RoMS' Extravaganza

by RoMS

Dec. 19-May. 20 - When The End Came To Town - 11

Dumb bet, dumb bet, terribly dumb bet! And dumb Scoots too! Why did she have to do it?

Rarity's going to be pissed.

Oh, Celestia this feels weird.

I tear through a cold, black goop, a gut-dropping dive into what feels like icy water. A brief pause comes. I can’t breath, flailing around and deprived of a grip on anything. It’s like I’m floating somewhere in space. Well... I’ve never been to space but that feel matches Luna’s description of it. No grip, or up and down. Just dark, terrible dark nothing.

Focus Sweetie Belle! Focus. The weightlessness vanishes and I fall again, bursting through yet another layer of mushy darkness. And a deafening silence welcomes me, if only for a moment.

My heart jumps to my throat. I hit yet another invisible wall and light rushes in, washing away the night around me. A blue light like nothing I’d ever seen but on Rarity’s most regal dresses. Ultramarine.

A deep and hazy blue blur that burns my eyes as I’m falling down. Down… down to the ground. I scream again. No time for even a quick breath.

I land against something woody, a branch maybe — snap! The wind gets knocked out of me — I tumble down against a tree trunk, bounce off a large root, scrape my shoulder against a rock, close myself from the world, and splat face-first against the ground.

Thud, crash, womp!

Ouch...

I shake the dirt off my head, nausea bringing my lunch crawling back up my throat. A few seconds breathing in and out go by, I dare not open my eyes.

Am I through? I'm definitely through. Oh horny horn, I'm through the Wall...

My ears perk up at any sound around me. But there’s nothing to listen to but the roaring, distorted and gushing wind. It howls like the scream of a banshee. Those same ghosts from Rainbow Dash’s scary stories.

I spring up and a dash of dizziness rushes down my legs. I shake, my temples hurting like no other day, and stumble to get my footing.

The air tastes of copper. I know because I used to lick the chocolate off the kitchenware when my sister or Pinkie Pie made brownie cakes. And I am very thorough.

Done with the dirt rag-tagged to my coat and mane, I rub my shut eyes and swallow. Though I can’t hear it over the wind, it’s raining. The cold water drum on my coat and muzzle. Though I’ve not opened them yet, my eyelids can’t block all of the blue blue hue blasting behind them.

My chest rises with a deep breath and I snap my eyes wide open.

A storm of light crashes around me, stuck under an infinitely distant dome, a smooth featureless planetarium of bright blue. No light source or specific point of origin, there’s only the blue hue, covering the landscape around me.

Tree trunks, rocks, pebbles, shrugs, everything’s dyed a shining blue that only Rarity’s best dresses could achieve.

And the noise, the crashing waves of wind that level the last standing trees tackles me to the ground. I scream, I think, but no sound reaches my ears.

My head reels, I stand up, I fall to my haunches. I am inside the Wall. And the noise is deafening.

I struggle on the ground, punched down by an irresistible force, like wind, invisible and yet very present. I get to my hooves, difficily, and take a step back towards the edge of the dome where I came from.

One step, two steps, three… a jump. But I never reach it. I can’t move to it, no matter how hard I try. I’m stuck in place. I spat, I damn the wind that seems to force me back. And so I take a few steps back, ready to run up and jump. But whatever I do, I can never walk back to it.

Each step away is a step I can’t make back.

I start running around, to find a hidden way to reach the Wall back. A small canyon between two large boulders, a trunk as a runaway, I jump, and I crash back where I started, sucked back towards the center of this sphere of blue.

There’s a force that stretches me towards itself. I’m angry, unable to make my way back, I can only turn around and find the source that’s keeping me there.

Twilight’s castle, at the centre of the dome shines the bluest, a near-white blast of light, a lightning bolt in a round sphere that clings to its crystal walls. And that’s where the sounds are coming from.

What I’ve thought was wind, started sounding a lot more like a high-pitched constant scream.

“Twilight!” I scream to the wind.

I look away from the castle and back at the Wall behind me. As the edge of a house starts peeking past its threshold, I lift my hoof and push forward to it but as expected something is repelling it, like forcing two unfriendly magnets towards each other, if my hoof was one of them.

I step towards the castle and try again towards the Wall, and yet again I can’t win back what step I gave. There’s only one way forward.

To the castle.

And so I run to it.

The further I run away from the Wall, the lighter I felt. And with the pressure in my chest lifting, so doe the blue hue blanketing everything.
Snapped trees go from blue to midnight black to brown. The brook I jumped by, by the the greying walls of an empty concrete shack, regains its natural greenish color.

The gate of the castle, from afar looking like Lapislazuli turn gold once more, and I step inside.

And the sound of the wind, first a single monotone whail turns into a distinct set of screams.

Twilight, Twilight, Twilight!

Starlight, help!

My heart grips in my chest as I pressed forward in the alleyways inside the castle who's always looked larger within than without. Left, right, up a staircase, down another, and another, to the basement.

I ram a door open. Or rather twice. I'm not very strong. Until I resort to turning its handle. And down I go, to the basement where the screams continue.

I am not ready when I step through the ornate door. The basement was more like a lab.

A lab hosting a hurricane of magic. Arched lightning, fire, floating runes and burning papers, torn books, shattered chemistry bottles and stuff. And in the middle, a hole.

Black, terrifying, like looking down a caverne hole. But it's a sphere, not unlike the Wall, but smaller, floating next to the ceiling.

With Twilight racing away from it, flapping her wings like mad, enveloped in an aura of magic, that of Starlight who sweats bullet, all four hooves gripped to a crystal chair anchored to the ground.

I dare not step in the room. Feeling myself getting sucked in towards the black hole.

"What is happening!?" I scream.

Starlight snaps towards me, fear bloodshot into her eyes. I stumbled back.

"Go find help!" she barks, yelping as one of her hooves slips away from the chair. "I can't hold five more minutes."

"Five more minutes?" I mumble, then shout back, "But it's been three months, Starlight!"

Her eyes grow wide and dart around for something.

"I can't escape," Twilight screams, sweat tearing across her face and back, taking off to race to the hungry monster behind her.

"The book!" Starlight calls out to me, nudging at a leather book stamped with a half yellow and red sun, and half a pink and purple star. "Write for help! Fast!"

"I..."

"It's magical! Write fast!"

"Starlight!" Twilight screams, her voice shrill and distorted.

A grunt of pain escapes Starlight's lips as another layer of magic erupts from her horn.

"Sweetie Belle," Twilight howls between two pants, "Please, get help!"

I turn around, ready to move back up the stairs. But like the outside, I cannot retrace my steps, locked in place by an invisible force. And as I turn around and back to the chaotic room, I wonder if it's the same for them.

Stuck in place where they are, only able to magick themselves steady, so they wouldn't fall into the black pit above their head.

I hesitate, gripped to the doorframe of the basement door, head low to dodge rushing furniture and shards of glass.

Squinting hard at the book, my horn fires and shoots a ray at it. The goal is to budge it, move it towards me so I'd not have to step forward any more.

But I can't. If I can't move away from the ball, neither can anything else. I guess you could either rotate around or fall into the pit.

There is no escape from falling. And so I yell and jump, and yell some more.

I slide across the room towards the chair, and the book, looking around for a flying pen.

Here, a crayon box swiping around in the whirlwind, then snapped within my magic.

I hug the chair, the box, the book, fight the wind to open the book to the last page. It will do.

I'm sweating. Everything's wind, screams and effort. My hind legs locked on the chair, I lay the book bare under my two other hoof.

Quick, quick. Have to be quick. I bite on a crayon, snatch three other in my magic. And write down a word.

H E L P