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Not Just Stories1,238 words
The Participants6,020 words
Level 1 - Upstairs2,605 words
Level 1 - Dreamworld2,298 words
Level 1 - Candle Cove4,355 words
Level 1 - Abandoned By Disney8,038 words
Slender Note #12,337 words
A Speech to the First Victors2,049 words

Level 1 - Upstairs

As the Iridescents finished their introduction, the shifting of the portals seemed to settle from their prior rapid opening and closing. One in particular opened up that appeared to be the intended one to go through, close to a small stairway to the left of the arena. Unlike the others had in the past, this one remained relatively steady and open.

The overlooking ponies glanced in the portal's direction, prompting their guests to follow their gaze. As they peered into the portal's entryway, the group could see that it looked like a sort of smoky dark blue orb, though as they looked at it closer, the misty forms of stairs briefly showed themselves.

"So then," Crescent Beam began, her voice echoing in the chamber, "it seems that this portal here is the first to be open to the story worlds. 'Upstairs', interesting choice for the start; short, creepy yet not too traumatizing..."

"Wait a minute," Flim said, looking curiously up at the hosts, "you seem to be implying that you're surprised. I thought you ran this place."

"Or at least you act like it," Flam added.

"When a portal opens to a specific world, it is simply the will of this place's laws," Lightning Prism explained. "We are not in charge of which portals are made accessible. It is not our choice."

"So you mean whatever portal opens, you don't pick it?" Sweetie Belle questioned. "It just happens?"

"Precisely."

"But how—"

"There are forces that reside here beyond our control," Lightning interrupted, with a cryptic glance upward.

The others followed his gaze, but saw nothing out of the ordinary from what they had seen earlier.

"However," Crescent said, taking over in the speech with a smile on her face. "We can choose which ones participate in in each specific story world. So..." Her luminescent eyes looked down at the group, and instantly seemed to find her target. She smiled.

"How about you, curious little Sweetie Belle?"

There was a cry of protests from a few of the participants.

"WHAT?!" Rarity demanded, her eyes seeming to radiate anger at the thought of her sister going through the trials. Defensive for her sister, she angrily tried to fire a burst of magic at the Iridescents above, only to have a small spark of magic come out of her horn. The anger was joined by sadness in her eyes as Rarity recalled that she couldn't defend her sister with magic after what the Iridescents had done to them. "Don't you DARE put my little sister through this!"

The young filly took a few paces back, caught off guard at being picked. "Wh-Why me?"

"Why not?" Crescent countered with a shrug. "You volunteered in a way, Sweetie Belle, with your question."

"That wasn't volunteering!" Rarity said with a stomp of her hoof, moving in front of her sister as if to shield her from the threat above. "She shouldn't be punished for being curious by going through your ridiculous games!"

"Better now then later," Lightning Prism chuckled slightly, placing his hooves over the platform's balcony to peer more steadily at them as he spoke in an authoritative tone. "Think of this not as a punishment, but a privilege. She gets to start out on one of the easier ones, and nothing here on the first level will kill you. If anything, it's a mercy to have her first experience be an easy one."

Jeff snorted and muttered something under his breath about wishing that he could just tear that young filly apart right now to satisfy himself. Luckily for everyone else, they didn't hear the maniacal colt's words, though they did see the hostile glare directed at them with his lidless eyes, a gaze that craved blood to be spilled.

Everyone else fell silent, knowing that Lightning had a point—it was better for her to go through one of the easier ones then to have a more likely chance to go through a more potentially deadly one later.

With a small click from the platform, a thin rectangular portion of the arena's floor began to open up, causing the ponies in the vicinity—which in this case were Derpy and the Doctor—to leap out of the way. The brief rectangular gap in the floor was quickly filled as the assembled participants watched a large screen rise out of the floor.

"What's the screen for?" Pinkie called out.

"Glad you asked," Crescent replied. "This screen here will allow us all to see what the participants involved are going through as they travel through the various worlds you'll encounter."

"That includes the images of your gruesome demises later!" Jeff laughed with a psychopathic grin.

Almost everyone looked unnerved at that, reality hitting them that they would be likely to die at some point in these story trials.

"Jeff..."

The colt merely tossed his knife back and forth in his hooves at the warning tone in Lightning's voice.

"Now, step through, Sweetie Belle..."

The cream-colored filly stepped forward a couple steps, meeting the worried eyes of her sister before going further.

It was clear that the young mare was struggling to keep her breathing steady as she hugged her sister. "You'll be okay, Sweetie Belle," Rarity assured her younger sister, managing to force a smile onto her face. "We're still on Level 1, these are just creepy ones... you'll get out of it..."

Sweetie Belle swallowed hard, and, with one look back, stepped through the night-blue orb of the portal vanishing from sight.

It was at that moment that the large screen started up so that everyone else could see the first of the stories come to life...

---

One second Sweetie Belle was surrounded by the misty blue aura of the portal, the next, she found herself in a completely different setting to the one she had just left. In fact, it was a place she recognized immediately.

She blinked her large green eyes, barely able to believe it. She couldn't be here, not after the place she had just been... but there was no mistaking where she was.

"I'm... at home?!"

"Why do you sound so surprised, Sweetie?" a familiar voice said from behind the young filly. "Why wouldn't you be at home?"

Sweetie Belle whirled around at once, though a part of her instantly relaxed the moment she saw who it was. The pony before her was a bright pink unicorn with a purple mane, smiling gently down at her.

"Mom?"

"Of course, honey." Mrs. Belle walked over to her daughter and gently ruffled her mane with a hoof. "Why do you look so shaken up? Is something wrong?"

Sweetie Belle looked up at her mother, thinking of how to respond. This wasn't her real mother, just a carbon copy, a way that the place had gotten inside her head. And yet this seemed fine, no scariness to it at all.

For now.

"I... I had a bit of a nightmare," she finally said, figuring that was the best thing to say. "I was thinking about it." Which, even in this story universe, wasn't too far from the truth. Except the "nightmare" she had been thinking of wasn't one that she could wake up from.

With compassion in her light blue eyes, Sweetie Belle's "mother" pulled her close. "I'm here for you to talk to me about it, okay?"

The filly managed a small smile. "Okay-"

It was then that she was suddenly cast into darkness.

-----

Rarity's eyes widened, anxious at the sudden darkness. "SWEETIE BELLE!"

"And this must be where the scary part comes," Discord commented as the others watched the screen. He yawned "How predictable and boring."

"This is Level 1, remember?" Chrysalis said in a huff. "I think these first stories are going to be relatively tame."

"Wake me when we get to that point," the draconequus said in a bored tone, placing his lion paw under his chin. "It's no fun when everything's orderly!"

Everyone else's attention was focused on the screen as the story's atmosphere quickly came into view again.

---

When the darkness cleared, allowing Sweetie Belle to see, she let out a faint gasp of unease. She could see that she was still in the house, but it was dark. Nighttime, and there was nopony in the house to be found. In contrast to the peaceful air of her home and the warm embrace of her mother moments before, her house now seemed sinister and unwelcoming.

This definitely was where the scarier part of the story started. But where had her "mother" gone off to?

"M-Mom?" Sweetie Belle called out hesitantly, her voice echoing in the darkness.

“Yeeeeees?”

It was her mother's voice, and yet it seemed different. Unnerving. Quieter, a bit hushed, and it didn't seem to come from the same level.

Rather, it came from the upper floor of the house.

The frightened filly came to the stairway, glancing upward. While ordinarily the white wooden staircase was a welcome sight, especially when Sweetie Belle wanted to be up in her room for a while, the newly darkened atmosphere seemed to cause the flight of stairs to be rickety, unstable, as if it was going to collapse at any moment.

Sweetie Belle gulped. Perhaps her mother wasn't up there after all. Perhaps she had just been imagining it. "Mom?'

“Yeeeeees?” the same voice again, still traveling down from the rooms upstairs. "I'm here, Sweetie..."

She realized that she had the choice between two options - going upstairs toward the supposed voice of her mother, or staying down here in the dark. Not that it looked as if there was much more light up there.

Eventually, however—whether through the tug of the voice, the desire to find some comfort, or her own curiosity—Sweetie Belle gingerly stepped up the stairway, forcing herself not to flinch under the unusual creaking of the boards under her hooves.

After what seemed to be 5 minutes, but was really only a few seconds, Sweetie Belle stepped up to the second floor. It was even dimmer up on the second floor, the only light coming from the cracks of a door at the end of the hall.

Her own room. Her mother—at least, what this place had created to be her mother—must be in there.

"Mom?" Sweetie Belle called again as she stepped a little closer, stopping herself from trembling. "Are you there?"

"I'm here, Sweetie Belle," the voice of her mother called in a tone both haunting and serene. The voice was indeed coming from behind the door.

A cold chill seemed to come through the hall as the young filly moved toward the door, her hoofsteps slow as if she were hypnotized.

"Come here, Sweetie... didn't you say you had something to talk to me about?"

"Yes..." she murmured quietly, coming closer and closer to the closed door. "I did."

"Why don't you come in here and tell me?" The voice of Mrs. Belle echoed just behind the doorway, even as Sweetie Belle was right next to it.

She knew that it was likely a trap. She knew that it couldn't be her real mother behind that door. But despite her misgivings, Sweetie Belle placed her hoof on the door, ready to nudge it open...

Suddenly, a noise caused the young unicorn to jump - the sound of the door opening downstairs. And the sound of the door rotating on its hinges was joined by a voice.

"Sweetie, are you home?"

Sweetie Belle's heart leapt in her chest—it was her mother's voice again. It sounded stronger, like her real mother, and not the ethereal echo of a voice she had heard for the past minute or so. Even in this strange story world, she could tell that the voice downstairs was her mother, her true mother, and the thing behind the door with her mother's voice was just an illusion. A trick.

"I'm here, Mom!" There was no disguising the relief in Sweetie Belle's voice as she began to start down the hallway and hurry down the stairs... but something stopped her before she placed her hoof on that first step.

"If my real mom is down there..."

Slowly, Sweetie Belle glanced over at the door to her room. The light was no longer present along the bottom and sides of the door, it was just as dark as the rest of the second floor.

In the silence, the door opened a crack.

It was as if the chilled air on the second floor had frozen Sweetie Belle to the spot as the door opened wider. She wanted to run, call for help, but at the same time there was something about it that seemed to pull her in.

The door opened a little wider, to reveal the figure who had been hidden from the filly's sight until now. It looked like her mother—exactly like her mother, in fact.

But Mrs. Belle's appearance quickly changed. Her face and body became pale and skeletal, almost appearing to look like a cross between a pony and a spider. Her eyes were no longer blue, now instead they gleamed a strange, cold black.

"Come to me, my dear daughter..."

The creature's now only bore a faint resemblance to that of Sweetie Belle's mother, taking on much more of that eerie, echoing tone that had only been marginally present before.

The doorway where the creature taking the form of her mother stood then seemed to gain its own form of gravitational pull, beginning to pull Sweetie Belle towards it. Towards the pony-spider creature who had taken the form of her mother.

"Mom!" Sweetie Belle cried out, trying to turn back toward the stairs despite the strength of the doorway's mysterious pull. "Help!"

But her mother downstairs didn't seem to hear her. The sucking pull of the door caused a sort of wind to whistle in her ears, pulling the struggling filly ever closer to the figure at the door.

"I am your mother," she hissed.

That was the last that Sweetie Belle heard before the alluring tug of the doorway lifted her off the ground and straight into the waiting hooves of the pony disguised as her mother, the door slamming shut behind her...

And the next thing she knew, she found herself hurled out through the smokey blue portal she had come through, landing with a small yelp of surprise as she tumbled, half frightened and half relieved, onto the ground of the arena.

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