Krastos the Glue Maker

by Horse Voice

Chapter VI

They met again in the high street.

Applejack, with three fillies following close, had decided to cut back through town and regroup with the others. But as they retraced her steps, they saw ponies fleeing through town in a rout, taking cover in houses or running into the gathering night. When they got to the high street, they saw a bright magenta glow headed toward them from the opposite side, and with a call of "Twilight, over here!" made straight for it. They met in the middle, almost exactly where they had that morning, and tried not to look at the defiled statue's remains as they spoke.

"Twilight, Zecora—where're the others?" Applejack said, eyes straining into the darkness around them.

"I sent Pinkie and Rarity with Dr. Turner to get the lights back on," Twilight said. "Everypony else..." She gritted her teeth and gave an annoyed snort. "Well, we're on our own. Where are the other kids?"

"They ran away just as I got to the school. I think the young 'uns all escaped, but Miss Cheerilee..." Applejack glanced back at the three fillies, who looked about to burst into tears again. "Well, it sounds like it was a close one."

"No..." Twilight exchanged a knowing glance with Zecora. "It was deliberate."

"Pardon?"

"Zecora explained the whole thing," Twilight said. "Krastos is not a natural creature." Her ears flicked and her eyes darted about, as if the thing might appear at the mention of its name. "It's a tulpa."

"A what?"

"A thought-form. Zebra shamans sometimes create them, but they're usually just imaginary friends with minds of their own." Twilight looked to Zecora, who nodded curtly. "But in ancient times, some discovered a magic that could bring tulpas into reality. They created Krastos to destroy their enemies, but when that was done..." Twilight took a fortifying breath. "It wouldn't stop. They had to destroy it and tried to erase all the records, all the stories that it had ever existed."

"Physical form it will achieve," Zecora said, "but only if ponies believe."

"It exists 'cause ponies believed it did?" Disbelief mixed with terror on Applejack's features. "That don't make any sense!"

"Zecora explained that too," Twilight said. "Tulpas are made of thoughts, and that includes this one. Once the spell is cast, a tulpa can keep taking physical form whenever enough people believe in it. And the more who believe, the more powerful it becomes."

"So..." Applejack spoke slowly, turning the facts over in her mind. "It showed itself to the kids so they'd run and tell everypony..."

"And now the whole town is doing the same thing." Twilight looked away, toward the cluster of distant lights on Canter Peak.

All at once, Scootaloo bolted forward and flung herself upon the ground at her hooves, eyes shut tight in a vain effort to hold back tears. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! It's my fault!"

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle followed close behind, and in a few moments the whole story had tumbled out amongst sobs and apologies: the contest, the old book, their plan to fool the town.

"And he looks the way he does," Apple Bloom said at last, "because we imagined him that way!"

With this final revelation, the three prostrated themselves face-down, their hooves over their heads as if to ward off punishing blows. Applejack and Twilight were upon them in an instant, nuzzling and whispering assurances. "Shh..." "It's okay..." "You couldn't have known..."

Zecora at first made to do the same, but stopped and stood tall, standing guard over the pool of magic light. It was she who first noticed the stocky figure who emerged from the darkness a moment later, panting from exertion and running as fast as his stubby legs could go.

"Twilight, Twilight!"

Said pony raised her head and smiled in relief at the sight of the newcomer. "Spike?"

Spike stopped beside Twilight and rested his hands on his knees, speaking between haggard breaths. "I've been looking all over for you. Everything's gone crazy. What happened?"

"Krastos is real, and everypony is running scared."

"No!" Spike's interjection was one of disbelief, not denial.

"We need help," Twilight said firmly. "Where's Rainbow Dash?"

"W-what?"

"I sent Rainbow to tell you to send a letter!" Twilight scrambled to her hooves, and a tremor of worry crept into her tone. "Where is she?"

Spike threw his palms wide. "I haven't seen her since this morning!"

All stood still. There was no sound, save the whimpering of the three fillies.

Twilight was the first to act, raising one hoof to her chest, breathing deeply, and making a casting-away motion. When she spoke, her voice was flat. "Spike, take a letter, please."

There followed a momentary search for anything that could be written upon, and Zecora was the first to spot a leaflet half-hidden by a wagon's wheel. They had no quill, so Twilight scorched a message upon the back with a narrow beam of magic heat. Without waiting, Spike snatched the note and sent it in an unusually strong burst of green flame.

"All right," Twilight said. "Now, we sit tight until..."

With an unexpected belch, Spike ejected an apparent response, and Twilight grabbed it from the air before it could reach the ground. She glanced over it once, twice, then wordlessly turned it to show the others.

It was the same note they had just sent.

"W-what does it mean?" Applejack said, looking up from where she still lay hugging a trembling Apple Bloom.

Zecora's ears flattened, and she absently kicked a little at the ground. "With this event, it would appear, he's grown more powerful, I fear."

"Okay..." Twilight again scanned the note, as if in the hope that her eyes might have deceived her. "Okay, okay... We can send a priority telegram instead..."

"Princess!"

The shout came from an alley beyond the main street and arrived along with a drumming of hooves on cobblestone. Before anyone could call back, Turner burst into the pool of light, followed close by Pinkie and Rarity.

"Dr. Turner!" Severity entered Twilight's voice as the newcomers drew close. "Why are the lights still off?"

Turner halted in front of her and spasmodically gestured into the distance behind him. "The lines are out!"

"Well, fix them!"

"No, I mean they're gone!" Turner's voice cracked on the last word.

"What do you mean 'gone'?" By now, Twilight was almost yelling in his face.

"I mean gone!" Turner struck the ground with one hoof. "The lines were cut at the power station, and they've vanished as far as we dared search!"

Behind him, Pinkie and Rarity gravely nodded assent.

"Well...!" The intended reprimand caught in Twilight's throat as the facts sank in. Her next words came out low and flat, and instead of meeting Turner's eyes, she began to stare straight through him. "The telegraph runs on electricity. Spike's magic isn't working. Our fastest flyer... We're completely cut off." She turned back to Zecora. "Okay, you know more about tulpas than anyone else here. I am officially open to ideas."

Zecora, her face lined with concern, scratched at the ground with the edge of a forehoof, as if the cobblestones might yield some secret. "This tulpa is a thought made true..." She spoke slowly, as if turning the notion over in her mind. "Perhaps there's one thing we can do."

All present turned toward her, expectation on their features. The fillies, whose sobbing had ceased, began to rise to their hooves.

"Fights with ideas may be won." She stood tall and looked left and right, scanning for something in the distance. "If we act quick, it can be done."

"What do you have in mind?" Twilight said.

By this time, the moon had begun to rise, casting silver light over the town's rooftops. Zecora's gaze stopped upon the open space near the schoolhouse outside of town, visible through a gap between houses.

With a curt turn of her head indicating for the others to follow, Zecora set off for it at a brisk trot.

Comments

[shimonsays]

Tulpae? In a story that does not take place in the envisioner's own head? So laaaaaaaaame.

derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/2/9/548002.png

Dropped harder than the second nuke on nagasaki.

[devas]

7687145

I can't tell of you're trolling or just stupid.

Scratch that, you're immensely stupid either way, the only difference is whether intentionally or not.

Don't let the door hit you on your way out.

[Samey90]

Well, they're royally screwed...

[horizon]

This one felt slow to start out — especially with the short chapters — but in between the Cranky scene giving us our first actual glimpses of the monster and the protagonists clutching for a survival plan, I can feel it shifting into high gear. Looking forward to the next chapter.

[PresentPerfect]

Okay, cleverly done. :) You called him "Turned" at one point, though.

[AShadowOfCygnus]

Oh . . . ! You clever, clever pone. Excellent use of real mythologies.

[Csquared08]

So if it's thought made real, does that mean everyone comes back when they defeat it?

Almost certainly not.

[Horse Voice]

9079146

Sadly, that would have undermined the theme. I don't usually engage in pointless nastiness, I swear!

[Phazon]

A tulpa, huh? I used to watch Supernatural, and they did an episode in season one with a tulpa as their monster of the week, so I suspected for a while that that's what this was. But this version of a tulpa seems more weaponized, probably because the zebras did in fact design it as a WMD. It seems to me like this tulpa has been acting deliberately, propagating the spread of its own legend to become stronger, cutting of modes of transportation and communication to isolate the town.

9079146

I wouldn't think so either. If it was designed to be a weapon, then reviving its victims upon demise would undermine its purpose. The only fix to that would be if zebra shamans also found a way to conceive a tulpa that can resurrect the dead, but that seems contrived even to me.

[AisheyruFox]

A Tulpa huh? This is the first I've heard of them. Very clever!!!

[Xafilah]

"Krastos is not a natural creature." Her ears flicked and her eyes darted about, as if the thing might appear at the mention of its name. "It's a tulpa."

Nope, nope, a thousand times nope. I know that tulpas only exist in the minds of the deranged, but parasitical thought-forms are a step too far into nightmare for me to take

[Moosetasm]

Well, only ways to defeat a Tulpa are to either stop believing in it, somehow slip in a weakness to everyone’s understanding of it, or to think up a more powerful one.