The Passage of Time

by MasterFrasca

Into the Unknown

Sound once again halted and I opened my eyes to see that I had entered the frozen world again, only this time I was ready for whatever resided in there. Looking around the tree, I saw that everything was the exact same as when I had closed my eyes, except for one odd detail. Where Twilight had been standing there was now an odd glow of light purple in the four spots that her hooves would have been. The glow seemed to pulse every so often, getting less energetic as the frozen seconds ticked by. I laid a hoof on one of the spots, not noticing anything different with it to tell me why they were where they were. If Twilight had been stuck in here, then she would have been right in front of me.

Dragging my hoof toward me to make sure that the spots weren’t some sort of odd paint that could only exist in this realm, a very light pulse energy shot up my leg and sparked out of my horn. I pulled my hoof off the spot, not wanting to get shocked by the glowing aura, and looked closer at the glowing substance. I had never seen it before, but the pulse reminded me of the type of pulse sent through my body when someone used a spell on me. Soon, I put my hoof back down on one of the other spots and ran it along the edge, seeing if it wasn’t just one particular section or some anomaly in that exact spot out of the four.

The same mix of a shock and tingling sensation once again ran slowly up my leg before I lifted it away from the glowing stuff. This time I noticed that a mist-like substance stuck to my hoof before slowly sliding off and falling to the ground like dust. I stomper on the ground near one of the spots and some of the blue mist scattered away, but most of it stayed in a ring shape, almost as if there were glue on the ground holding it in place. Once more I ran my hoof along the ring, getting the same tingling sensation, but nothing stuck to my hoof or kept it in place. I had no idea what to make of it and just ran my hoof along all the spots causing my horn to spark whenever my hoof made contact. If I didn’t know any better it looked as if Twilight had cast a spell or something to try and deliver a message.

I just didn’t know what spell she would have used to try and get me to do something. Laying my hoof on a spot, I let the tingling sensation run up my leg once more, only this time I didn’t stop it after it reached my torso. I let the sensation overcome me until my entire body felt as if it was going to explode with power and my horn was sparking like mad. Closing my eyes, I channeled all of my energy into my horn and suddenly, something felt as it was going to burst from my head. I shouted and pushed with all my might and a hologram spurted out from my horn in the exact likeness of Twilight. The hologram looked around the room for a few seconds and I called out “Twilight?” to see if it could notice me.

“Colgate,” The hologram started, eyes still darting around the room uncertainly. I was about to shout that I was right here when it continued, “This is a pre-recorded message, so don’t try to respond to it.”

“Alright,” I said, only to realize my silly mistake a second later. I put my hoof into my face and closed my eyes in a defeated manner and just listened for whatever Twilight was going to say.

“I realized after I had cast the spell that you had never told me how to reverse it,” the hologram said, still glancing around the room and pacing back and forth. “I’m going to try to get myself out of here using that spell again,”

“No Twilight, that just sends you...” I began before realizing again that I was essentially talking to a ghost and that it still couldn’t hear me.

“If something is to go wrong I’m leaving this message in the hope that you’ll find me,” she said, glancing anxiously behind her. “If I don’t return...” she trailed off with a look of pure fear in her eyes before finishing the thought. “I hope you know what to do. I’m sorry I didn’t stay to listen to you. I thought I had learned that lesson... Good Luck Colgate.”

The horn on the recorded Twilight flashed and the hologram was gone in a flash of light. I stood there entranced in thought. Twilight had just done what I had earlier when I visited that demonic parallel world with Lily. Now Twilight was stuck in that second world with those moving demon-ponies and shadows. I stood there for a few seconds thinking over what I needed to do. If she had really cast the spell then there was no doubt that she had been captured by those shadows like Lily had, and I would have to figure out what to do.

There was no way of defeating those creatures though. It would be like trying to kill smoke. Not only was it absurd, but it was also impossible to do without extensive knowledge of spell casting. Even then the smoke didn’t fight back. I looked around the room at the moonlight shining through the windows and the glowing substance at my feet fading substantially. I felt that with every second I was getting further and further away from Twilight. I needed to act now, but I didn’t have even the semblance of a plan. If I went now, I’d get caught instantly by those creatures, but there was no telling what their weaknesses were without trying to study them. I had no time, unless I...

The thought was crazy, and there was no other way of telling what they’d do to me, but I had no choice at this point. I had already lost two people, so now I may as well see what they went through. The creatures couldn’t just kill me, because I was the only way ponies could travel into their world. The must need to eat or use their victims for something, so my best shot would be to let them take me in. I could try and convince them before the killed me or ate me or do whatever they do to me. There was no going back.

Calming myself down, I took a deep breath in and slowly let it out, shutting my eyes tightly and beginning to conjure images of a ticking clock once again. I stepped forward and tried to turn the hand back as I had always done, but this time the Clock looked to be a cuckoo clock painted purple with blue and pink streaks intertwined in the woodwork. When I tried to slow it down this time, it refused to change its course as easily as it had the last time. I concentrated harder and put all of my might into getting the hand to stop moving, pulling harder and harder with my magic. Soon I started to hear popping sounds coming from my own horn, but I didn’t dare to open my eyes in fear of losing my concentration.

Pulling harder than I ever had, the clock handle seemed to be stuck fast with the inner mechanisms. It was as if somepony was pushing the handle for every second that ticked by, making it impossible to stop. I jumped forward and struck the clock in the hopes of maybe breaking it to see what would happen. As it tipped over, a dark shadow emerged from it bringing with it a whisper of Lily’s name. The clock shattered into hundreds of pieces and an ear-piercing scream sounding distinctly like Twilight voice shattered the air, causing me to jump backwards and knock myself into a shelf, dumping a plethora of dusty tomes onto my head.

I pushed the books away from me, coughing from all the dust that was raised, and blinking a few times to make sure I wasn’t about to pass out. Looking in front of the piles of scattered books, I noticed that the four rings where Twilight had cast her spell were no longer glowing, and instead there looked to be a spot burnt into the floor as if there had been a fire or some sort of explosion had gone off. I got up and brushed the titles aside, transfixed on the burnt patch of the ground.

Walking over to it, I placed my hoof onto the patch and slid it along the edge before picking it up and looking at it. A bit of ash had rubbed off onto my hoof, and the spot itself still felt warm as if a teleportation spell had been placed there recently. I brushed off my hoof and looked out the window to see if the spell had worked or not. An unnaturally black sky met with my eyes and I knew that I had crossed over, but that scream in my head had sounded too real for me to have imagined it.

It was as if Twilight herself had screamed when I had broken the clock. Now that I thought about it, the color scheme reminded me of her mane. I called out vainly in case she was still here. “Twilight!” the word echoed about the silent room with only the sound of moving air as a response. I paced back and forth planning my next move in this dangerous land. I had no idea where any of the creatures that had taken Lily had gone or if Twilight had even met them yet.

The wind rose and the white noise caught my attention. The thought crossed my mind that usually when I was in the frozen world, the air stopped moving around me. I assumed that it didn’t change until I forced it to myself, so it shouldn’t be moving unless somepony was causing it. “Twilight?” I cautiously asked, creeping closer and closer to the front door as the noise rose in volume. When I took the final few steps towards the entrance, the noise became almost unbearable and I grasped the latch with my magic and pulled.

I expected to be met with the normal town outside, granted it be in a more demonic state with a missing sky and eyeless ponies, but something even worse met my eyes. The doorway seemed to be replaced by a wall of static that seemed to resonate with a scratching sound. I took a step back from shock, only to step forward again when I realized that the static was static and wasn’t going to harm me. Gingerly I raised a hoof to the surface of the static doorway and let it fall into the blocked entrance.

My hoof stopped as a dull thud resonated back to me. The passageway was covered in what felt like glass. Tapping a few times on the surface, I could feel that the glass was thick, and I didn’t want to break it anyway. The static droned on, and shut the door to try to drown out the noise. I turned around and looked out the window to see that it was still black as the sky was earlier, except I could see the tree outside. Thinking I could get a better look at the other Ponyville, I climbed the steps into Twilight’s personal bedroom and peaked out the window. What I saw caused my heart to start racing.

Nothing. There was nothing.

The only thing I could see out the window was the tree branches jutting out above me and ever those were a few shades darker than normal. I took a step back from the window and started to panic. Twilight was in here somewhere and I had to find out how to get her back, not to mention Lily. But how was the rest of Ponyville missing, and why had that static appeared over the doorway. “This doesn’t make any sense,” I mumbled to the silent air around me. Glancing out the window once again, I tried to light up my horn to make sure there wasn’t some kind of covering keeping me in. Try as I could though, I couldn’t produce any feeling in the tip of my horn. It was as if all of my magic had gone.

I grunted pushing with all my might to get my horn to at least glow, but nothing was produced. My heart started racing as I realized that not only was my magic not working, but my tether to the normal frozen world was gone. I also had no way of fighting off those shadows if they were to come. My mind started to go wild at the thought of the shadows capturing me. “What if they take me and dissect me or rip out my soul or something...” I mumbled out of fear. I shook my head to try and elude those thoughts while tensing up my body and shaking. It occurred to me after a second that the shivering wasn’t from fear, but the room seemed to have suddenly dropped tremendously in temperature. I glanced outside the window to see if something had changed outside, and something caught my eye.

In the distance was a pair of glowing red orbs.

I screamed without thinking of the consequences when I saw them and jumped back, falling on my side as my heart pounded against my chest. I quickly got up and sprinted for the stairs, tripping and tumbling down the steps and landing on the floor with a thud. For a few seconds a dazed numbness overcame me and my vision blurred as my head swam, then reality came back as a sharp pain coursed through my head. Blinking a few times, I stared at the floor, trying not to fall to vertigo and vomit.

A drop of blood landed on the wooden floor, followed by another, and I could feel a small stream running down my forehead as the drops became faster and faster. Pushing myself to my hooves, I reached up and gingerly touched my front left hoof my head before pulling it away to see a small puddle of blood. Panicking, I closed my eyes and tried to perform a healing spell, but that just sent even more pain across my forehead. My magic still wasn't working, and I probably just chipped my horn, but that was the least of my worries at the moment.

The front door slammed open and the static screen seemed to be frozen. I backed up as blood trickled into one of my eyes. I gave a yelp as it stung my eye, and as soon as I did, three of the shadow-like figures seemed to pass right through the frozen static doorway. Hastily glancing behind me, I saw that I was in front of a shelf. I picked up one of the lighter books and threw it at one of the figures slowly advancing on me.

The novel passed right through the head of one of the figures, who stopped momentarily as the smoky substance started to reform in the shape it had previously been in. With my eyes wide in shock, I picked up another book and threw it, hitting one square in the chest but with the same result. The book even hit the static doorway and bounced off with the thud that the glass had produced earlier. Again I yanked a book off the shelf, and again I threw it, but the effect that it produced was only the slowing of one of the three figures for a second. I started to bombard the three figures with books, but the hazy ponies kept advancing on me.

Throwing a book, my arm suddenly felt heavy and I could see my own breath as the room chilled further. I threw another book, but this time it felt as if I had just tried to throw a boulder. I picked up one last novel, but it suddenly felt too heavy to carry and I dropped it on the floor in front of me. I slumped into a lying position with my chin resting on the ground and my legs fanned out around me, suddenly feeling very drowsy and weak. As the figures stood around me, I asked, “Why...?”

“You shouldn't mess with time,” one whispered as everything started to fade. I began to ask what that meant when the figures crouched over me and I closed my eyes, warm blood trickling down my face.

Finally a black mist filled my brain and I fell into a dreamless sleep.

Comments

[night-feather]

Scary D:

[wkblack]

O___O
Why so cliffhanger?!

[MasterFrasca]

1794139 Sorry...
I'm writing I swear... I'm just unsure of how I want to reveal the new setting.

[Eldorado]

i50.tinypic.com/9hmk3k.png
unicorn horn master race

[Skeeter The Lurker]

Daaaaaaamnnnnn.

And the rabbit hole goes deeper...

~Skeeter The Lurker