• Published 28th Jul 2014
  • 1,235 Views, 442 Comments

Starlight: Redshift - the-pieman



Anthony takes Twilight and Rarity on an unexpected adventure they won't forget in this spinoff of Starlight in a Broken Vessel

  • ...
13
 442
 1,235

PreviousChapters Next
Chapter 37

I sit up and I feel something grab my face. “Oh god, it’s got me! I’m gonna diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie-

Grabbing my face to ward off the attacker I discover I sat up and headbutted a spiderweb. Well it could have been a killer! I grab the candle off the table and continue on to find the girls. If they haven’t already been killed or had their souls eaten. Wouldn’t be surprised since they don’t listen to the smart one around here...

The mares walk into the dining hall, actually looking scared and then they see me. “Just because I’m not dead yet doesn’t mean it’s not gonna happen!” Twilight rolls her eyes and I feel real sleepy again...

I come to in the same position as before. “Goddamnit, stop doing that!”

I find I’m yelling at nothing again, because they have wandered off. I hear a faint clacking noise from behind me as I walk down the hall, but I don’t see anything when I turn around. There’s just bunch of creepy-looking old masks and skull-shaped ceramic busts in this hallway. I keep getting the feeling I’m being watched, but I never actually see anything! It’s driving me nuts!

Grabbing the candle once more, I begin my search for a way out of the house. I pass all the cliche stuff like wind blowing curtains and moving shadows looking like creatures. I’m not so dense as to jump at the fake stuff, I just keep a healthy amount of belief in ghosts. After all, I’ve battled with them in the games, and the pokédex confirms their existence. If they lived anywhere, it would be here in this very run-down trash-heap of a small mansion.

Continuing on, my candle lights my way. Granted I could just Spark up and light myself, but trying just kind of... drains me to do it.

I find myself in something of a landing for a flight of stairs, with an obvious entrance to the basement going down, and a way to the upper floor next to it. There’s also another hallway int he other direction.

Yeah, like I’d go up or down into an enclosed area... I’m taking the hallway!

I step into the hall, and a brief flash and crack of lightning gives me a perfectly-lit view of a dozen paintings, a door at the end of the hall, and a door halfway down the hall.

Inspecting the paintings, I assure myself that nothing is watching me through them, double-checking by poking each painted face in the eyes with no results.

I come to another Clefable painting and give it a sharper poke, but again, nothing happens. The oilwork just gets smudged and I’m convinced it’s just a painting. I rub the oily paint off my hand and continue on to the door in the middle of the hallway, my candle burning just as bright as ever.

After a quick jiggle of the handle, I find the door unlocked, but it feels like there’s a blockade behind the door. As I try to see if I can shift it at all, a shivery feeling goes down my spine, and the sensation of being watched increases tenfold.

Luckily I have a way to get inside. I toss out the white Pokéball containing Geodude. “Rip that door off it’s hinges!”

Geodude, reaches out, and a dull thud echoes from behind the door, then a scraping noise. Geodude gently touches the door, looking almost as freaked out as I feel, and the door swings easily open.

“What the hell? I swear it was jammed... Well, I’ll call you if I need you again, and I’ll make sure I actually need you.” Geodude salutes as he disappears back into the ball. I try the door and it opens just fine. Huh... I take a tentative few steps inside, using the light from my candle to see if there’s a desk or a chest or something close enough to have been in the door’s way, but I find nothing. It’s just a few armor racks, coated in dust, and a small desk that couldn’t have blocked the door. There’s a single book on the desk, open, but also coated in dust. A long, metallic feather juts from an inkwell.

Looking down, I’m puzzled until I see a long streak, such as from something being dragged, cleared in the dust on the floor. It curves and leads straight into a solid wall, with stuff on the floor in front of it, also strangely clear of dust. I pocket the interesting quill pen and move my candle closer to inspect the odd area better.

There’s a spot precisely the height for a large crate or something that’s cleared of the wall... other than the slight amount of clear slime on the wall. Ectoplasm in the outline of... a coffin? The cleared spot on the wall’s the right height and such... But how could it go through the wall? There’s not enough space for a secret passage.

I knew it, ghosts are here and they are fucking with all of us. I take a closer look at the armor racks, but there’s nothing weird. Just the assorted helmets and gauntlets. They look nice, but I don’t see anything funny about them. Oh well, I guess I’ll go see if I can find Twi and Rarity. I give them a 60-40 chance of being dead already.

And, of course, as soon as I step back into the hall, I hear a shrill screech, coming from upstairs. I can’t tell if it’s Rarity or Twilight, but... the hero usually survives, right?

I head back to the nearest stairway up, the one towards the second floor, and begin climbing the stairs to see what she saw.

When I reach the top of the stairs, I see that there’s a corridor to either side, with standing suits of armor, each bearing a longsword or shortsword in the typical ‘standing guard’ pose. A few also have spears, but those’re far rarer.

Yeah, right, like I’m just going to walk down this hallway and be attacked by a suddenly moving suit of armor. Bullshit.

I grab a shortsword from one of the suits and, getting no response, hold the sword out towards each suit of armor as I go, expecting each one to leap out as I approach it. I hold my blade so that doing so would have them impale themselves on my weapon.

A click-Clack! sounds from one of the suits, though I’m not sure which. I look back down the hall and-

Oh shit, they’re all looking at me!

I backpedal, still holding the sword in front of me, informing the previously inanimate suits that I’m armed and I know vaguely how to use what I’m holding. I’m so fucking dead right now.

An eerie cackling begins to break out from the suits, and I feel myself back into something. A gauntleted hand clasps me on the shoulder, and I can see bones between the sections of old armor.

“Oh fuck!

The gauntlet slowly raises again, and I turn to see the armored skeleton raise the hand to its helmeted face...

“Shhhh.”

Oh god it’s gonna kill me! I’m dead, so totally dead! I hurl myself to the floor, away from the armored skeleton and, slide on the thick dust. I look back to see the suit picking up the sword I dropped, and I take the time to scuttle into the next room, which prompts a shriek from the inhabitants thereof.

“EEEEK! THEY’RE AFTER US AGAIN!”

Oh thank goodness, it’s just Rari- OWCH

Rarity chucks something at me, smacking me in the chest this time. I stand up and rub the dust off my shirt. “Now do you believe me when I say the place is haunted you stupid horse?”

“Fine! I’ll believe you! Just make them go away!” Rarity says, brandishing a sword in her magical grasp. It’s making awfully cinematic ‘shing! Schwing!’ noises as she does, but it seems alright.

“Thank you. Now, clearly they are undead, so they have no vital points to attack. The best bet would be to remove the armor and break them into pieces.” I toss out Geodude again. “Okay, this time we’ve actually been attacked. See what you can do about those suits of arm-”

Muahahahahaha!” As stereotypically evil as that sounded, it also sounded about as evil as you can get with laughing at anything. The laughter resonated from every corner of the room

I yell at the house. “Creepy noises alone aren’t fucking scary unless you’re two and a half!”

“Heh. Heh heh.” That noise came from behind me.

I slowly turn, and find myself looking right at the faces of the two scared ponies and... the biggest, baddest, scariest face I’ve ever seen. The wide, toothy maw of purpley-black shadows seems to be peeling itself off the wall at the back of the room, a multitude of reaching claws grasping at us from the darkness. There is literally no way to accurately describe the level of malevolent this thing gives off, let alone how scary it is right now.

I beg my feet to get me away from here, but I can’t seem to make them do what I want. This is it. This fucked up mutant-beast of a Haunter is going to murder us all.

Twilight and Rarity scream and charge the door, tearing away from the terror-inducing apparition, colliding with me and dragging me along with them in the process.

Twilight slams the door shut and does something to it that makes it glow slightly, then lifts me in her aura and tears down the hall, following Rarity, who is now keeping the sword she’d found in a sheath on her back. The suits of armor turn to watch us, but don’t seem to be following. I’m probably imagining it, but I think I hear snickering from them as we pass at high speed.

“I told you, I told you we should have left! But no, you wanted to sleep here!”

“Berate us later, run now!” I can appreciate that right now, so I just... sit floating in midair as Twilight drags me along with her magic.

Waitaminute. “Uh girls, the stairs downward, and therefore to the exit, are back there.

Twilight turns back for a brief second. “Too late!” she keep barreling onwards, until we find ourselves with a choice of two doors. One to the right, and one to the left.

“One on the right!” I yell and the girls obey, all of us rushing into the room and slamming the door behind us before actually looking around.

It’s a beautiful room, with red satin drapes and fine seating. In fact, it’s an incredibly tasteful room, thogh there’s a lot of silver and a suspicious lack of mirrors... which is only suspicious because of the large coffin where I suspect a bed would otherwise go.

The coffin is large, ornate, and very solid-looking, with silver and gold trim, and a few large rubies worked into the designs.

I am being as quiet as I can get, because I don’t like the thought of waking anything that might be in there. I lean closer to the mares on either side and explain the plan in a low whisper.

“Okay, what we do, is we get out of here as quietly as possible, and head back to the stairs. Then, we leave this place and find rain shelter in the forest somewhere. Sound good?”

“Indeed.

Yes.

Scree.” What? I look at the sound and see a Zubat hovering above us. I wave my arm at it trying to get it to shoo. “Scree!”

Aw c’mon, I don’t want that thing waking up! “What the heck do you want?”

“Scree!” Goddamnit, why can’t they invent a pokémon translator? “Scree!”

“Food? You want food?”

Scree!” I’m not sure if that’s a yes or a no...

“Well what do you want then!?” It takes a moment, but I just realized I shouted back, meaning it’s guaranteed whatever’s in the coffin heard me.

And sure enough, the top of the coffin opens to either side, and a mostly humanoid shape rises from the coffin like it’s on a hinge, totally ‘Nosferatu’ style. A pair of blood-red eyes snap open, and a huge set of bat-like wings open as the creature hisses at us. “Nosfer!

Oh crap it’s a pokémon!? I drop my candle and bolt out the door, and race for the stairs. I turn back for a moment when I realize that the ponies are still in the room. “You can teleport!” I remind them as I continue running for the downstairs and to freedom, the lit candle grappling my sleeve as I run.

I get to the stairs and basically toboggan down on my rear, ignoring the pain as I get up and look around for an exit. Twilight and Rarity reach the top of the stairs moments after, and we all take off down the hall I’d been exploring before. The door at the end of the hall opens easily, and reveals a fully stocked kitchen. There’s nothing unusual in it, and we have a moment to actually catch our breaths.

“Oh crap.” I mutter as realization dawns on me. “Where’s Geodude? We left him back in the armor hall!”

“You what?!” Twilight says, looking at me in horror. “And what were all of those? You never mentioned any of these things before!”

I think for a minute racking my brain for a ‘humanoid skeleton in armor’ Pokémon, but none come to mind. “I hate to say it, but all things considered, those were probably just armored animate skeletons. Like, raised-from-the-dead skeletons.”

“But- how?! You said there’s no magic, per se, but necromancy is definitely magic!”

“Well, ghost pokémon are undead. Maybe they have a way of sharing that? I dunno, but I don’t think those were pokémon, and I really don’t want to go back there and check... but Geodude’s in trouble...”

Twilight heaves a sigh, looking a little shaky. “I don’t know how much we can do, Anthony. We don’t even know where to look, exactly.”

“Shouldn't I be the insensitive one, who would rather just leave a friend behind? As awful as this place is, I’m not leaving without him.”

“I wasn’t saying we should. But, we need to calm down if we’re going to be helpful.” She cocks her ear for a moment. “Hmm... that rain’s stopped. We should figure out where the exit is, at the least so we can get out when we find Geodude, rather than wandering into another trap, alright?”

“Yeah, let’s go.” I grab the candle off of my sleeve and- waitamin- Holy crap! I drop the candle and hit the deck, expecting it to set me on fire or something.

Lit!” The candle says, when it hits the ground. As we all look at it in surprise, it rights itself, yawning slightly. A pair of tiny, adorable eyes looks up at me, and it makes ‘pick me up’ motions.

A Litwick... that, actually makes sense. And it seems harmless. Eh, friendly ghosts exist I suppose. I bend down and offer my hand to the pokémon, who jumps on. I lift it back up to hold it like a candle.

“A-Anthony, what’s that?”

“It’s a Litwick, a Ghost/Fire type. This explains why you can’t see the flame but I can.” I demonstrate the flame’s reality by pulling out one of the waterproof matches from my bag and touch it to the Litwick’s fire. The match lights and the girls stare at it, being able to see this flame.

“Wow... so it produces a light that only someone holding it can see? That’s really impressive! How does that work?”

“Uh, that’s not it. It... uh... hold on.” I forgot how it works, so I just pull out my éTech.

-Litwick, the Candle Pokémon. Its flame is usually out, but it starts shining when it absorbs life force from people or Pokémon, which becomes the fuel that it burns. -

It’s also a little strange that it’s the same color as a normal candle. Aren’t they supposed to be a lighter blue when shiny? Is it sick?

“Are you uh... feeling alright little guy?”

Lit!” It hops in place a little smiling up at me. Huh, it’s eyes are light blue. Odd.

“Well, I guess if you want to come with me that’s fine...”

“Wait, hold on.” Twilight said confused. “You can see the light. Doesn’t that mean that it’s eating your soul!?

I think on that for a second. “I guess, but I don’t feel like anything is eating my soul. Granted I have no idea what it would feel like, but I’m sure it’d feel like something, right?”

Lit! Litwick!” The little pokemon nuzzles my fingers, the tiny flame atop it keeping my hand warm. It also seems a little bigger already.

A thought occurs to me. “Wait a second... is this it?” I try to Spark up and, like I tried before, the slight draining feeling returns and the flame on Litwick gets noticeably brighter while my glow is even more diminished than it usually is. “That’s it, my star core! He’s not feeding on my soul he’s running off of my stellar energy, like some sort of soul substitute... weird.”

Litwick!

“Well, it doesn’t hurt, and he seems to like me, so I say we keep him. One of us needs a Ghost type after all, right?”

“I suppose.” Twilight says, looking warily at the cuddlesome little candle-pokemon. A vaguely ‘nice’ scent wafts gently from the pokemon.

“Besides, I know plenty about these guys. Small now, but later on, they’re real tough powerhouses. Trained right, these guys will bounce back from just about anything.”

Twilight gestures towards the other door of the kitchen. “Well... alright. Now, let’s see if there’s an exit through here...”

PreviousChapters Next