Chapter 1
A tingling sensation washed over Twilight’s horn, and she felt ice slide down her spine. But when she turned to look, nothing was there.
Unable to focus on reading, Twilight placed her bookmark and closed her book. She gingerly levitated it back to its shelf.
“Spike,” she called to her assistant.
Spike looked up from his comic book.
“I’ll be heading out for a bit. Make sure to look over the library while I’m gone,” Twilight said sternly.
As Twilight trotted down the crystal stairs and out the front door, she found that neither the calming blue crystals of her library nor the warm greens and light browns of the sunny outdoors made her feel any better. For some reason, despite the cheerful smiles and waves, she felt like she was trotting towards the maw of a creature that could swallow her whole. The feeling of ice cold magic still sliding down into her horn certainly didn’t help any.
She scanned the crowd, but nothing seemed out of place. Nopony was even casting any magic that could upset her horn save for a few levitation spells. No, the ponies in the crowd looked as normal and happy-go-lucky as they ever did. There were even a few ponies watching her, pointing at her, looking where she was looking, and trying to get her attention. The fact that they didn’t feel this disturbing chill was almost more disturbing than the feeling of the magic itself… Almost.
As she felt the cold magic constrict around her to a point where she was having a hard time breathing, she thought she saw something in the back of the crowd. From the corner of her vision, it looked like the pony turned its eyes, but not its head, and then its ears, but not its muzzle.
When she turned to look at it, there was nopony there. And now the chilling sensation was gone.
Twilight shook her head and walked back into her home. There, she and Spike would be safer together.
Once she opened the door, she welcomed the colder air and the clean smell that washed over her. She was glad to be back home, safe from whatever imagined fears she was having.
“Hello and welcome to—” Spike stopped when he saw his sister. “—back already?” he smiled bemusedly.
Twilight paused before smiling back. “I guess it was nothing.”
“You guess what was nothing?” Spike raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing.” Twilight smiled back, giggling.
“Soo...” Spike smiled cheekily. “Does this mean you’ll be taking care of the library now?”
Twilight chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Sure...”
Spike walked back to his comic book with a smile on his face.
She trotted forward to pick out the book she was just reading, but once she did, she saw Pinkie hiding behind it.
Twilight pursed her lips. “You can’t get me with the same trick twice, Pinkie.”
Pinkie didn’t respond.
“Pinkie?” Twilight repeated.
Pinkie still didn’t respond.
Twilight pulled out a few more books, fully uncovering her friend.
Pinkie took notice of the missing books and shook her head at Twilight. When Twilight took out more books, Pinkie scuttled back so she was hidden once again.
“Pinkie!” Twilight complained before grabbing her friend with her magic and pulling her out. But she wasn’t expecting her friend to struggle so hard. “Gah!”
Pinkie kicked the bookshelf and flung herself out of Twilight’s magic. Now she was in the middle of the room.
“Pinkie!” Twilight yelled. “What’s gotten into you!” She rubbed her horn. “That hurt!”
Pinkie stood up. She was shivering and her eyes were wide open, but she still smiled at her friend. “Sorry.” She grinned sheepishly. “I panicked.”
Twilight glared, still feeling the pain in her horn.
“Do you feel that?” Pinkie asked.
“Feel what?” Twilight responded.
“That terrible”—Pinkie leapt forward and grabbed Twilight’s face—“bone chilling, spine tingling”—she traced a hoof along Twilight spine—“suffocating feeling?” She backed off.
Twilight blinked. Something about that sounded familiar... But no, it was a bit much. Earlier today, the cold of the library had gotten to her, and she even told Spike that she would be out for a bit before she quickly found it was too hot outside. But that was nothing like what Pinkie described.
‘I wanted to show you.’ Twilight remembered a strange, almost sad voice, but she couldn’t match the voice to anypony she knew. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t figure out where that memory came from.
She shook her head. “Nothing chilling or spine tingling here, just a regular old library.” Twilight paused and gazed at a bookshelf. “Well, there may be a few chilling stories in the horror section.”
When she looked back at Pinkie, she saw her friend staring at the bookshelf she was just looking at. But as her friend turned her head back, first, only her eyes moved. Then, Pinkie’s muzzle turned to face Twilight, followed by Pinkie’s neck, and her nose and ears were last.
Pinkie smiled. “Nah, I came here ‘cause I wanted to show you something, but now I can’t remember...” she trailed off.
Twilight paused to let Pinkie think. When her friend just stood there, gazing off into the distance, she spoke up. “Well, you’re welcome to stay over. I’d like to hear what it is if you remember it.”
Pinkie tackled Twilight in a strangely tight hug. “Aww.” she nuzzled her friend. “I’d always love to stay over.” She dropped Twilight. “We should read a book together!”
Twilight picked herself up and looked at the nearest bookshelf. She noticed several books lying on the floor. “Ugh!” She frowned. “I thought I told Spike to look after the library! Spike!” she called.
Pinkie looked in every direction, then zipped around the room, peeking under the books and beneath the stairs.
Twilight grunted in annoyance and trotted upstairs to Spike’s room. Once she got there, she threw open the door. “Spike!”
The dragon gave no response.
When she looked at him, sleeping in his little basket bed, she couldn’t help but calm down at the sight of his chest falling and falling as he breathed in, then kept his breath in, then breathed in...
Despite her frustration, Twilight couldn’t stay angry. That dragon needed his beauty sleep, and she wasn’t the kind of sister who would wake up her little brother in the middle of the night for some small chores.
She closed the door slowly, careful not to wake up the sleeping drake, and then trotted back downstairs.
When Twilight reached the entry room to her castle, she expected to see Pinkie for some reason, but there was a completely different pony there. He was staring at a bookshelf with a single book taken out and left on the floor.
“Don’t worry,” the messy gray unicorn with yellow eyes said, half of his face concealed as he stared at the bookshelf, and the other half concealed by his large blue hat, “I dealt with the others.” He turned, his blue cape following him, but his face was still concealed.
Twilight glanced around the room, but couldn’t find Pinkie. She felt fiery rage rise out from her chest. What did he mean by ‘dealt with the others’? Where was Pinkie!? Why was Spike still asleep? Why was she alone!?
When she tried to answer her own questions, she found that she really had no reason to be angry: Pinkie was probably back home serving the early-afternoon customers, Spike was sleeping because it was the middle of the night, and she was alone because she wanted to be alone. But how could it be the middle of the night right after early-afternoon? She must’ve been outside for longer than she thought.
“Okay,” Twilight said, confused. Though, she was more confused at her sudden anger than at this pony. “Well, what are you interested in?” She motioned to the bookshelves around her.
Twilight looked down to the book beneath her. It was the one she had been reading this morning, but never finished. She looked back up at the pony, slightly confused.
The pony tore his face from the bookshelf piece by piece. First, his eyes moved, then his ears followed, then his jaw, his nose, and the rest of his face followed. “I wanted to show you,” he said.
Twilight stepped forward, the corners of her vision fading as she looked at him. “Show me... What?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” he asked, righting his hat before he tipped it. The sound of jingling bells stopped resonating throughout the room.
Twilight blinked. She opened her mouth, about to say his name, but then she remembered she already said it.
The mouth smiled. “It seems you do recognize me.”
“But,” Twilight started, but rubbed her eyes. She hated it when she couldn’t see clearly after studying too long. “What did I want to know?”
“Time.”
Twilight opened her book and started reading. She was comfortable in the knowledge that she would have as much time as she needed in the morning, so she buried her muzzle in the book, and didn’t look up until she heard Spike come down to get his after lunch comic reading done right beside her.
For some reason, she felt like she would never run out of time again.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- DrakeyC · 2.9k words · 506 5 · 6.4k views
- RagingPonyRider · 21k words · 434 22 · 6.5k views
- mr lovecolt · 85k words · 180 14 · 8.8k views
- Ranakastrasz · 14k words · 3k views
- the legendary ass eater · 3.6k words · 251 25 · 5.5k views
- ProbableSarcasm · 13k words · 66 6 · 2.1k views
- Snow Moon · 3k words · 39 2 · 1.2k views
- Intellect Stretcher · 60k words · 39 2 · 2.3k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.109 seconds
Total duration
991 users online
1,513,888 hits today, 1,996,409 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
You know what's nice after a long and hard day?
Sex.
But here, have a review.
~
So, uh... I'm not really sure what to think about this.
I feel like something happened, but I just can't figure out what. Maybe the symbolism is just flying right over my head. The narrative kept jumping around, which was intentional from what I can tell, but it was fairly disorienting. If that was the intention, then you hit that nail right on the head. I did like the bit about ponies turning to face Twilight, which was weird and creepy. I felt that the inclusion of Pinkie Pie just throws the whole thing off, as I was waiting for her to be funny and ruin the mood rather than her increasing the tension.
Actually, was this all a dream? That would explain everything jumping around like that.
Rating:
/5
Fave Line:
I freaked when I read that line, good on that.
Final Verdict: I want to show you something. Marvel as my each of my body parts move separately, much like an animation error.
5326268
After helping him edit the first chapter I can confirm that's the case.
5326410
Yay! I did it right then.
So I assume I have the go ahead to post this. I'm gonna go ahead and post this now. Message me if you want me to unpost before it passes moderation or something
5326268
Yeah, Applejack or Rarity would've probably fit the mood better. I relate to Pinkie and Twilight the most though, so I tend to write them into my stories more often.
Maybe I should try the other main characters some time. I'd probably be doing them with their families though if I was going for character interaction, or with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, since I feel that their families mesh together better than the mane six. (Take Pinkie Apple Pie for example. I normally don't like applejack, but she really reminded me of an old best friend in that episode.)
That was... odd, but odd in a good sense. I can tell this is all set up intentionally the way it is, though I can't figure it out yet. Suppose I'll need more time to get it, though from what I read, I quite enjoyed it.
Quite chilling, actually. Well done!
5329736
Thanks!
Must... resist... urge... to give hints!
This... is... infuriating!
but in the best kind of way 
it's really spooky, well-written - I can't wait for the next chapter 
I'm trying to figure it out... but failing 
I think I see the layers here, but I'm sorry to say that it's not really working for me.
If I'm interpreting it right, there's something going on where Twilight and/or Starswirl are stealing little moments from everyone's day in order to give themselves extra time in the future. Which is creating jerky animation glitches. The issue is that I don't have a sense of what's at stake. The ending implies that the creepy feeling throughout amounts to ... well, pretty much nothing; you can't have horror if nothing actually goes wrong.
(I might be missing textual evidence that it doesn't resolve as cleanly as it seems, but really, throughout the story, nobody seems at all concerned, except for Twilight (who calms down) and a couple of background ponies who we're just told were "taken care of". I don't even know what to make of that.)
Does this rely on information in the story description and/or cover art for context? Because that does seem to recontextualize it, but a) that's a little unfair and b) then i'm just lost.
5330719
That's pretty much what I was intending. I didn't want an obvious enemy that could be overcome or even fully understood. I was going for something closer to cthulu or other unfathomable horrors. And part of the unfathomable part here is that you can't even tell if the antagonist is good or bad, hurting or helping, etc.
I have to disagree here. The purpose of horror isn't to hurt the characters in the story, like movies like saw tend to do, but to instill fear or, well, horror. This is psychological horror.
Hmm, I thought I portrayed that decently well. Pinkie and Twilight were very concerned, until they did calm down. But the calming down was supposed to seem artificial, especially with the faulty logic and the misrememberance of events.
Did I not portray that right?
I meant this to be a bit open ended as to what exactly happened. Yes, the antagonist was definitely who you said, but I didn't want their actions or their results to be clear cut. This was inspired by an extra credits review of cthulu in video games, so I wanted to instill the same loss of control and even understanding that they talked about. (After all, to understand would mean you would know what to do in this situation, and that would mean you might be able to figure out a way to deal with, or at least mitigate, the horror. Here, you don't know if you can safely do anything without something completely unknown, ranging from life changing and good to horrible and fatal, happening to you.)
5330521
This was meant to be a one-shot. I could write a second chapter, depending on the reception I get, but I'd have to be delicate with that to not ruin the original story.
I don't want to have an open ended first chapter and have a lot of people thinking of different interpretations, and then choose just one interpretation and go against most people's ideas while ruining the mystery of it. If I were to write another chapter, I'm pretty sure I would try to make the story even harder to understand.
I figured out who it is easily once I read the story.Starswirl the Bearded!
5331601
Yay!
Originally it was harder, but too few people were getting it.
When did you figure it out?
5331610 it's the hat and bells. That's what I think when I think of the character, other than his beard.
5331624
Yeah, I was thinking of adding that too, but then it would be too easy to figure out who it was. It wouldn't seem like a challenge.
5331638 yeah, I know, it's why I marked it spoiler! Well, great job so far. I do wonder what actually happened there though...
5331651
I'm curious, do you think something good or bad happened?
5331696 I think it depends on your point of view, that some could classify it good and done bad. That's usually the case when time magic is involved. I don't think The Character would intentionally hurt Twi, so he thinks it's good.
5331715
Nice. I originally meant it as a sort of gift between kindered spirits, but one that was hard to understand.
I like how your interpretation is based on who the antagonist is, which is part of the puzzle.
Capitalize "Pinkie".
Is the mirroring intentional?
These confusing descriptions make me wonder just what the hell is going on.
And yet, if the events are strung together, night either came really fast or something is playing with Twilight's mind. Ponies are not really outside during the dark.
Something broke Twilight's sense of time and the logical flow of events.
The addition of the Star Trek background noise was interesting. Really didn't expect the little bleeping and images of flashing buttons it conjured. Twilight seems trapped in some sort of temporal tomfoolery, but why? Is this a story that will have clues sprinkled throughout that could lead an attentive reader to some conclusion before it is stated? There is the bit with the bells, that kinda made me think of Star Swirl and his hat.
Edit: Star Swirl it is.
5332420
Fixed the first two errors you mentioned.
The others... well, it looks like they had the effect I intended, unless by 'confusing descriptions' you mean that I didn't spend enough time describing certain things. If you think I should have described things a little differently, then I'm all ears.
5332489
Oh no, the "confusing descriptions" were good. I was noticing the time issues and so kept jumping up and down in the chapter to cross check things. Not sure but exactly the describing of parts of a head turning separately means. Seems almost as if you are having the mystery pony be slightly out of time with himself. Each part in a slightly separate timeline so actions are preformed in varying steps by each body part in a different line. I guess his body just isn't synchronized.
5333171
Ah, so I did good then.
Neat!
Was this supposed to be scary? To be honest it was just a bit odd and felt a bit weak....
This story fell flat for me. It was supposed to be creepy, but it didn't have any affect on me. And, those links to songs seriously messed me up each time I got to them. That green text just messes up the flow and I almost left the story the second I read the first line.
I'd really like to make this more like constructive criticism, as it sounds more like blatant complaints, but this story was too short and I don't really have anything good to say. Good grammar, I guess.
So, sorry about breaking the "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," rule. I just wanted to say that, because honest, unsugar-coated opinions do help, in the end.
Well, have a nice day! I hope I didn't sound 100% like a jerk! 99% is good enough, right?
5334219
5334534
I love criticism, but I can't really do anything with this. Also, I think someone else liked the songs, so I'm not even sure about the only specific point.
This is being sent to twilight's library, so if there is a problem, hopefully someone will tell me.
5334534
Wait, no, I might be able to use that greentext complaint. That's more a matter of design, not part of the story.
Since the greentext highlights whatever I put it over, I placed it on clauses that set the mood, but don't tell much about the future of the story. I think that should work better.
Does it work better?
Need a visit from the sun? ~Dr. Celestia~ ust.chatango.com/um/b/l/blacksilverflames/img/l_29.jpg
5336100 Yes, I like that much better.
This isn't going into my completed stories section because, well, it isn't quite complete.
This fic might have a rushed feeling to some, and that's because it speeds over some descriptions that the characters would usually take longer to scrutinize, even if they calm. For instance:
After she closed the door, I could have had Twilight think about how cute spike was when his chest just kept sinking and sinking into his body as he constantly breathed in. She could have stifled a chuckle when seeing the stack of comic books constantly swaying away from his basket-bed, proud that her little brother was becoming an avid reader like her. Then, she would slowly open the door, careful not to wake Spike when she arrived, because she truly didn't want to wake her brother for some small chore.
Read that example, then compare it to what I wrote in the story, and you'll see why some commenters are saying 'it just fell flat'. It didn't really fall flat, it just didn't take the time to flesh itself out and reach the full potential of the premise.
I may rewrite this if I don't have something for the next Twilight's Library opening, but I'll probably just write another one-shot, because I like being involved in a certain fic competition group.
There's never a connection between the suffocating spine chilling cold and the bleeding animation errors. It can't be that the errors are doing it to Twilight, since she only feels it once and as soon as the error happens it goes away. It can't be that the errors are taking Twilight out of it though, because they continue to happen and she's not feeling chilly at all. And it can't be that having an error causes it, because it was other ponies who had it not Twilight, and Spike didn't even seem to notice, while Pinkie was experiencing the chills and the errors, seemingly randomly.
There also aren't any others to deal with. He can't be referring to Pinkie since whatever he was doing didn't deal with her at all, since she's been retroactively at the bakery this whole time. He can't be referring to keeping Twilight alone, since he was there for one thing, and after she tried to set down and read then Spike came down the stairs. She was never worried about running out of time until the very end, like it was just thrown in as an afterthought.
The only thing I can think is he was trying to show her time, by interrupting the flow of it selectively so she could see it progressing. But that wouldn't explain why her past was altered such that she didn't even ask in the first place, and still doesn't address the spine chilling cold. I mean, it probably wouldn't have been as spooky a story if it went like,
"Hey there! I'm Star Swirl!"
"Star Swirl the Bearded!"
"Check this out. Bzam!"
"Twilight? Who's thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
"Holy Frito Lay what did you do?"
"Just a little time magic. Bzam!"
"at?"
"I can totally use that to have more time to read!"
"Only happy to help my biggest fan! I must go now. Time powers awaaaaaaaaaaaa-"
"Twilight, could we never ever do that again?"
"Sure Spike, as long as you never interrupt me while I'm reading a book."
"Hey I'm in this story toooooooooooooooo"
"Pinkie"
"ooooooooooo"
"Pinkie it isn't time magic if you just sit there saying ooo."
"Aww!"
Jesus that was creepy as hell and the comment below mine seemed to sum things up pretty well.
Fukken love fics that have music to them - and that employ it properly.
... Now I'm gonna go find something to scrub my ears of the echoes of music.
Why is that so weird? Moving your eyes without moving your head is a possible thing to do. Also, the cover art is broken, please fix it.