Lost in a Terrifying World

by Erisn

Part 4: Escalation

Slender watched the purple pony fall. It was rare that an individual stared at him for so long, but it had been known to happen. Many of Slender’s victims had eventually realized he could not move so long as eyes watched him. Such was the nature of the game. But what each forgot, and what inevitably led them to their demise was this: when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back.

Slender Man could concentrate his presence upon this reality to the extent he chose. Apart from darkening the world around him and causing panic in the minds of lesser creatures, it was also deadly to any being that absorbed too much of it. A touch from one of his tendrils was like pure poison to the body, but even staring at his form for too long could cause one’s head to explode.

The pony had collapsed from the strain, which was just as well for it. Another ten seconds and it would have been dead. Slender was quite surprised its eyes hadn’t exploded already, but it must have been the magic. A highly magical being could withstand the effects of reality-warpers far better than ordinary mortals. Still, her feat had been impressive, if futile.

Slender let his tendrils drift closer to the group, but now there were no eyes on him, he was free to move as well. He stepped into the shadows other-plane that was his home and watched through the thin veil that separated him from reality the other ponies sprang into action. The blue one had hesitated, but had grabbed the orange and small yellow pony and leapt into the air. She – Slender was vaguely aware the pony was feminine – was climbing into the air, presumably attempting to take the other ponies to safety.

Slender watched in fascination as the blue pony climbed into the sky. It was accelerating at a rate approaching the limits of sound even with the two ponies across its shoulders. This would be interesting.

----

Twilight was only dimly aware of her surroundings in her pain-filled world. Nevertheless, the crunch from high above was enough to jolt her out of her semi-stupor. Her eyes were filled with some liquid – Twilight wiped if off with one hoof before she noticed what it was. Blood. Leaking from her eyes, and nose as well. But even the sight of that didn’t stop Twilight’s eyes from reaching the figure in the sky.

No, not one figure. Three. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Apple Bloom were all falling. How? And why? But there was no time for questions, much less for answers. Getting shakily to her feet, Twilight summoned all of her magic in a frantic spell. It caught the three figures in a purple nimbus twenty feet off of the ground and began to slow their descent. Too slowly, and not by enough. All three figures were still falling far too fast. Rainbow Dash wasn’t moving; nor were the other two. Twilight frantically pumped more magic into her spell, but the figures refused to slow down any further.

A blur of yellow and pink shot past Twilight. Fluttershy, wings pumping frantically had launched herself at the three ponies, catching them midair. Fluttershy was attempting desperately to control their descent with her lone set of wings. The maneuver was suicidal – the pressure on Fluttershy’s wings from all four ponies at that velocity had to be – Twilight watched in horror as Fluttershy’s wings bent and twisted from the wind pressure. But the ponies’ descent was slower, and Twilight’s spell capitalized on the decrease in momentum. The four ponies halted mere inches from the ground, and Twilight carefully lowered each to the ground.

“Fluttershy, that was…” Rarity began, but Twilight was already brushing past her, staring at the downed ponies. She spared a glance for Fluttershy – the pony smiled weakly, but her wings were tattered, feathers having been torn away from the stress of the fall. But Twilight had a far more serious problem.

Rainbow Dash lay unmoving on the ground next to Applejack and Apple Bloom. The rainbow-maned pony’s head looked…lumpy. Part of her head was ever so slightly bowed in, and the skin around her head was already stained a dark purple. Not a concussion. No, far worse. A depressed skull fracture. But from what? Some invisible barrier? Whatever it had been, Dash had run into it headfirst and now…

Twilight looked up. Pinkie Pie had said something about not leaving. If Dash had run into some kind of barrier – the same kind as the one around the thing that Applejack had kicked, there was no way anypony was getting away unless the barriers were gone. Pinkie Pie had mentioned something about a game. What game?

“Darling, we must get Dash and Applejack to Zeroca’s at once!” Rarity again, her voice buzzing on the edge of Twilight’s racing thoughts like a parasprite. “They’re in dire condition and—”

“Pinkie Pie. Where’s Pinkie Pie?” Twilight snapped. “She knows what’s happening.”

Twilight spun to confront a bewildered Fluttershy and Rarity, and noticed for the first time the absence of three ponies. “Sweetie Belle? Scootaloo? Rarity, where are they?”

It was Fluttershy who answered. “The instant you fell over, Pinkie Pie ran into the forest. She was shouting something about pages, so Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle followed her.”

“What?” Twilight spun around, searching for any of the missing ponies. But all she saw was the empty road, and ahead of her, the Everfree Forest. “That thing is out there and…” Twilight’s thoughts halted. “Where did it go? It was right here and where did it go?”

Fluttershy and Rarity looked around nervously, but Twilight was sure. Her stomach churned with acid as the full nature of what was happening finally sunk in. “This isn’t an attack. This is a game. And if Pinkie Pie is right and we can’t leave until we find these ‘pages’…this is a game. And that thing is it.”

Twilight stared into the forest. It was hunting them. But what could Twilight do? Run after them? That would be far worse: leaving Fluttershy and Rarity to defend three injured ponies? But to leave them alone in the woods…there were no good options. Twilight felt trapped. It seemed as though every move – attack, flight – was already accounted for. No matter what they did, it was as if their fate had been sealed from the very start.

----

Slender Man watched the three ponies tending to three fallen. Three down, six to go. And in such a short time as well. It had been an unusual game from the start, with the magical spell and the pony trying to kick him. Watching the other ponies catch the falling blue pony had been just as interesting as well. But now the game was truly afoot. Slender could sense the other three ponies running through the forest, searching for pages. This was more like it.

He decided to leave the three upright ponies for now. They wouldn’t go anywhere, not with the barriers in place. It was the ponies in the forest he wanted now. They were playing the game. And so, it was time he took part as well.

The two smaller ponies he found first. They sped along the outskirts of the forest, pausing to check the trees. An inefficient method. Besides which, the pages were unlikely to be in the open. They didn’t seem to know precisely what they were looking for, but made up for that with a speed borne of pure panic. One of them was a pegasus, but Slender noticed the wings on this pony were smaller than they should have been.

As if to bely this handicap, the pony rode on some kind of scooter, barely more than a board with wheels on. Yet it propelled itself at insane speeds by flapping its wings to move forwards. Quite interesting. Slender had chased a few humans in cars, but they inevitably crashed into the dimensional walls marking the borders of the game. However, this scooter-pegasus combo seemed almost ideal for evading him.

Nevertheless, the pegasus was hampered by the other small filly. A unicorn like the purple pony, but Slender felt only the barest glimmer of magic about this one. Useless. Hardly a challenge.

Contemptuously, Slender materialized a few feet ahead of the duo, concealed by a few trees. As the two fillies raced around a tree trunk, they saw him, but were too late to stop. Two tendrils from Slender’s body caught both ponies and held them up. They writhed helplessly, emitting more vibrations in the air at near ultrasonic levels. It was over.

Slender waited patiently. It would take a minute; perhaps less for the two to expire. A pity; this magical environment seemed to give the ponies a slight resistance to his touch. Any human would have died within seconds of his touch. Already their coats were fading. Any second now…

A sudden shock ran through Slender Man. It was as if a gong had just been rung inside of his head. He let the ponies fall to the ground, still breathing, as he turned to gaze deeper into the forest.

Three. One of the ponies had already collected three pages. That was…impossible. Even an eldritch can be shocked, and this was Slender’s first surprise in eons. Nothing could collect pages that fast. But even as he stood there, he sense another page collected, another reverberation in his being. No time to even finish the small ponies off. Slender stepped into his shadow dimension and sped faster than thought to where he sensed the other pony to be.

It was the pink one. Slender had seen her at the back of the group, and unlike the others, it had been wise enough to avert its gaze after he had appeared among them. Now it galloped through the forest, dashing through the trees as a speed no human could match. It seemed to know that the pages weren’t grouped together, and combed through the forest systematically, pausing to look in a slow circle every hundred feet before shooting off again.

If Slender didn’t know better, he would have assumed the pony knew the rules of the game. But that was impossible. Slender had never encountered this pony before, and besides, he had never travelled to this dimension. His legend could not have travelled between realities. Could it?

Enough. Regardless of the pony’s skill, Slender would not let it grab any more pages. Materializing a few feet in front of the pony behind a set of trees, Slender waited. The pony rounded one of the trees and saw him.

Unlike the smaller fillies, this pony’s reaction was instantaneous. Front and back hooves hit the ground, and the pony was already turning, running perpendicular to Slender, mane flying in the air. Not a motion wasted. Only a millisecond’s time in Slender’s presence – not enough time for Slender’s unearthly aura to affect the pony at all.

This might be harder than he had thought. Annoyed, Slender dematerialized and reappeared, this time cleverly hidden among a group of trees. This time the pony wouldn’t know he was there until he was right on top of her…

The pony’s left ear twitched. Then she sneezed. Without missing a beat, the pink pony did a 180-degree turn and sped back the way she had come into the forest.

Slender nearly flipped his shit. What the hell was that? He’d never seen anything like it. Had some miserable protoplasmic lifeform developed a…Slender sense? Impossible. But that was clearly what had happened. Humans might have doubted the evidence of their eyes, but Slender didn’t have eyes. Incomprehensible as it seemed, the pony not only knew how to play the game, but could sense his presence.

Before Slender could even dematerialize another silent echo rang through his consciousness. Five pages. Five. Pages. This wasn’t right. The game shouldn’t go like this. Other individuals had defeated Slender at the game once or even twice, but never more than twice, and never this quickly. And Slender hated losing. This was it. No holds barred. The Slender Man was going to find that pink pony and kill her horribly. He had already decided her death would be horrific enough to give him nightmares.

Grimly, Slender Man stretched his consciousness throughout the forest. He barely took any notice even as the pink pony collected another page. Preparations like this took a bit of time. Around The Slender Man darkness coalesced into a mass, deeper than fog and as black as original sin. Slowly, the Slender Man’s features twisted. Instead of his normal, human form, Slender Man now sprouted six twisting limb-tendrils from his back. His face, normally a blank mask akin to that of a mannequin, was now frowning, brows drawn down into a terrifying scowl of hatred. He was ready.

Game face set, Slender Man stepped once more into the darkness of his shadowy realm. Six pages down, but not one more would be taken. The pink one died now.

----

Twilight was beyond panic. Panic was for lesser situations of life-or-death crises. Ponies panicked when they caught their mane caught in train tracks with the Canterlot Express barreling towards them. Panic was good for changeling invasions, the return of Nightmare moon, and failing to write your weekly lesson on friendship to Princess Celestia.

Right now Twilight was sinking through the serene ocean of pure unadulterated terror. She hadn’t even glimpsed the bottom yet. She had passed over the event-horizon line of fear and despair as it were and now existed in a state of calm serenity.

It was quite relaxing, actually. Twilight trotted through the forest, Applejack and Rainbow Dash carried magically through the air behind her. Rarity and Fluttershy brought up the rear, Rarity carrying Apple Bloom’s unconscious body, while Fluttershy limped along, tattered wings shedding feathers behind her.

Twilight was quite worried about Fluttershy’s wings. They refused to lie flat on Fluttershy’s back. No doubt they were at least sprained, or even broken. Based on Twilight’s internal calculations, Fluttershy would probably be grounded for the next two months at best.

This was, of course better than Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s situations. Glancing at both her friends hovering behind her, Twilight could only thank Luna that she had read Basic Healing Magic for Dummies last week. The title hadn’t engendered much confidence, but the book had been extremely informative on the various types of injuries and how to stabilize, if not cure them. A magical compressing spell on Applejacks’s legs had stopped the bleeding, at least. For Rainbow Dash, all Twilight could do was keep her head upright and stable, but at least magic ensured there was no possibility of something jostling her.

Moving someone with a head injury was usually a bad and often fatal decision, but Twilight had no choice. Once her panic, confusion, terror, and nosebleed had halted, Twilight had known there was only one option left to her and the rest of the girls. The Tree of Harmony.

Twilight wasn’t sure about the Tree of Harmony, but it was her last resort. The Elements of Harmony had been easy to use. Equip crown, blast bad guy. Very simple. But ever since Twilight had unlocked the magic box and activated the tree, things had gotten much more complicated.

For one thing, the magical transformation hadn’t activated itself when the six friends had tried to manually summon the elements. And even in a situation of great need (now), the elements weren’t doing anything. Did everypony need to turn the key again to use the elements? If so, Twilight was going to make a complaint. Talk about a shoddy element-delivery system.

Still, it was their best bet at the moment, which pretty much indicated how much trouble everypony was in. Pinkie Pie, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle hadn’t reappeared, so Twilight imagined they must be trying to collect these pages. But how long could they escape something that seemed to move every time you stopped looking at it? Whose very touch could corrode and destroy? Whose skin seemed impervious to harm?

Twilight was a mare of science. And magic. If Pinkie Pie could stop this monster by gathering a few pages, that was fine. But if she failed, Twilight wanted some heavy-duty magic in her arsenal.

Twilight glanced back and over her shoulder at Rarity and Fluttershy. Both ponies were silent and shattered at the ground or at their feet. Fluttershy noticed Twilight’s stare and gave a weak half smile. Twilight tried to return the smile as best she could, but she was aware that the blood vessels in her eyes had burst, giving her eyes a red tinge, and blood was drying down her front from where her nose had bled. At least Rarity was unharmed. The purple-maned unicorn could have been out for a stroll was it not for Apple Bloom’s limp form on her back. The black marks on her chest, arms and legs seemed to pulsate even as Twilight watched.

The memory of how Apple Bloom had received those marks concentrated Twilight’s mind again. Looking forward, she stepped up her pace. The Tree of Harmony had to work. It had to. Twilight could only pray that Pinkie Pie and the others managed to keep the strange creature off their backs long enough for them to figure out how to use the elements.

----

A stand of trees exploded as the Slender Man’s tendrils lance through them, sending a deadly hail of splinters in all directions. The Pink One was gone though, zipping away once again through the forest. Slender screamed his fury, a terrible screech-wail that echoed through the forest. Again. The Pink One had escaped him again.

Already, the pink pony was out of sight, but Slender could still sense her speeding through the forest. He could also sense the relative location of the last two pages, and knew the pony was once again moving towards one of the pages. How did she do it? No being from a three-dimensional reality could have senses that reached into the parareal, but this…pony had them. Flawless escape patterns, trap and warning senses, and the ability to home onto a page’s locations. This wasn’t just someone good at playing the game. Slender was sure that this pony was…cheating.

That made him mad. There could be only one eventual winner of the game, and that was Slendy. When Slender Man gave it his all, there was no being that could evade him, no matter how skilled they were. But the Pink One was an adversary in another league. Slender might have even been impressed had he not currently been so pissed off.

Still, Slender had to admit that the game was getting fun. Rage though he might, it had been a long time since he had actually had to think while playing. He had even hit upon a new strategy; one which he was sure would be effective.

Slender stepped into his alternate world, and then back out, just as the pony was reaching for a page. His tendrils darted forth, and sure enough, the Pink One spun and dodged around them, grabbing the page as she did so. No matter. Slender hadn’t been aiming at her anyways.

The tendrils slammed into the tree trunks next to the Pink One and passed through, effortless perforating the layers of bark and exiting the other side without slowing. Needle-sharp fragments of bark and wood sprayed out like hail and peppered the Pink
One even as she turned to flee.

Got you.

The Pink One staggered and nearly fell, but kept moving despite the hundreds of cuts and splinters of wood now peppering her side. Blood already oozed from many of the deeper cuts, but she nevertheless dug in her heels and took off. Far more slowly, Slender noticed. The cuts were deep, and if blood loss did not affect the Pink One’s reactions right away, a few more repeats of the same trick should do the job. He had won.

The eldritch do not adapt to change well, nor surprises. They’re used to tradition, and follow the rules. That doesn’t mean they can’t think quickly.

Slender stepped into the dark otherworld once more. Time to finish the game.

----

Twilight stared at the Tree of Harmony and could have wept. The tree glowed even in the unnatural darkness, emitting an aura of such love and life that for a moment, Twilight forgot why she had come. Not for long, though.

Setting her two friends gently on the ground, and taking a moment to ensure Rainbow Dash’s head stayed level, Twilight then galloped for the base of the tree. Sure enough, the box was there, each key in place since Twilight and her friends had defeated Tirek. At last.

The box seemed to glow in the tree’s gentle radiance as Twilight approached. Swiftly, Twilight found her key in the box. It was time to let loose the Elements of Hamony once more. This strange thin man-thing had kicked her and her friends around the block for a while, but it was time to law the smackdown on this monster.

Twilight twisted the key as hard as she could.

The key refused to budge.

Disbelieving, Twilight twisted again.

The key refused to budge.

Twilight felt the calm radiance of hope which had so recently engulfed her vanish, and panic once again take control. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening.

“Um, Twilight? What’s wrong?” Fluttershy and Rarity approached, Rarity having left Apple Bloom with the other two ponies. Twilight made no answer, but twisted again, this time using both hooves. The key didn’t budge as much as a millimeter. Both Rarity and Fluttershy’s eyes widened in dismay.

“Oh no. The keys aren’t…?”

“Quick, try and turn your keys as well,” Twilight said desperately. “Maybe if we turn them together…”

It wouldn’t work. Twilight knew it. No matter how hard Rarity and Fluttershy pushed, at the same time as Twilight or independently, the keys refused to budge.

“Maybe it needs all of us to work,” Rarity suggested. “You know, like the first time we did it.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Twilight thumped the box with one hoof in frustration. “Applejack’s unconscious, Dash’s skull is fractured, and Pinkie Pie is out there playing tag with that thing."

“Maybe…if we took the elements out of the tree again?” Fluttershy suggested quietly. “They wouldn’t be as strong as the tree itself, but we could still use the Elements, right?”

Twilight slapped herself on the forehead with one hoof. “Brilliant, Fluttershy! That’s how Luna and Celestia first got the Elements. Let’s do it!”

But try as they might, the ponies found the elements were now locked in position on the Tree of Harmony. Twilight pounded at her own element, tried to blast it out with a few spells, and even punched the tree a few times but her element didn’t so much as budge. This was insane. The tree was denying them the Elements. But why? Why? Everypony was going to die unless they got the Elements and…

Twilight was dimly aware of a pounding in her head, and a noise on the edge of consciousness. The Elements. Without them, they were all going to die. The needed the Elements. Pinkie Pie might think these pages would stop the monster, but what good would pages do? They needed to get the Elements, so why wasn’t the tree helping them? Did they all need to turn the keys at once like before? Or was it that the tree had grown tired of helping the six, had withdrawn the Element’s blessings? Could it be that the six had done something to break the bond of friendship? What if—

“TWILIGHT!” Twilight’s head snapped up as Rarity’s scream brought her back into the real world. She stared up at her friend; the unicorn was holding her tightly by one arm, as if dragging her back. Twilight was suddenly aware of Fluttershy on her other side, gripping her just as tightly. There was a throbbing pain on Twilight’s head for some reason…

“What is it, Rarity?” Twilight asked. Rarity stared back at Twilight for some reason, and then slowly pointed to Twilight’s forehead. Instinctively, Twilight touched her forehead and flinched. A bolt of searing pain raced through her head and her hoof came away covered in blood. Twilight stared horrified at the blood, but then saw the tree’s trunk. There was a faint indentation, and a spattering of blood, right at head-height. “Did I do that?”

“You started hitting the tree with your head,” Fluttershy volunteered timidly. “And you wouldn’t stop, even when Rarity and I grabbed you. Are you…okay, Twilight?”

“Fine, fine.” Twilight lied, as the pounding in her head was replaced by a full-blown marching band on parade. “I was just thinking. About…tactics. It looks like the Element’s won’t be working for us, girls.”

“I’m sure we don’t need them anyways,” Rarity said with forced cheerfulness. “Pinkie Pie can get all of those pages, or if that fails, you’ll come up with a brilliant plan.”

“Of course. Of course I will. I’ve got five backup plans already, and a five-phase plane ready to go.” Twilight had no plans, no idea of what to do. The tree had been her last bet, and worse, she could see Rarity and Fluttershy knew it too.

“I tell you what, why don’t we go back and have another shot at that barrier-thing?” Rarity suggested. She was trying to appear cheerful, but there was a brittle edge to her voice as she continued, “I’m sure that if we try again we’ll break through. And then…why, we could get to Zecora’s and sent a letter to Princess Celestia through Spike!”

“Yeah. That could work,” Twilight said absently. It couldn’t work. It wouldn’t. But what options were left? Maybe…maybe they could look for Pinkie’s pages. Maybe she had been right, and the pages were the key to stopping this nightmare. It was all Twilight had left.

She turned to the entrance of the cave that held the Tree of Harmony and stopped. There was something pink on the ground and the entrance to the cave.

It was like one of Pinky Pie’s party balloons, only deflated. Ragged bits of wood were stuck to it, and red was oozing all over the balloon. It was twitching, ever so slightly. It moved – convulsed rather – but all that happened as the balloon flopped over on its side. A raggedy bit of cloth stuck to the balloon fell over. It was…pink, and might have been fluffy once. Pinkie Pie’s mane.

It was Pinkie Pie.

The party pony didn’t move. Twilight wasn’t even sure she was breathing. What she had taken to be cloth was her mane; no longer in its bouncy, fluffy shape. It looked as if it had been torn to bits. The same was true of Pinkie. A thousand cuts lined her body, and dripped blood onto the stony ground of the cavern. It was pooling around Pinkie, a red stain engulfing a pink center.

Slowly, Twilight looked up. Rarity and Fluttershy were transfixed beside her, still with horror. But Twilight’s eyes roamed the cavern for what she knew must be there. The darkness caught at her eyes. The shadows seemed to draw in more light. There he was.

Standing. In the center of the cavern suddenly. As if he had always been there. Waiting. The tall figure regarded her slowly. It was no longer a still, pale, twisted version of a human. This was something else.

Dark tendrils emerged from its back. Shadows seemed to form around it, sucking in the light. Its features were twisted, horrible and cruel. Two empty sockets seemed to be staring right at Twilight. She could feel it’s presence from here. It poured into her soul, invisible tendrils pressing against its heard as it whispered in Twilight’s mind.

This was it. Death.

No more places to run. Nowhere to hide.

Twilight raised her horn, and stared the monster down as she drew on every scrap of magic she held. If it was her time, she was going to go down swinging.

Her legs braced. Her head lowered.

Twilight charged.

Comments

[Jonny Bench]

Slender, you obviously haven't played pinkies game. Rule one, pinkie sense detects 99% of bad things that will happen. It is omnipotent. Rule two, she can bend the fabric of reality and shatter the 4th wall. She can find out anything. Rule 3, pinkie rarely loses

[Danksouls]

Pinkie got hella popped