... Slaughter Together
Rainbow Dash was bored.
“Viiiinyyyyl.” All alone and draped upside-down across a padded chair, she whined to nobody in particular. “Where are you?”
Beside a crooked chandelier, a dull golden blob of light shone down from the ceiling above the dining room’s long, wooden table. Hanging out with Twilight had spoiled Rainbow when it came to unicorn magic—where Twilight could have kept the entire room lit without blinking an eye, the spell Vinyl had left in her absence barely kept the room’s center lit enough to see, let alone the perimeters and corners. Liquid shadows oozed in from all sides like a roiling mass of water throwing itself against a flimsy, quivering wall.
After a moment of staring into the inky darkness, Rainbow swallowed and glanced away. Her attention settled on the table. A dusty white cloth covered the entire thing, and she could imagine Rarity nattering over how whoever had lived here last should feel the deepest of shame for ever letting such a thing happen.
She suddenly groaned and shook her head. Being sensitive and considerate was fine and all, but actually seeing things from Rarity’s perspective was where Rainbow drew the line. She was too cool for that.
Without sitting up, her head turned towards the room’s other occupant, Angel, who had spent the last few minutes slowly sidling towards a dark corner of the room. “Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
Ears flat, Angel glared back over his shoulder.
“You know any games we could play?” Rainbow went on, ignoring his acidic stare. “Tic-tac-toe? I spy?”
The glare continued.
“Maybe any idea where the treasure is?”
Angel’s eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, me neither,” she said.
Aside from the long table and the chairs around it, the dining room didn’t have much in the way of places where someone might hide their treasure. Rainbow had already looked behind all the faded portraits of important-looking ponies to no avail, and Angel’s journey under the table came up with similar results. She briefly considered pulling up the carpet to see if a trapdoor lay beneath, but quickly discarded that plan. That would take effort.
Angel had once more began to slowly shuffle into the shadows when a groan from Rainbow brought him to a halt.
“When’s she coming back?” she said in a loud voice. “It’s been, like, ten minutes!”
Angel scowled and sat down.
“I mean, I’m all for finding this dumb treasure as fast as we can, but c’mon!” Arching her chest, she stretched all four of her legs. “This is a team effort, right?”
A gust of wind rattled the windows. She almost jumped, barely managing to rein herself in. That wind was odd, though—she didn’t remember any weather like that on the forecast, just clear skies, warm temperatures, and a very slight breeze. Perhaps a rogue front had slipped under her team’s radar. She shrugged and returned her attention to Angel Bunny.
Just in time to see his fluffy white tail vanish around the doorway’s cusp and into the pitch-black hallway.
“Hey!” Rainbow cried as she tried to sit up but instead only managed to slide off of the chair and land on her back. Her legs tangled with each other, and it took her a few seconds before she managed to regain her footing. “Hey, rabbit! Get back here!”
She darted after him, then skidded to a halt right at the doorway, which marked the end of her light and the beginning of the deep shadows. Her head craned around, trying to see into the darkness, but it was hopeless.
“Yo! Bad bunny!” she shouted. “Bad! We’re supposed to look after you!”
Before she could decide whether or not to brave the shadowy corridor, something crashed against one of the windows. Rainbow did jump this time, spinning around. All thoughts of Angel Bunny were blown from the front of her mind, and she instead focused on the window. The heavy curtains, partially moth-eaten yet still functional, prevented her from seeing anything outside. Another powerful gust shook the glass.
“Probably just the wind,” Rainbow muttered, swallowing. “Just the wind.”
Despite her attempts to reassure herself, her heart was pounding. She slowly put one hoof in front of the other, then did so again, then again. Her legs carried her to the window, which continued to rattle.
“The wind,” she said again, reaching out to slide the curtain away. Then, another heart-stopping clatter rang out from the window, and she fell backwards. If before her heart had pounded, now it hammered in her ears, almost making her head throb with every beat.
She knew she should just sit there and ignore it, or even walk away and take her chances in the darkness. Every last instinct she possessed told her that, whatever she did, she should not look to see what might be outside. Perhaps it was a sort of morbid curiosity, then, that led her to reach out and tug the drapes aside. Her trembling eyes gazed out.
Nothing.
“Huh.” Rainbow breathed a sigh of relief as the crushing weight that had settled on her back sloughed away. “Wow. It really was the wind.” She stepped forward to glance out for a better look. “Not like I was scared or any—
The window shattered inward as something crashed into it at full speed.
A shriek tore unbidden from her mouth, and before whatever had broken in could so much as think of tearing her to pieces with its no-doubt long, sharp claws, she turned and galloped out of the room. She didn’t even hesitate to plunge herself into the darkness.
And that was how Rainbow Dash went from bored to hopelessly lost.
Twilight gawked at the corridor, which had a notable lack of other ponies.
“Octavia?” she called, brow furrowed.
A quick trot took her back the way she had come, and seconds later her pale light slid over the door to the small library where she had last seen Octavia. She reached out towards the door handle when she came to a realization that made her heart skip a beat—the door was shut.
And something other than her had shut it.
Shivers danced down Twilight’s spine as she pulled her hoof away. Would Octavia have closed the door? If she wanted privacy she could have simply asked instead of letting Twilight go on without her. Twilight briefly considered the possibility of a prank, then shook her head; something told her that Octavia wasn’t the pranking type.
But Twilight hadn’t shut the door, so if Octavia wasn’t responsible, then… who was? Doors didn’t close themselves, after all.
She scowled and shook her head. The late-night study session from the previous day must have affected her more than she realized. Of course Octavia had shut the door for some reason, or maybe Twilight had done it herself out of habit without even noticing. And to think she had almost considered the possibility of a gho—
Without hesitation, she jerked the handle down and threw the door open. Her light cascaded into the room, showing her that little had changed in the few minutes she had been gone. That is, little except for the fact that there was no Octavia in sight, and the room’s other door on the far wall hung wide open.
All by herself and confronted by a conundrum that didn’t particularly make a whole lot of sense, Twilight felt a cold bead of sweat roll down her forehead. “Octavia?” she said, only partially successful in keeping the tremor from her voice.
The light from her spell only fell a few inches into the next room, almost as though the darkness was pushing back against it. She knew that Octavia must have left through that door—where else could she have gone?—but the thought of following after her made the hairs on Twilight’s back stand up. Some little voice, a survival instinct that all living beings possess to some degree, whispered to her that she should turn away, that she should walk back into the hallway and get out of the mansion as soon as possible.
After a moment’s inaction, she quashed the voice into silence.
“Octavia?” Twilight called.
She pushed through the door and into a small sitting room, where her nose immediately wrinkled; something in this new room reeked, so much so that it felt like she had run into a wall of stench. A glance showed her exactly what—a deer lying in the corner with a chunk of meat missing out of its side. Flies buzzed over the poor animal’s corpse.
For a moment, Twilight lost her focus and simply stared. Regardless of whether or not the wound was responsible for killing this animal, the fact remained that something had bit into its flank. What that something was, though, she couldn’t say. A bear, maybe? The thought of running into a bear in the dark mansion sent a shiver down her spine. However, before she could speculate further, a noise like hooves stepping on hardwood came through a doorway across the room, followed by more. Someone in the next room was walking about.
“Octavia!” Twilight cantered over and poked her head through the frame. “Is that you?”
She found herself in another short hallway, this one with two plain wooden doors on either side, just in time to see the door across from her close. For a moment she wondered if it had just been a trick of her light playing across the wall, but then the loud click of a deadbolt resounded loudly in the small space and proved that someone was indeed trying to get away from her.
And Twilight wanted to know why.
“Hey, who is that?” she shouted, trotting up to the door and knocking. Nobody answered. “If that’s you, Octavia, then please just tell me what’s wrong.” Still no answer.
An irritated sigh slipped past her lips. Normally she would just teleport to the other side, but she had no idea what might be sitting over there. Celestia had told her a few stories about unicorns who ended up teleporting literally into a chair, or, in one grisly case, becoming trapped inside a thick stone wall. But the only other option was to force the door open. A close inspection told her nothing about the wood’s state; it might be weak from age, or it might be as strong as the day it was carved. She sighed again.
“Sorry,” she muttered to the house as she turned around.
Her hind legs lashed out in a powerful kick that slammed into the door and sent a deafening crash echoing through the wing. The door blew open, and Twilight wasted no time in running through. She tried to ignore the expected surge of guilt she felt from damaging such an old door, a task made easier at the sight of the shadowy figure who darted out of the perimeter of her light.
“Who are you?” Twilight shouted breathlessly as she galloped into the room, which might have served as a kitchen back in the mansion’s glory days. She couldn’t spare a moment to appreciate it, though, as her quarry had already slipped through yet another door.
She followed, then skidded and jumped backwards into the kitchen just in time to avoid a large cabinet that came crashing down in front of her. Porcelain and glass shattered, filling the air with a brittle tinkling sound.
“Please,” someone said from the darkness ahead. Twilight squinted; she could just barely see a pony’s silhouette on the other side of the cabinet, but her spell didn’t carry far enough to give any other details. The strangled, choked voice didn’t sound like anyone she knew. She couldn’t even tell if it belonged to a mare or stallion, assuming they were even a pony. “Get away!”
Twilight hopped over the fallen cabinet into yet another hallway. The fleeing pony, still not close enough for her spell to clearly illuminate, galloped away. She bounded off in pursuit.
“Octavia, is that you?” she managed to shout. The distance between them shrunk, and she saw that the fleeing figure wore a cloak. Its body was bulky and misshapen, and its posture was stilted and lurching, almost like it wasn’t used to running.
“You have to stay away,” the figure yelled back, and Twilight recognized it as a mare’s voice. “Please, Twilight, just—just go!”
Before she could say anything else, the mare dashed sideways into another room. The door closed behind her, and Twilight heard another deadbolt slide into place. She skidded to a halt and pounded her hoof against the smooth wood.
“Open up! I don’t care what happened—this is ridiculous!” She hit the door a few more times. “Just tell me the problem and we’ll fix it, I promise.”
An agonized moan seeped out from the room. “You don’t understand,” Octavia said. “I’m—something’s wrong. I’m changing!” She cried again, a noise that sounded like a cross between a shriek and a snarl. “Get away from me so I don’t—”
One final cry rang out, then silence.
“Octavia?” Twilight put her ear against the door. “Hey, say something.” When nobody answered, she turned around to kick the door open just like she had before. She leaned forward onto her forelegs—
—right as the door exploded outwards underneath the weight of something massive. Twilight fell forehead-first into a closed door across the hallway. Her horn crashed against the door handle in an impact that made every nerve in her face scream out in agony, and for a moment she lost her concentration along with the illumination spell. She staggered to her hooves and even managed to take a few steps back down the hallway before she collapsed against the wall, breathing heavily. The entire world spun around her in the near-complete darkness. A shaking leg came up to feel her forehead, only for her to snatch her hoof away when it touched a particularly sensitive spot on her horn. A tiny piece of the keratin had been chipped away.
As Twilight groaned and fought to regain her senses, a loud snuffling noise came from the darkness. She could hear wood splintering and cracking beneath someone’s hooves, but without her spell, she couldn’t see exactly what had barreled out of the room.
Again, the voice of her survival instincts spoke up. Something huge had nearly crushed her flat, and now it sniffed around, maybe for prey. The voice told her to run, to run and never look back until she stood someplace far, far away.
The repeated sniffs grew louder, as though whatever creature shambled about in the darkness wanted to pick out a particular scent but was having trouble. Briefly Twilight considered going back the way she had come and regrouping, but this idea was brushed away as soon as it came. Octavia needed her, and Twilight couldn’t just run away from that. Taking a deep breath and gulping loudly, she tried to reproduce her light spell. Although her horn sputtered in protest and started to throb, after a moment the bead of light once more coalesced at the tip and cast a flickering light upon her immediate surroundings. The creature cried out, and she finally got a good look at the thing that had almost flattened her.
She immediately wished she had run away while she had the chance.
I told you so, the voice whispered much more smugly than it had a right to.
Like a pony it stood on four legs, but the obvious similarities ended there. A stubby fin flapped about errantly partway along its barrel-like body, with another probably on the other side out of view. Its tail, sweeping back into a point, whipped back and forth almost as though it was trying to propel its owner through the water, and a dorsal fin on the creature’s back had a wicked curve of its own.
However, Twilight’s attention was focused entirely on the monster’s triangular head jutting forward, the beady eye blinking in the light of her spell, and the cavernous mouth filled with rows and rows of jagged yellow teeth, each more than capable of shredding a pony’s flesh. Her gaze traced a line from the tip of its lower lip, back towards the corner of its mouth, and then up to a white cloth band that circled the thing’s neck.
A white band holding a very familiar pink bowtie in place.
Maybe her fatigue had finally started to play tricks on her, or maybe she hadn’t fully recovered from hitting her head, but for some reason that would forever elude her, Twilight’s first coherent thought was to wonder if bowties were in that season, and to speculate at whether or not Rarity would like one for her birthday. Her next thought was that the tie matched quite well with the beast’s silken black mane that flowed down its back, rippling mesmerically in the light with every jerking movement.
Then everything snapped into place in a moment of gut-wrenching clarity. The bowtie, the black mane, Octavia’s fainting spells and subsequent flight—the puzzle snapped together. Twilight’s eyes widened as she realized just what this monster was—or rather, who it was. All of a sudden, her warm, soft bed back home began to look a lot more appealing.
Octavia?” she whimpered, ears lying down flat against her head. The fish-beast rounded on her upon hearing the name and snarled. “Octavia, is that you?”
The monster took a step towards her; every instinct told her to run, but her legs were frozen. It took another step, and then a second, and within seconds it loomed over her. Its breath reeked of rotten meat, whipping her mane around with every exhalation. Up close she could see that the bow-tie was nearly torn in some places from having stretched so far, and the thing’s mane was slick with something—water, she hoped.
The Octavia-thing—this was technically Octavia, Twilight’s racing mind decided—took a whiff of the terrified mare in front of it. Its nostrils flared, then it turned to get a closer look. Maybe it was just the numbing terror, but Twilight imagined that she could see some sort of intelligence in the thing’s pupil-less eyes.
“Octavia,” she breathed. At the sound, the shark twitched. It pivoted to look at her from the other side of its triangular head. “Can you understand me? Do you remember me?”
It didn’t say anything or make any indication that the words meant anything to it, but it did take a step away so that it didn’t tower over her quite so much.
“You’re still in there, aren’t—”
The shark’s flaring nostrils were Twilight’s only warning before it sneezed, showering her with warm mucus. She let slip a high-pitched squeak that would have left Fluttershy green with timid envy, and in response, the monster belted out a deafening roar that would have left Fluttershy dead from sheer terror.
Instead of taking that option, Twilight chose to spin around and dart back the way she had come. Her heartbeat had begun to pound in her ears, just barely slower than the tempo of her hoofsteps. The obsessive-compulsive part of her mind considered slowing the pace so both would fall into perfect rhythm when another roar brought her crashing right back to reality. She shook her head, then darted around a door that she thought would lead back the way she had come and slammed it shut behind her.
The room was long and narrow, with a row of moldy coats and rotting coat-hangers hanging on either side. An archway on the other end gaped wide open. It took her beset mind a few seconds to realize that she had gone through the wrong door.
“Bad, bad, bad,” she mumbled, thoughts whirling.
Then her face lit up, and she nearly laughed. All she had to do was teleport to safety, then find Rainbow and Vinyl and regroup. She took a wide-legged stance and drew the magic like she always had, but before she even had a chance to shape it into any sort of meaningful spell, a searing stripe of agony lanced across her skull, emanating from the horn’s base.
When she opened her eyes, she was lying on the ground—she hadn’t even realized that she had fallen—and her illumination spell had once more been lost.
“Small spells,” Twilight mumbled with a groan, pushing herself back up. She collected the magic to again light up the room, careful this time to make sure her injured horn could handle the strain. With that accomplished, she turned her mind towards escape.
Would it be worth it to go out into the hallway and try again to find her way back to a familiar path? Was the monster still out there? Maybe it was worth a peek. She had just turned around and reached for the door handle when a distant rumbling made her pause. From beyond the door, loud thumps approached, the sound of heavy hoofsteps making the floorboards creak and shaking the walls. The noises came to a sudden stop right outside the door, and she heard something grunt loudly.
Backing away, Twilight gulped. The idea of going back no longer enticed her, not with a massive, hungry, fish-looking Octavia ready to burst into the room. Briefly,she considered hiding in behind the coats. Maybe the reek of decaying cloth would throw off the thing’s sense of smell, and if she released the light spell, it wouldn’t be able to see her. Then, she could wait for it to wander off before backtracking to find Rainbow and Vinyl. But what if the thing could smell her amidst the mold? The thought of trapping herself and then relying on assumptions left a sour taste in her mouth.
Something sniffled against the crack underneath the door. Whatever Twilight did, she had to make up her mind—the longer she waited, the longer the monster had to break in. As though responding to that thought, the door shook beneath a massive blow, making her leap back. Her heart, which had begun to slow a bit, once more resumed its relentless pounding. The door shook again, and Twilight made up her mind.
She spun and galloped towards the archway.
Just as she passed through, a loud crash from behind told her that she had chosen just in time. She glanced back to see the shark-Octavia shaking splinters out of its mane before letting loose another chilling scream and charging forward.
Twilight barely had time to register the room's contents—a small lounge with a few dusty bottles of liquor adorning the shelves—before she shot towards another door. The monster barreled into the room behind her right as she slammed the door shut and galloped across this new room, which, judging by the four dusty, round tables, probably used to be a dining area. Another crunching noise made her wince, and she realized that this time the door hadn’t even slowed the beast. She put her head down and pushed herself to run faster.
Through a sitting room, down a short hallway, into a bedroom, through a shared bathroom—she wasn’t even stopping to think anymore about the rooms that she passed through. All that mattered to her was the thing that had once been Octavia, always close behind, flattening any obstacle Twilight threw in its way. Closed doors, flipped tables, and even at one point an old set of glass marbles—it barreled through everything unfortunate enough to get in its way, all the while gaining on its quarry inch by horrifying inch.
As the chase went on, Twilight found herself tiring more quickly than she cared to admit. Her breathing came faster and more labored, and her hooves began to feel like she was wearing lead horse-shoes. The light spell that she had maintained for so long without so much as a flicker started to waver and fade along with her energy. Unfortunately, shark-Octavia didn’t seem to have the same problem; it kept up its relentless pace without faltering. The distance between them closed at an ever increasing rate. When she glanced back over her shoulder, she could see its gaping mouth chomping at the air in anticipation for the upcoming meal.
A sudden realization hit Twilight as she rounded a corner and forced her quickly tiring legs to carry her down yet another hallway. If things carried on like they were, she would end up ripped to pieces when the monster finally caught up to her. She needed to do something to throw it off, and she needed to do it soon. Then an idea hit her. All she needed was another room to appear.
Within seconds she saw a pair of double doors thrown wide open on her left; she hurried through without a second thought. Then, before shark-Octavia had a chance to come roaring in after her, she spread her wings and, with a few powerful strokes, lifted herself right above the entrance. Hovering was still difficult for her, but at least the muscles she used to fly were still fresh after the madcap dash through the mansion. She released the magic that fueled the light on the end of her horn; absolute darkness descended over her as her eyes struggled to adjust to the change, but she had no other real choice. The thought of trying to sneak behind the monster only to be foiled by her own magic almost made Twilight chuckle. Almost.
Pounding hoofsteps beneath her heralded the monster’s entry as it blew into the room and skidded to a stop. She could almost see its confusion in the near-darkness. However, that confusion would only last for a moment until it smelled around and found her. Before that could happen, Twilight descended on silent wings, then drifted back out into the hallway. She thanked whoever had built this place for making these double doors wide enough for her to pass through without clipping her wings on the frame.
Having lost its attention, Twilight half-flew and half-glided down the hallway, back the way she had come. Staying airborne in such tight quarters wasn't easy and quickly burned through what little energy she had left, but she couldn't land and risk the monster hearing her hoofsteps. Hopefully it would just stay put in the room back there until long after she hunted down Rainbow and Vinyl; maybe, if they all put their heads together, they could figure out just what was going on.
Then her head smashed into something hanging from the ceiling and sent a loud, metallic clattering ringing through the air. While the darkness meant the monster couldn’t see her, it also meant that she couldn’t see the chandelier that she had blundered into. Her horn screamed in protest from the unintentional impact, and her flapping wings faltered. She landed on shaky hooves as a loud roar from behind told her that her cover was blown. Reigniting the blazing light on the end of her horn, she spotted an open door and slipped in, hopefully before shark-Octavia could see anything. The door shut with a soft click behind her a second later.
No need for sneaking now, Twilight thought, glancing over her shoulder.
A dim, flickering flare burst forth from her horn, and she glanced around—not that there was much to glance at. Her forehooves had fallen inches short of sending her tumbling down the dusty, wooden stairwell before her. The walls pressed in on either side as she stared into the gaping maw that awaited her below. She hesitated; pursued by a hungry pony-turned-monster, the last thing she wanted was to get lost, or—even worse—trapped beneath the ground.
Heavy hoofsteps and familiar grunting from right outside the door sent shivers skittering down her spine, reminding her that she didn’t have much in the way of alternatives. Again she tried to focus her magic enough to teleport herself to safety, and again her forehead cried out in agony. She collapsed against the wall and rubbed the base of her horn; it felt as though her skull had been stabbed, cracked, split open to expose its steaming contents to the still, dry air. Twilight shuddered at the imagery.
“Great,” she muttered as the once-Octavia monster bumped up against the door. Heaving a weary sigh, she put her best hoof forward and began her descent into the dark unknown.
If an average, everyday pony found herself wandering aimlessly through a supposedly haunted manor with no idea where she was or where she should be going, she would likely come to the conclusion that she was lost. Armed with that knowledge, she could then either try to backtrack to a more familiar location or stay put until someone found her, amongst a number of other solutions. An average, everyday pony would probably not press forward with the assumption that everything would turn out alright in the end.
Rainbow Dash was not an average, everyday pony. Besides, she wasn’t even lost—only losers got lost, and she was certainly no loser. She just didn’t quite know where she was. Or where she was going. Or how to get back to her friends.
She gave her head a hard shake—definitely not lost.
The door creaked open before her, and she crept into what she felt must have been the hundredth hallway. Shaking eyes, just barely able to see in the near-darkness, darted down one side of the hall, then the other in search of anything waiting for her in the shadows.
She yelped and jumped when the walls shook; over the past few minutes, the wind had picked up to the point where she could hear it anywhere in the house, not just in a room with windows. Her heart felt like it wanted to burst out of her chest from how hard it was pounding. Suddenly, she smacked herself across the face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she said to the empty hall. “It should take more than darkness and a bit of wind to scare Rainbow Dash!”
The only answer was the howling wind, keening its mournful song.
“And a dumb haunted house,” she added begrudgingly.
Suddenly a loud thump from behind brought her spinning around. It had sounded like something falling onto a wooden floor.
Rainbow gulped. “Hello?” she said. Her voice cracked on the second syllable—she was thirsty, of course—and she cleared her throat. “Vinyl? Twilight?”
When no answer came forth, she shuffled in the direction the sound had come from. Her hooves slid silently over the thick carpet, and she fought to bring her breathing under control. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t afraid at all.
A dark doorway that she could barely see loomed to her right. She could vaguely make out some dark shapes inside—furniture, probably—but still nothing specific. Curiosity warred with not-fear as she stood there, knees quaking.
“Twilight?” she whispered. “Rabbit?”
Suddenly, everything was enveloped in pure-white light; through a now-visible window, she saw a forked bolt of lightning arc through the sky. In that instant, she could make out a large bedroom before her, with a bed against the far wall and a wardrobe to the right. Then the light winked out and she was once more left in the darkness, sparks dancing in her eyes.
She grunted, then screamed when thunder cracked the sky apart, shaking the house more fiercely than the wind ever had. By the time the rumbling died down, Rainbow found herself huddled against the wall.
Blood pounded in her ears, seemingly in contest with her heart-beats to see which one could pulse more loudly only to find themselves easily outdone by her chattering teeth.
“Should’ve gone with Twilight,” she mumbled.
Another flare of lightning filled the house, and this time she made out more details—the torn curtains haphazardly flung across the windows but failing to cover much at all; the mattress which lay half-on the bed, with the other half hanging over the edge; the foal’s crib with railings only on one side.
And the round goblet lying in the middle of the floor, still rolling back and forth from when it had fallen. The lightning vanished, but the image remained branded on her eyes.
Rainbow’s heart stopped beating entirely for a full second before it resumed its race towards the end of her life. Had the goblet truly been moving? If so, who had knocked it over? She and her friends were the only ones in the manor, and if it had been one of them, they would have answered her call earlier.
“Which means nopony knocked anything over and that dumb cup’s been sitting there forever since the beginning of time not moving forever,” she concluded. After saying the words out loud, she felt relief blossom in her chest, only for it to immediately wither as a thunderclap crashed down over her.
A third bolt of lightning flashed, and Rainbow gasped. The goblet was right in front of her. Her hooves had carried her over to it without her even realizing. Up close, she could make out the ornate jewels set into the rim. She reached out to take it.
Something fell on her shoulder. “Hey, kid, what are you—”
She didn’t hear a word of it. With a wordless shriek, she bucked out with her hind legs. Her hoof connected with something solid, but instead of waiting to see what, she tore out of the room and down the hallway.
Not that she was scared or anything; she just wanted to be not-scared somewhere else..
The cool, damp air made Twilight shiver as she made her way down the stairs. The walls had been smooth and wooden when she began her descent, but along the way they had transitioned into roughly hewn rounded stone right about the same time the tunnel had started twisting and turning instead of continuing in a straight line. As the staircase led further into the depths, the air had grown damper and damper until finally condensation began to form a slick sheen on every surface. More than once Twilight’s hoof had slipped, almost sending her skidding the rest of the way down on her chin.
She came to another bend in the tunnel and glanced behind her. The pale, flickering light from her horn glared so harshly on the slimy walls that she had to squint in order to see. How many stairs she walked down so far? At least a hundred, but probably more. She wished she had been counting the whole time, but she hadn’t thought this would lead to anything other than a simple basement. Instead, she found herself on the stairway to the center of Equestria itself.
Her ears swiveled around as discordant, snarling echoes crashed down around her from back up the stairs, and she wasted no time in resuming her descent, wings spread just enough to help her balance.
“I should’ve just gone home,” she muttered, pulse quickening. “But nooo, Rainbow Dash had to eep!” The yelp came from her forehoof slipping to the side as she put her weight on it. Only frantic scrabbling with her other legs kept her from falling forward.
Ahead, the tunnel twisted left and she turned with it, only to come to an immediate halt. Her eyes grew as wide as saucers. She had finally reached the bottom of the stairway, where the tunnel leveled out.
Too bad it was also flooded.
Turgid brown water lapped at Twilight’s hooves; it felt disturbingly warm, considering the air temperature. At least she finally knew why the air was so moist.
Although the walls on the way down were rounded—likely because of the effort required to make them perfectly flat, Twilight postulated—they had been more meticulously hewn down here at the bottom, such that the tunnel almost looked like a proper hallway. The ceiling was still fairly rough and uneven, but at least it didn’t look ready to collapse on her. Bottle racks lined the walls on either side, and Twilight could see in the quavering light that at least half of the spaces were still occupied.
“A wine cellar,” she said to herself, grinning as she took the sight in. “It has to be deep to keep the temperature low.”
The tunnel continued forward for a few dozen yards before twisting to the right and out of sight. She wondered how far it actually went.
A thunderous roar from behind made her jump, reminding her that she didn’t have the luxury of indulging her inner scholar. The monster probably still had a long way to go before it caught up, but that last bellow had sounded clearer than the ones before. It was gaining ground.
Twilight eyed the water; it probably wasn’t so deep that she couldn’t wade through it. A full four or five feet separated the water’s surface from the ceiling, which meant it would likely come up to her belly at the most. The small lake had a vivid brown color in her spell’s illumination, one that would have given even Applejack pause before hopping in. Twilight noticed a few bits of debris drifting around lazily. In particular, a large board knocked up against the bottle rack on the tunnel’s right side. She would have to be careful not to run into any hidden obstacles or step on something sharp underneath the water where she couldn’t see it. It wasn’t a sure thing that an open wound would get infected, but considering how dirty the water was, she didn’t want to chance it.
Once more her head twisted around to stare back up the stairs, only to snap forward as a splashing noise echoed in the tight space. Ripples fanned out from a point right by the tunnel’s bend, and the wooden board now rocked as though something had just bumped into it.
“Hello?” she called in an undertone, hoping that Rainbow or Vinyl would poke their head around the corner. “Is somepony there?”
Nobody answered.
She glanced up at the ceiling; it looked like parts of it had crumbled in the time since it had been hewn however many years ago. Maybe the splash had just been a bit of stone dropping into the water while her attention was focused in a different direction. Or maybe it was an animal that had somehow made its home down here.
After a moment’s thought, Twilight frowned. The mansion was in a normal stretch of woods, which should have normal woodland critters as opposed to the far more intimidating specimens found in the Everfree. The most dangerous creatures Twilight had to worry about were wolves, bears, and maybe even a mountain lion, none of which would hide underwater in an attempt to ambush her.
Then again, never in her wildest dreams would she have predicted she would be on the run from a pony-turned-shark, so her conclusion had to be swallowed with a very large grain of salt.
Yet another snarling roar came down, and Twilight realized she was out of time for deliberation. She could push on into the cloudy water and take her chances with whatever might live in its murky depths, or she could wait for the monster to catch up and kill her for certain. Without a second thought, she leapt forward, wincing as she sank almost up to her neck before finally touching the floor. It was deeper than she had imagined, but there was no going back. She could hear snuffling, which meant that her pursuer was close. The spell lighting the hallway winked out with a sputter, and she waded on. Her wings spread out to touch the walls and keep her from running into anything when the tunnel turned.
After the first bend right, the path hooked right again almost immediately, then continued straight. Every step she took stretched her nerves to their limits; she couldn’t afford to take the time needed to test the ground before moving forward and constantly expected to crash into something blocking her way.
A sharp cough came from behind, followed by loud splashing. The shark had moved into the water, a fact that made Twilight want to hurry.
Then she froze solid as something slimy brushed up against her left leg.
She strained her senses in an effort to hear or see something, but it did her no good. All was silent aside from her raspy breathing and the splashing, which clearly was coming closer. She gulped. Maybe it had just been a bit of debris. Maybe she could just keep going and nothing would attack her. She took a hesitant step forward.
That same something slid alongside her right flank as it passed by. She wasn’t alone.
Unfortunately, she also had very few choices to act upon. With her horn injured, she couldn’t do anything more than light everything up and maybe lift light objects, so magic was out. That left the same two options as before—move forward and probably get attacked and eaten, or stay still and definitely get attacked and eaten. She gulped indecisively.
A moment later, the choice was taken out of her hooves when something long and supple wrapped around her foreleg.
“What—“
Whatever she had been about to say turned into a yelp; she found herself hurtling down into the water, which barely had time to crash over her head before the thing holding her leg pulled her down the hallway at an alarming speed. It whipped her left around a corner, then right along a bend, and then left again; after the tenth turn, Twilight lost track of what direction she was going in and instead focused on getting free. Her free legs reached out to grab hold of something—anything, really—but whenever they found anything even remotely promising, they were yanked free by her abductor.
She punched at the thing holding her; its spongy flesh gave under her hoof, so she struck again and again. There was no indication whether or not she had hurt it at all, but at least it felt like she was doing something useful. She lashed out over and over until her leg began to ache, and then smacked the soft limb a few more times for good measure. Suddenly it stopped dragging her and slithered around both her forelegs, pinning them together before resuming the madcap race through the flooded tunnels.
Twilight’s lungs began to sear; she needed air, and whatever this thing was, it wasn’t giving her a chance to breathe. Her thoughts grew fuzzy as she desperately fought to breach the water’s surface, hind legs flailing frantically in all directions. At that point she had no idea which was up or down.
Then, just as she began to realize she was about to die, the tentacle's grip disappeared and her momentum slowed. Her scrabbling hooves found the ground, and she pushed up as hard as she could. Her head burst out of the water into the chill air, which she gulped at hungrily. None of the fancy meals she had eaten during her tenure as a princess even came close to how delicious the briny-smelling air tasted in that moment. Her lungs burned with every breathe, telling her that she hadn’t died.
A full minute passed before her fuzzy thoughts returned to reality, and she realized what, exactly had just happened. She couldn’t hear anything other than the sound of water lapping up against the walls. No snarls, no growls, no roars—nothing. With a gulp, she dared reignite the light spell, wincing when her horn throbbed in protest. Cold light filled the space.
Instead of a tunnel, she now stood in a large, square room, with a pillar in each corner. Gigantic kegs rose out of the water and stretched almost to the ceiling. Those kegs, however, didn’t do nearly as good a job of catching her attention as the staircase set into the wall behind her. Without thinking twice, Twilight swiped a swathe of soaked mane out of her face and scrambled up the steps.
On the way up she slowly regained her composure; the harsh breathing diminished and finally returned to normal, although her lungs still reminded her that they ached every few seconds. Similarly, her heartbeats slowed to the point where she couldn’t hear them pounding in her ears. Her thoughts raced between Octavia’s transformation, whatever that thing in the water had been, and her role in all of it.
Rough stone walls soon transitioned to brick as she moved further and further away from the wine cellar, and the stairs went from being carved into the rock to proper wooden steps. Before she knew it, she found herself coming up beneath a sturdy looking trapdoor. She gingerly pushed against it with both hooves, and a grin split her muzzle as the rough wooden door lifted up. She slipped through before dropping it back down, careful not to make any loud noises.
The stairs had led her into a small room with a single door, aside from the trapdoor Twilight had emerged from in the corner. Short stacks of rotting wood teetered against each other. The brick walls were mostly intact, with only few spots where the mortar had begun to crumble away.
Focusing on a pile of logs, she stepped up to it for a closer look. “Firewood?” A rusty axe leaned up against the wall, and she nodded. “Probably firewood, yeah.”
It hadn’t occurred to her on her way back up, but now Twilight inspected the walls with a more critical eye. Where the parts of the mansion she had walked through earlier had been made of wood and stone, this room and the top part of the stairwell used brick instead.
“A more recent addition, maybe?” A hoof reached up to rub her chin.
Any further musings were cut off when a sharp slapping noise rang out. A second later she heard the noise again, then again. She slowly swiveled towards the room’s only doorway, which looked ominously in her flickering hot light.
Twilight, well-read pony that she was, had read at least a dozen horror novels that she could remember. In these stories, the characters always split up, as she had told Vinyl earlier. They also investigated noises and sights that they clearly shouldn’t. Looking back at what she had gone through over the past hour, Twilight recognized this sound as one she shouldn’t even think about going towards.
She was only mildly surprised to find herself tiptoeing through the doorway, where the noise had come from.
Thunder cracked overhead, but Twilight didn’t even flinch, so set was she on whatever evil monster waited for her in the next room. She heard it make that slapping sound again and again, each one coming at even intervals. As she emerged into the next room—a boiler room, it looked like—her eyes darted back and forth.
Serpentine pipes crawled along the ceiling and the walls. The room was cluttered with a few rusted gears, at least a dozen scattered tools, and a pile of metal parts left in the corner. Distantly, she wondered what all of this had been for, and which of the mansion’s former inhabitants used this as their workshop. An old furnace stood in the room’s center, looming over everything else but not presenting anything of interest to Twilight; her gaze slid right past it, only to snap back a moment later when that noise came again. Whatever made it was right on the furnace’s other side.
Last chance to run, she thought, even as she craned her head around to take a peek. A second later, all of the uncertainty sloughed from her face, replaced by a hard expression. Her horn began to glow purple as she cast a simple spell. The expected stab of pain didn’t even slow her down.
“Bad!” she shouted, whipping her magically conjured newspaper at Angel Bunny, who sat hunched forward on the furnace’s far side. The makeshift club cracked down on the poor little would-be horror’s head right between the ears. “Bad bunny! I told you to knock that off!” Even though her horn stung from the use of magic, the gratification she felt was more than worth a little bit of pain.
After failing to shield himself from the third smack, Angel tried to dart away; he didn’t even get close to the doorway before Twilight caught him up in her magic. She floated him over to dangle right in front of her face, upside down and most certainly unhappy if the daggers shooting out of his eyes were any indication.
“Don’t you give me that look,” she said, matching his glare. “After what I went through, I’m in no mood for your horse hockey, buster.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“Oh you have no idea. I got chased through a mansion by Octavia, who by the way turned into a giant shark with legs! With less luck, she’d be picking me out of her teeth right now. Then some weird creepy tentacle monster I never even got a good look at dragged me through a flooded basement! Did I mention that there’s a flooded basement? Because there’s a flooded basement. I almost drowned!” She paused to take a breath.
Angel simply snorted.
“Hold on,” Twilight said, putting her nose an inch away from his. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Nod.
She shook him from side to side. “Have you ever even met me? You think I’m the type of pony to make up stories about shark monsters and underwater tentacle things?”
He began to nod again, then paused. With a sigh, he begrudgingly shook his head.
“I didn’t think so.” She gave him a smug grin. “Now let’s go.” Her magic lowered him to the ground before letting go. “We need to go find Rainbow Dash and Vinyl Scratch before shark-Octavia does.”
Angel dusted himself off and hopped over to her leg, ostensibly to climb up onto her back. He squeaked when she shoved him back.
“Nice try,” Twilight said. “No way are you touching me with those paws ever again. I know what you were doing back there.”
Fluttershy tapped her on the shoulder. “What was Angel doing?”
“I caught him doing that—” Twilight shrieked and leapt away, cracking her head on a low pipe. The searing agony that stabbed through her brain left her crouching on the floor. She heard Fluttershy’s scream a split second after hers.
“Sorry!” Fluttershy said with a hoof over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to frighten you!”
Twilight took a few hissing breaths, then straightened up. “It’s—fine.” Her horn, which had only seconds ago stopped aching, began to throb again in nauseating waves. “It’s—Fluttershy, what are you doing? When did you get here? Why did you get here? I just—I have no idea what’s happening.”
Fluttershy’s gaze drifted to the floor. “Well, um, I was just thinking that Angel is only a baby bunny, and he’s so little and vulnerable, and I just couldn’t bear to let him wander this place all by himself, so…”
“You know we’re looking after him, right?”
“Oh, of course I do!” Fluttershy said. “It’s just, with Rainbow Dash here and all, I was worried that, um…”
Twilight snorted. “I get it.”
“Please don’t tell her.”
“I won’t.” Twilight rubbed her head a bit more, hoping she could touch it without her horn throbbing. She was wrong. “It’s weird, though—I thought you’d be terrified of this place, but you seem totally fine.”
Fluttershy gave a sweet smile as Angel Bunny scurried up onto her back. “Oh, no, I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life. I’ve just come full-circle after getting thrown through a window, followed by a bunch of creepy noises, and ambushed by an icky clown doll. Oh, and don’t forget the ghost pirate. He had a peg leg and everything!”
“I doubt you actually ran into a ghost,” Twilight said.
“It was more running from him than into him.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Of course. Still, I’m proud of you for making it this far by yourself.”
Still smiling, Fluttershy pointed behind her. “A few minutes ago, I threw up in some cute little washroom back there! That’s just ridiculous of me, don’t you think so?”
“Insanity made manifest,” Twilight agreed, grimacing in tandem with Angel. She sighed; at least she could kind of ignore her headache if she didn’t think about it too hard. As though on cue, her horn twinged, making her wince.
“Are you alright?” Fluttershy tilted her head. “Did something—” Her eyes widened as a dramatic gasp slipped past her lips. “Twilight, your horn! Oh my gosh, what happened? Does it hurt? Are you hurt? What are you going to—”
Twilight shushed her yammering friend. “Relax. It’s just a chipped horn. It’ll heal.” She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “But forget about that—we need to go. If you start feeling like you need to rest, just let me know and I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you, Twilight, but that won’t be necessary,” Fluttershy said with a proud smile. “Just so long as I don’t let myself stop and think about all the horrifying things I’ve experienced, everything should be perfectly fine.” After a few moments, her grin melted away. “Oh, poo.”
“Yep,” Twilight muttered. “That seems about right.” Of the two doors, one only led back towards the wine cellar. The other, pipes crawling around the cusps, ostensibly led back into the mansion proper, so she chose that one to walk towards.
“Um.” Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Twilight?”
Twilight paused in the doorframe. “Yes?”
“I my nana—” Fluttershy cut herself off with a high-pitched titter, then tried again. “I might need just an eensy, weensy, teensy bit of help. Um, please.”
“What is it?” Twilight fought the urge to scowl. “We don’t have time to waste.”
“I cana—I cahana—” For a moment she couldn’t force the words out until Angel gave her a supporting pat on the shoulder. “I c-can’t, um, move.”
Twilight sighed. “Can’t because you’re scared, or can’t because you just literally cannot?”
“Um.” Fluttershy shrunk in place. “Yes.”
“I see,” Twilight said, taking a step forward. “Fluttershy, I know this is absolutely awful for you, but it’s alright—no matter what happens, I’ll keep you sa—”
A hoof slid out of the gloom and grabbed her shoulder. “You think you can answer me a few questions, gorgeous?” came a stallion’s voice.
At the contact, Twilight screamed again and jumped away. Fortunately, she managed to twist out of this unknown stallion’s grasp. Unfortunately, her skull cracked against another pipe in exactly the same spot as before. She collapsed in a blubbering heap.
“Was it somethin’ I said?” The stranger stepped forward into the light of her spell, which she had miraculously maintained even through all the blunt trauma. She couldn’t see his face due to both his wide-brimmed hat and the high collar on the trench coat he wore. She couldn’t even tell what kind of pony he was. “You okay, doll?”
“Haven’t you ponies ever heard of calling out?” Twilight sobbed, rocking back and forth. “Is that so hard to do?”
The stallion crouched down. “Babycakes, where I come from, you don’t go callin’ for trouble. Trouble goes callin’ for you.”
“That makes no sense!” The last word turned into a wail as Twilight’s horn sputtered and sent a particularly unpleasant pulse through her skull. “Start making sense!”
“You want sense? Dollface, sense is a luxury ponies like me don’t get. My world is a rough one. Dark. Dirty.” He paused to readjust his hat. “Dangerous. Like an Apploosan outhouse right after the rodeo. In my line of work, a stallion can’t walk down an alley without getting mugged three times and murdered twice, and that’s on a good day. The ponies want a hero, but they’ll settle for the next best thing. That’s where I come in.” From the depths of his coat, a hoof whipped out to present a small white card. “The name’s Noir. Pinot Noir, private eye.”
Twilight took the card with a sniffle. “Thank you?”
“Thank me later. For now, something smells fishy, and I don’t mean the tomato over there with the shaking legs.”
“Sorry,” Fluttershy whimpered.
He waved a hoof in her direction, then returned his attention to Twilight. “Now, Duchess, tell me everything you know about sharks.”
“Sharks?” Twilight clambered to her feet.
“Sharks,” Pinot said. “And I ain’t talking about the card-playing variety.”
She had her mouth open to answer when she got a glimpse of his face. His white, creamy coat was stained blue by wicked-looking bruise around his left eye. “Did somepony hit you?”
“You mean this shiner?” He lifted the hat, letting the light fall over his face. “Some crazy broad upstairs slugged me good. Trust me, dollface, it ain’t the first time. Now, the sharks. Sing for me.”
“What do you want to know about sharks for?” Twilight said.
“Some bird wants me to ice a four-legged one.” Pinot’s eyes shifted back and forth as though the shark were in the room with them and would reveal itself if only he looked hard enough.
“Ah.” Twilight glanced at Fluttershy and Angel, both of whom shrugged. “Sorry, but I haven’t seen any sharks around here.”
His gaze stopped dancing around and focused on hers. “Don’t be taking me for a bum, doll. Nobody—and I mean nobody—plays me for a sucker and gets away with it.”
“If we run into any sharks, you’ll be the third pony to know.” Twilight wiped at her eyes, then rose onto wobbly legs.
“Um.” Fluttershy gave a delicate cough. “Shark?”
“You’re sure you ain’t seen no sharks lurking around?” Pinot said. At Twilight’s nod, he added, “Absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent sure?”
“Nope, not in this mansion!” Twilight said with a laugh. Before she could say anything further, a faint cry warbled through the air. Her ears swiveled around. “Fluttershy, did you hear that?”
Fluttershy stood stock-still, wide-eyed and staring at her hooves. Twilight trotted over and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Fluttershy.”
“Eeeek!” Fluttershy recoiled so quickly that Angel tumbled to the floor. He glared up at her.
“Fluttershy,” Twilight said again. “Did you hear that?”
Fluttershy’s chest heaved with every breath. “Twilight! Hello! Um, what a—what nice night we’re having this weather! We—”
“Fluttershy.” Twilight held her groan in check. “Stay with me.”
“I’m here!” Fluttershy stammered. “With you! I mean, here with you! Right here, in the basement, here with you, in the haunted spooky giant creepy haunted basement creepy thingy I’m here I’m with—”
Twilight sighed and turned back to Pinot. “At least tell me that you heard—”
She found herself talking to empty air; Pinot had disappeared.
“Seriously?” she said, spinning on Fluttershy. “Would you believe that’s the second time this has happened to me tonight?”
“Right here, with you,” Fluttershy mumbled as she cowered in place.
“I think I heard somepony cry out.” Twilight closed her eyes and listened as hard as she could, but other than the sound of her breathing and Fluttershy’s muttering, nothing presented itself. “We need to go find Rainbow Dash and Vinyl as soon as we can
This time Twilight didn’t even try to keep the exasperated groan in. “Fine. Fine, if that’s how it’s going to be, then that’s how it’s going to be.”
She glanced at Angel Bunny, who had resumed his place on Fluttershy’s back. Before he could finish making himself comfortable, though, a magical aura snared him up into the air, only to drop him back down on a grimacing Twilight.
“This is a one-time thing only,” she hissed at the glaring Angel. If looks could kill, she would have been vaporized on the spot. “I can’t run and maintain two spells at once, so just this once, you get a ride.” She coughed in Fluttershy’s direction. “Alright, Fluttershy, Angel and I are going, now!”
Fluttershy gave her a blank look. “Pardon?”
“Angel and I are going, I said.”
“Going?” Fluttershy shook her head, expression still glazed over. “Going where?”
“Oh, you know,” Twilight said with a shrug. “Taking a walk, watching the stars, feeding Angel to the evil hungry shark monster—average, everyday things.” She trotted towards the doorway.
“I see. Have fun, then.” A few seconds passed before Fluttershy’s eyes shot open. “Wait, what?”
Angel tried to jump off, but Twilight pinned him down under a wing. “Just giving Mr. Shark a nice, fuzzy snack.”
Through the door she found a set of dusty stairs to the next floor and began to make her way up. She wondered if Pinot Noir had come this way or if he had somehow snuck back in the direction Twilight had come from. He was in for a nasty surprise if he did the latter, but she didn’t have time to worry about him. First on her list was to get Fluttershy moving, and after that she had to make finding Rainbow and Vinyl her top priority. Despite the throbbing in her head, she allowed herself a small smile when she heard light hoofsteps on the stairs behind her.
“You—you weren’t really going to feed Angel to a shark monster,” Fluttershy said softly. “Were you?”
Twilight glanced back, allowing her friend to catch up. Angel hopped off of Twilight and scrambled up his mother’s leg. “Only if he behaves himself and doesn’t do things he’s not supposed to.”
“Like what?”
“He was—” Twilight broke off when, from Fluttershy’s back, Angel dropped to his knees and made a pleading gesture. Her mouth snapped shut.
Fluttershy blinked. “He was what?”
Angel continued to beg silently, fear etched onto his face. Twilight gave a loud sigh. “He knows what he did, and he knows not to do it again.” Angel collapsed forward.
“I hope it wasn’t that, um, that thing we talked about before,” Fluttershy said. “Nopony likes to take their pet to get fixed, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do it!” Her chest swelled as she let a confident smile spread.
Twilight stared at her for a moment longer before slowly resuming her pace up the stairs. She felt a sudden wave of sympathy for poor Angel. “You’re absolutely right, Fluttershy.”
A few moments later, they came to an open door at the top of the stairs, Twilight saw everything light up for an instant, followed seconds later by a crack of thunder that shook the walls and made Fluttershy shriek. Little bits of debris from the ceiling came free and showered the two mares.
“Has it been storming this whole time?” Twilight wondered out loud.
“Ever since I—” Fluttershy yelped again as more thunder rumbled through the house. “E-ever since I got here, y-yes.”
Twilight paused to scratch her chin. “I don’t remember any storms in the forecast, though.”
They trotted through the door and found themselves at the end of a long hallway with doors up and down either side. The light from Twilight’s spell only reached part of the way to the hall’s other end. Now that they had left the basement, she could faintly hear the sound of rain pounding on the mansion’s roof and wind whistling past the outer walls.
She glanced back at Fluttershy, who had deathly pale, but before she could speak, a long creak came from outside of her spell’s range. Someone had opened a door. Twilight strode ahead and spread her wings.
“Fluttershy, stay behind me.” Her eyes strained to see anything in the darkness, but the light ruined her night vision. “And be ready to start running.”
“Alright,” Fluttershy squeaked.
Another squeak resounded in the tight hallway, and then Twilight heard a hoofstep, followed by another. They were coming closer.
“Who is it?” she called, fighting to keep her knees from shaking at the thought of another chase through the mansion.
Just when she was certain that the approaching steps belonged to yet another monster, a voice called out. “Twilight? That you?” Out from the shadows, a dirty Vinyl Scratch stumbled into the light. What looked like black soot covered her coat, and her mane was even more disheveled than before. “Oh geez, thank Celestia. I actually found somepony.”
“Are you alright?” Twilight galloped up for a closer inspection. “What happened?”
“Well, ah—” Vinyl cleared her throat. “It’s a little embarrassing, so, uh, you think you could keep this a secret from Dash?”
Twilight glanced back at Fluttershy, who shrugged. “Sure?”
“So I’m wandering around looking for the loot, see, and I find one of those old-timey fireplaces, right? And I think to myself, maybe there’s something hiding up the chimney, so I stick my head in, and, uh—” She gave a nervous laugh.
“And you got stuck,” Twilight offered.
“Yeah.” Vinyl scratched the back of her head. “Yeah, I got stuck, but I got out. So, where is everypony? I left Dash behind in some random dining room, so we can go pick her up next. Where’s Tavi?”
Twilight winced. “Vinyl, I have some terrible news for you.”
“About Tavi?” Vinyl took a step forward, concern dripping from her voice. “What happened? Did she sprain a leg or something? Where is she?”
“It’s…” The light from Twilight’s spell glanced from the other mare’s glasses, making it nearly impossible to look her in the face. “I… We were just looking around, and she… I don’t honestly know how to put this.”
Vinyl moved right into Twilight’s face. “Just tell me. What happened to my fiance?”
“She turned into a shark!” Twilight yelled, falling back. Her words hung in the air for the long moment of silence that followed.
“She turned into a shark?” Vinyl said at last.
Twilight couldn’t look into the other mare’s face, so she glued her eyes to the floor. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t—” A sudden peal of laughter cut her off.
“She turned into a shark?” Vinyl said in between chuckles.
“No, really!” Twilight yanked her gaze back up, then remembered that she couldn’t even see Vinyl’s eyes behind those shades anyway. “She really did! She turned into some kind of-of pony shark and tried to murder me!”
“Stop it!” Vinyl said, leaning against the wall so she could clutch her ribs with both forelegs. Her laughter echoed off the walls. “You’re gonna make me pee myself!”
Twilight felt a twinge of irritation, but before she could act on it, Fluttershy tapped her on the shoulder. The timid pegasus wrung her forehooves together. “Um, didn’t you tell that stallion downstairs there were no sharks here?”
“Well, yes,” Twilight said, “but that’s because the shark is Octavia and he wanted to kill her. Of course I told him there were no sharks here.”
“Oh.”
Roaring with laughter, Vinyl pounded the wall. Tears rolled down her cheeks and cut furrows in the ash-coated fur. “Okay, Tavi.” She pushed herself up onto trembling legs. “Come on out, now, the joke’s over!”
“Vinyl—” Twilight began.
“Where is she?” Vinyl craned her head to peek around the other mares. “Is she hiding behind you?” Another round of chuckles slipped past her lips. “You really got me. Tavi a shark—ha!”
As Twilight’s eyelid twitched, a pulse of agony ran through her skull. She took a deep breath. “Vinyl. This isn’t a joke.”
“Knock it off,” Vinyl said as she straightened up, still grinning. “It was funny, but we got stuff to do. Where is she?”
“I told you, she turned into a sha—”
“I said to knock it off!” Vinyl snapped. Her smile vanished in an instant. “I know you’re lying. This is just the type of thing she’d do, making up some story about turning into a monster or whatever so I look stupid when I believe it.”
“I’m telling the truth!” Twilight said, ears lying down flat. “The thing that chased me through half of this stupid mansion was not somepony trying to prank you.”
Vinyl stomped a few steps away, then spun back. “You really think I’ll fall for this, won’t you?” Her lips curled into a sneer. “I wouldn’t believe you if you said she turned into a nicer pony, so no way will you ever sell the story that my fiance transformed into a big, dumb shark.”
Twilight had a retort ready to go, but before she could fire it off, the wall beside Vinyl exploded. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the monster that had once been Octavia fell over her fiance and shoved the poor mare head-first into her cavernous mouth. With Vinyl’s hind legs still kicking in the air, the beast crashed through the opposite wall and kept on going.
In the aftermath of the shark-Octavia’s appearance, all that could be heard were her pounding hoofsteps, growing quieter as she galloped away, and the sound of splinters still falling from the broken walls. A cloud of dust had been kicked up and now drifted lazily through the air.
A state of numb clarity draped itself over Twilight. The responsible part of her demanded that she charge after the escaping beast, but her hooves were glued to the hardwood floor. She turned her dumb gaze back at the shaken Fluttershy and uttered the only three words that seemed to make sense at that particular point in time.
“Told you so.”
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MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
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This gets more and more beautiful.
Sharks are the unheard messengers of the sea. They bring sonic waves and cundhulent breaches from one sector the other. They are gorgeous creatures.
Octavia is also a beautiful creature. She plays sweet music in the vein of cheese and rhinoplasty. I just really lover her work.
Good story.
7255808
Your words are like sweet ambrosia to the sensibilities.
7255849 I'm sorry, I was totally drunk while writing that last night. I am now projectile vomiting at the con bathroom.
7257358
That isn't sweet ambrosia.
The best spacing errors are the ones that aren't actually just my computer loading text wrong.
Wouldn't this flow better as 'Twilight briefly considered'? Just a thought.
Needs either a comma (as indicated) or swap to 'it stood on four legs like a pony'.
So, when you do spacing, it really is double or nothing.
Repeating 'in its way', and in such a way that the repetition actually slots in under the original. Kind of admirable.
Double period.
In this case, the emphasized word is one that is supposed to be in the sentence, but isn't.
I feel like your Fluttershy is a caricature of Fluttershy based off of an over-simplification of her character. That, or you're just really bad at writing Fluttershy. Also, is there anywhere I can read about her adventure?
You did not just introduce a hardboiled detective with a vendetta against sharks.
I have introduced another word that should be there, but currently isn't.
See that paragraph break? I feel like there's at least twenty words that are completely missing here.
Also, I continue to fail to see why you felt it was necessary to have a subplot about masturbating rabbits. All it does is take us out of what little immersion we can scrounge up from all the OOC actions and disjointed dialogue and make us really regret biology class.
Heartless bitch.
I'll say one thing in favor of this story:
You write decent action scenes. Twilight's 'fight' against Sharktavia was decently tense and flowed better than basically any other scene in the story thus far.
Is this ever gonna get continued?