The Night Terror
His name was Devon. He was a tall, beige-colored griffon with black hair and a sour temperament. Since his childbirth, he and his family were poor and had gotten by mostly on relief funds and begging for money. Griffonstone was, after all, a place of depravity and poor economic conditions, wallowing in poverty and old hay.
Devon had gotten into debt early on in his life. To help pay off the debts, and to try and get out of Griffonstone, Devon found himself involved in petty crime- swiping a wallet here and there, extortion, and he had once knifed another griffon for twenty gold bits. Over the years he had eventually moved to Manehatten and begun a new life there. He rose through the ranks of criminals to become a minor leader in a weapons business.
He was now overseeing seven of his under-associates loading in several crates into a dim, cobwebby old warehouse on 5th and Hay street owned by one of his crime bosses. Looking at his fellow griffons straining under their loads and stacking them in the warehouse, he reflected on the circumstances that led him into such a situation.
It was Griffonstone's fault. It was so deep in debt that there was no way for Devon to live there comfortably. Here in Manehatten, he was free and had money. The method of income was...dubious, yes, but it was what he had to do in order to live. And sometimes he wasn't even aware of what his higher ups were telling him. There were some operations where the cargo was labelled TOP SECRET DO NOT OPEN. He was innately curious about it, but he decided to restrain his curiosity and not peek inside. That information was for him to find out later.
Two of his fellow griffons were carrying a massive wooden storage crate into its designated space.
"Whew!" one of them exclaimed as they set it down. "That one was real heavy. They oughta pay us more for that hard labor we do all the time."
"What the Tartarus was even in that thing?" the other one asked. "It felt like I was carrying all of bleedin' Canterlot in that thing. Whadda ya say, want to find out-"
"No," the other one refused. "The boss is only payin' us to load the crate, not find out what's in it. We don't want to make him angry, you know. The last time you tried to, Glenn, you almost got a knife in your eye."
"But Gilbert-"
"No buts. Don't peek."
Glenn looked at Gilbert strangely, then sighed and went back to work. He trudged over to the cart of crates a pony had brought in anonymously and picked up a lighter, but larger box. "You know, Gilbert, I can't help but think there's more to all this than they're telling us. They barely tell us anything about all these weapon shipments they keep on making us do."
"Well, in order to commit felons, you need weapons, don't you?"
"I know that- everyone knows that. But for the amount of weapon boxes we've had to ship in the last month, you'd think we would launch an all-out war against Equestria. What's with that?"
"Are you so sure that what you've been shipping is actually weapons?" Gilbert asked. "They could be putting other materials in the boxes and mislabeling them on purpose, you know."
Glenn pondered that. "You're right..." he said after a while. He looked at the box he was setting down. "Why don't we find out?" he suggested.
"It's your own head you're risking, Glenn." another griffon said, overhearing the conversation.
"I don't need you to comment on that, Maurice!" Glenn spat.
Thump thump
"He's right," Gilbert said to him. "Keep your head down and don't question the higher-ups that can have you drowned in the harbor with a twitch of a finger."
Glenn gave a withering glare at them behind their back.
Devon watched all of this with satisfaction. His compatriots weren't just hard workers, they kept themselves in check- and prevented others from stepping out of their spots. Essential elements in good underworkers. You worked hard to get where you were in the criminal underworld.
Devon was not ambitious, nor was he cunning or deceiving. All he wanted was enough money to live comfortably. It was the spot he was in now, and he liked it.
Thump thump
He paused. What was that sound? It was faint, but it seemed to resonate throughout his entire being for some reason. He looked around for a second, watching for an intruder to come in, an accident about to happen-
Then he realized. It was just the beating of his own heart. Devon put his hand to his chest and felt the steady, regular beat of it under his flesh. The heart, an unstoppable organ, the definition of life, the thing your body depended on so much but never failed at. Steady, steady beats. Steady...he felt its beat, counted its motions, its rhythm. Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump, th-
Thump thump
And his own heart seemed to skip a little. That, right there, wasn't his heartbeat. It was something else. He looked around. Did someone turn on a machine or something? It sounded like it came from the catacombs of the warehouse, deep inside, deep inside...
Devon twiddled his thumbs nervously. It was nothing to be feared. They were safe. No pony knew this place was being used, and no griffon would sabotage their job. It was being commissioned by the boss, after all, and no one dared cross the boss. It was just the heating system finally kicking in.
Thump thump
And yet he felt cold, so cold, so bitterly frozen. It came all at once. One instant it was room temperature in the warehouse, the next, it seemed to drop twenty degrees. Devon shivered. It was probably his imagination. He was paranoid. He was just getting nervous because he was a criminal, after all, because what if Manehatten police found out he was transporting weapons to his higher-ups, what if they found out about his past activities of robbery and petty murder?
But it didn't explain the cold, the permeating cold that infested inside him that surrounded him, seemed to choke the air out of him in bursts of frozen exhales. He looked around once more, his teeth chattering like loaded dice. There was still nothing there. Nothing to be afraid of. Why should he be afraid of the cold? It was just a feeling, a temperature...
Thump thump
And then a loud bang.
Devon whirled around to the source of the noise, startled inexplicably. Glenn had dropped a crate on the concrete floor and the box had spilled its contents. Devon cursed under his breath. Not only had he startled him, the contents of the box had attracted attention. The secret contents. A few objects scattered across the ground along with the hay it was being packaged in.
"What in Equestria is that?" Maurice said in surprise. He picked one of the objects off the ground.
Gilbert tilted his head to the side. "It looks like..." He trailed off. "...I don't even know what that looks like."
It looked like a thick black metal capital L that was squared off. It looked innocent enough, but like a weapon of some sort. At the junction of the two sides was a trigger, and the inside of it from the long end was hollow. It was a curious device indeed, and the griffons were fascinated.
"Get away from that!" Devon snarled, and pushed aside the griffons beside him. "That's top secret information! You aren't supposed to know about..." His eyes fell to the strange device. "...whatever that is." He snatched it out of the hands of Maurice and eyed it strangely. The purpose of it eluded him.
Thump thump
In the dim yellow light of the warehouse they were in, Devon examined it. It felt heavy, but easy to point. The trigger meant that it was a release to fire a projectile. That much Devon knew about weapons. He tried to look for the place where the crossbow bolt would be, but there wasn't any. The device was too small to accomodate that anyway. But if it wasn't a long-range weapon, what was it? A club? He tried holding the object from the long end and found that it was too short to be used as an effective club.
Devon looked at the ground near the toppled box and found even more of the strange devices. Capital black Ls, scattered across the ground, like a toddler spilling his learning letters. There were four small wooden boxes next to them, as well. Only one of them had opened. In the boxes were hundreds of oblong brass objects flat at one end and pointed on the other. They were quite small, and were rather pitiful to look at.
"Are those badges?" one of the griffons asked. He went forward to try and examine them.
"Get back!" another scowled at him, and grabbed his arm before he could do anything. "I don't know what those are! There's a reason why this is all secret, you know!"
Thump thump
"Guys?" one of the eight griffons asked. "M-maybe we should put those back. I don't want the boss to get mad at us."
"What the boss doesn't know won't hurt him," another griffon snapped. "If you're so much of a pansy that you can't even handle this, maybe you should just get out of here!"
"Is it just me, or did it get really cold in here all of a sudden?"
"It's not just you. I feel it too."
Devon tried to put the object down, but found that he couldn't. The object was so intriguing that no matter how much he tried to just lay it down and pack up the spilled weapons, he just couldn't. It was too peculiar.
Thump thump
"Does anyone else hear that?" another griffon asked.
"Hear what?"
"Listen!"
Everyone fell silent. The only sounds that could be heard were the faint winds howling outside like forlorn wolves and the hum of the yellow, aging light bulbs above them. A few of them flickered.
Then they heard it.
Thump thump
"What is that?" one of them asked.
"It's just the heating kicking in. About time, too. I'm feeling more numb than a dentist's patient."
"Or what if it's something else?"
"You and your supernatural crap. Just shut up and get back to work," Devon snarled. He looked at the strange device held in his hand again. It seemed to radiate something...dark. A dark promise, the promise of death to all it came in contact with. The metal felt a lot colder in his palm that had nothing to do with the rapidly falling temperature.
"Uh, guys?" one of the griffons asked, the one who had talked about "something else". The temperature continued to drop. "I don't think it's the heating system."
Thump thump
"Well then, why don't you have an idea of what it is, then?" a female griffon snarled at him. "If it's not the heating, then what is it?"
KABOOM
All the griffons almost jumped out of their skins. They had all turned themselves to the source of the noise and noticed that the massive double doors to the warehouse had mysteriously closed all by themselves with a fast swing and a loud echo. They were now alone in the warehouse. The yellowing, ancient lights began to flicker and sputter slightly.
The eight griffons surrounded themselves together in a circle. Devon noticed his hands were slippery with sweat, despite the bitter, bitter cold that nipped at him everywhere. Devon swallowed and said, "Someone go check the doors and get 'em open now!"
The female spread her wings and flew over to the doors and yanked on them. Then yanked again. No luck. They were locked inside. She tried one last time before she flew back. "We're alone in here," she reported gravely.
Thump thump
Everyone flinched. "What was that?" another griffon asked, shaking from the cold and from nervousness.
"It sounded closer that time," another griffon observed, nervously pulling out a small knife. He held it in front of him, the blade trembling.
"It sounds like a heartbeat," Glenn said out loud. "But it can't be a heartbeat, it can't be, no heartbeat is that loud..."
They clustered in closer in a circle surrounding the fallen box of mysterious weapons. All of them were pulling out crossbows from off their back, drawing short blades, picking up blunt instruments. Devon held the mysterious black metal L. It shook slightly.
Thump thump
A pause.
Thump thump
Another pause. The griffons were getting scared. The bulbs above them flickered and sparkled even more.
Thump thump
Thump thump
Thump thump
And all of a sudden the lights went out like the snap of a finger. Someone screamed and fired their crossbow randomly in the oppressive darkness, prompting a barrage of twangs as even more crossbows were fired in response.
And then, as sudden as it had gone out, the lights came back on again.
The griffons looked breathless, panting desperately, looking around in fear. Arrows littered the ground. Devon looked around, checking to see if anyone was hurt. Nobody was.
But one of them was missing.
Devon's breath caught in his throat. Where had he gone? "Paul?" Devon asked, looking around the large space they were in. Paul, wherever he was, gave no response.
"Where'd he go?" Glenn asked apprehensively, darting his eyes to every corner of the room.
Thump thump
One of the griffons was hyperventilating. In between breaths, he gasped, "We...we're going to...to die!"
"No one is dying on my watch," Devon said sharply. But he knew it was a promise he couldn't hold to permanently.
Thump thump
The sound seemed to come from directly in front of him. Gulping, he raised the weapon in the direction of the thumping sound. It was a heartbeat, the heartbeat of some evil abomination of nature, perhaps.
"Everyone, hold hands," a griffon suggested. "That way, if one of us disappears, we'll be able to tell." All the griffons tentatively held hands then.
Thump thump
And all of a sudden, the lights went out again.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"
"Hold on to her!"
"I can't! She just vanished!"
"Where is she?"
"Victoria! Victoria!"
And suddenly the lights came back on again. Victoria was missing. The griffons were shaking, both from the bitter, bitter cold and the fear struck deep into their hearts by the faceless terror out there.
Devon glared at the two griffons that had been holding to Victoria. "What happened, you dolts? Why didn't you hold on to her?"
"S-sir," one of them shakily stammered, "She- she just slipped out of our grasp, sir. One minute we were holding on to her, and the next, it was like she disappeared!"
Devon fixed him a withering scowl. "Disappeared?"
"Vanished, sir."
Thump thump
The lights were flickering in varying degrees of yellowish light. The chains they were attached to begun to swing subtly. Back and forth, back and forth they went, causing shadows to stretch, then come back, stretch and come back, like they were reaching for something just beyond their range.
"Face each other!" Gilbert yelled. "That way we can tell by sight who disappears!"
The griffons in a circle then turned to face each other. They saw immediately that it was a good idea. Not only could everyone see each other clearly, they could also see past each other to look for any threats. Everyone tried to get their breathing under control. They leveled their crossbows so they could fire past each other's faces.
"Keep your eyes open!" Maurice said pointlessly. He was shivering, but not entirely from the awful, awful cold.
Thump thump
The room seemed to blink. The lights went out, just for an instant, a moment, a second. But it was all that was needed.
Maurice was gone.
Someone screamed. Devon held the strange L even tighter, so hard he was afraid he would break it. There were no targets.
"Where are you?" Gilbert screamed. "Where are you?" Devon wasn't sure who he was talking about, Maurice or the evil spirit haunting them. Nathan screamed one more time, "Where are you?"
And there was a thud. An impact as something heavy fell to the floor.
The griffons- the five griffons left- faced where the noise came from. It was in between an alley of crates directly across from where they were. But there was nothing. Nothing there.
Thump thump
The lights went out again and in between the alley, where nothing was before, a pair of hot red eyes burned, searing the image into their heads for all eternity. Red, fiery eyes that radiated the promise of doom.
The griffons all fired their crossbows at the figure, but he blinked and disappeared. The griffons all turned wildly, but he was nowhere to be found.
There was a swishing noise as something was fired through the air at them. Gilbert stiffened, then slowly keeled over on the ground. The back of him was riddled with strange long objects that shimmered as he fell face down, the life bleeding out of him through the impacts. Blood oozed out of his wounds, the long metal objects embedded deep into his back.
They were feathers. Metallic, sharpened feathers.
The four remaining started to turn around wildly, hoping to catch some glimpse of their attacker, but they could see nothing, only a flash of darkness as whoever it was flew in the rafters high above them. They all fired their crossbows at the figure sprinting through the rafters above, but the arrows sailed through the dark, hitting nothing.
Suddenly a loud staccato reverberated throughout the room, at the speed of a snare drum, but as loud as thunder. A yellow burst of light shone in the oppressive darkness, and another griffon suddenly spurted blood from his body out of dozens of wounds that suddenly appeared all over him. He stumbled backwards as the wounds appeared, then collapsed onto the ground in a pool of blood.
Glenn screamed in horror and ran to the griffon's side while the last remaining griffon and Devon fired their crossbows at the light's origin. But there was nothing there.
Glenn held the griffon's body, shaking as he felt the dead weight in his hands. Glenn was on the verge of tears. "How?" he whispered. "How did he do this? Why?"
Devon had no answer.
The last remaining griffon was circling about wildly, his face plastered with one of panic. The strange thumping sound had stopped. There was an eerie silence present in the spacious warehouse, broken only by the wails of Glenn over his dead compatriot.
BOOM
And suddenly there was an explosion, a hard sound that rocked the ground beneath them, a flash of orange color near the one unnamed griffon that he was caught up in. He disappeared in the blooming flame, then came running out, engulfed in fire. Glenn and Devon had been thrown back by the force of it and had hit the ground with a hard thud. Devon struggled up weakly in time to see the burning, screaming griffon stumble away.
And then there was a bang, and he spurted blood from his front, and the screaming stopped. The burning, bleeding griffon fell down onto the cold concrete floor and moved no more. As he fell, Glenn and Devon could see who had killed him, standing behind him.
He was silhouetted against the tall forest of fire behind him, his image distorted by the heat waves emanating off of the fire. They could see nothing of his dark figure, other than that he was a pony who was standing upright, pointing something at the burning corpse. Glenn and Devon felt like they were in a nightmare, a terrible nightmare where all of your friends died and this was Tartarus, a special kind of Tartarus.
Glenn screamed in fear as the upright pony looked at him with baleful eyes and pointed his hoof at him. He tried to scramble away from him, but the nightmare simply aimed at him and a loud bang filled the air, loud as thunder. Glenn stumbled, bleeding from a wound in his thigh. He gripped it and more blood spurted out, crying aloud in pain.
Two more bangs ripped through the air, and two more wounds appeared in Glenn's back and shoulder. He fell to the ground, and one more deafening bang echoed in the vast warehouse. A hole appeared in the back of his head, and he went still.
Devon felt like he was going to throw up. His shaking fingers clutched the handle of the black capital L, wondering why he hadn't fired it before. He drew it up so it was pointing it at the head of the deathly pony, and pulled the trigger with all of his strength.
Click
The sound made his insides drop. Of course. Nopony ships loaded weapons. The device was empty. Devon had forgotten to load it.
The pony stood there for a second as if he was amused. Devon hurriedly threw the device away to the side and exclaimed, "I surrender! I surrender, d'you hear?"
For a while, there was only the sound of the crackling, snapping flames. The pony was motionless.
Then a soft voice came through, barely distinguishable over the snapping, angry fire.
"Don't you understand?" the voice spoke so calmly, so quietly, so slowly. "I'm not accepting surrenders. A surrender is the mark of a weak being." He slowly walked to the side, still silhouetted by the fire. "You are a criminal. A liar, a murderer, a creature of vileness and filth. I can't allow you to exist in a world where you can cause more damage to the innocent. You've abused the privilege to live."
And he pointed his hoof at Devon. Devon was paralyzed by fear. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything except pray in his head for mercy.
"And when privileges are abused..." The voice was so calm, so soft, so quiet, "...They get taken away."
A bang.
The pain was unbearable, the pain was like a fire burning in his insides as a wound opened in his gut. As he bled his life out and his eyesight failed him, all he could see was the orange blur of the flame. And all he could hear was the beat of his failing heart.
Thump thump
Thump thump
Thump thump
Thump thump
Thump...
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Is this like the Pony Punisher?
Upupupu, its seems a new game is afoot. This seems to have potential, and he seems to be something to fear. I can't wait to see more.
When I saw the word vengeance in the description, my first thought was “PUNISHER!!!” Then I read, and was somewhat disappointed. Good story though
I had a nightmare just like this. Ghost child, one you could only see on your phone, with a knife. Came after me and two others, I was the last one alive and I thought I made it, but she comes to where I am hiding and starts stabbing. I of course try to stop it, but you can't grab a ghost...so yeah, this reminds me of a really fucked up dream.
8494048
Sort of...You'll see
https://youtu.be/vrmtB-1crJI?t=10m6s
Thought of this when I read that part. Stop watching when you want to.
8542080
Well dang. Pretty dang scary. Remarkably similar to what I had in mind, except the silhouette has the gun. I like it.
people who murder have forfeit the privilege of living, i feel. i agree with this character's sentiment that criminals should be executed for major crimes. i sure hope he doesn't turn out like one of those insane fuckers who kill people if they turn right on red without stopping.
Well... I'm truly frightened... I thought reading "Rainbow Factory" was freaky, but Up could at least identify the killer.
This pony is on a whole new level of terror...
Devon, UK was where my father was raised. Also, never knew that Devon could also be a name. Then again, people make up new names all the time.
A good, scary story. Ooooooo, getting goose bumps!
I can't say I completely agree with what the vigilante said. There are criminals, and then there are criminals.
Whoever this mysterious vigilante is, I approve.
8494048
......no offense but it says Pony of Vengeance, they move almost like a spirit, they start a fire, they take their sweet time in killing the Griffons, if they had a comic it would probably be ruined by cheesy stunts, a terrible plot line, and a half-ass actor......ringin' any bells?
EDIT: read the replies, and i apologize if i caused any doubt, but i digress this vigilante seems to be a mixture of both in a way. They get fire, their sadism, and seemingly ghost like movements from The Rider (you pick which one, but i prefer Carter Slade), and everything else from Punisher
9604072
He had a valid point. This mysterious vigilante is eerily similar to the Punisher in his mindset, and that's what he was trying to find out.
Everyone else is saying this is the Pony Punisher or whatever, but for some reason, I imagine this guy talking in Ben Affleck's Batman voice.
I know he doesn't, but still.
9849334
Nonsense! Batman doesn't use guns!
Wait, you said Affleck. Oohhh...
So basically, Punisher meets ponies (or in this case, griffons).
I'm intrigued.