Laughter Died

by Leafdoggy

6: Lightning

A chill went through my body as I wandered the cold stone ruins. The mud splattered all over my body was starting to dry, but my fur was still drenched. It left me feeling stiff and disconnected from the world around me.

The halls were dark and gloomy. The only light came from torches that sporadically lined the walls, flames still flickering after all these years. They gave off decent enough light, but very few of them were still lit. None of this should have been a problem for me, but after the stress, the rain, the fall, I was so exhausted and out of it that I completely forgot about my magic.

“Applejack?” I called out, hoping fruitlessly to be heard. “Fluttershy?”

My words disappeared into the abyss of the ruins, never to be heard again.

I wasn’t moving especially quickly now. I was too tired, and it was too dark. The light around me was getting dim as a torch slowly disappeared behind me.

I pushed open a door on a whim. Darkness. All that met me was a wall of black, and the torchlight was so thin now that it couldn’t even get past the threshold.

I left the door open and moved on.

Not long after that the light stopped reaching me altogether, and I was walking into a world of nothing. I looked back and could still see the tiny dot of fire, flickering with all its might, but it looked to be worlds away. That light wasn’t a part of my world anymore.

I turned away and kept walking into the inky blackness. All that was left to remind me that I was still in the castle was the hollow clacks of my hooves on stone.

Darkness stopped bothering me a long time ago. It had to, once I lived in a world of it.

I often wondered if, wherever they went, the ponies of Cloudsdale lived under an eternal day. The idea seemed worse than anything night could bring, but then, they had almost all of Equestria’s weather-making ponies with them. They could no doubt bring in their own darkness.

There are still things I don’t understand. Things had escalated so quickly, but after the night started it all seemed to just stop. We spent years under the moon, living in constant fear of when the next blow might come.

Was that their goal, all along? To turn Equestria into a world ruled by fear? If so, there was no doubt they had already won.

Maybe there was more, though. Maybe they needed all of Equestria to be broken by their spell, and when Cloudsdale left they had to give chase to finish the job there. Is that why Rainbow Dash never came back?

Or… I didn’t stay long enough to see the aftermath of Pinkie being hit. Could she have turned back up? Could she—

I ran into a wall.

I rubbed my sore nose as my thoughts fell apart around me. I put out my hoof and felt the unforgiving stone of the hallway’s end. Then I looked around, hoping to be able to find my bearings.

There was a second light, now, flickering off in the distance to my left. I turned and started for it.

I started to wonder how long I would be here, wandering this labyrinth in search of my friends, when a shadow passed over the light. I blinked, not trusting my eyes, but there was no mistaking it. Somepony was there.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Wait up!”

I heard the sound of panicked shuffling, and then the light went out. Instantly, I was drowned in immutable darkness.

I started to run towards where I felt the light had been.

Ahead of me, a door slammed shut. I turned towards the noise and sprinted.

It wasn’t long before I met another wall. Luckily, I wasn’t running straight at it this time, but the sudden collision still knocked me off my hooves and sent me tumbling to the ground.

I rolled down the hallway, feeling the world spin around me despite not being able to see anything. When my body finally stopped, my head kept swimming, and I stumbled as I tried to push myself to my hooves.

I made it upright after a couple tries and felt around, trying to find a door or even just a wall, but I found nothing. I spun my head around and strained my eyes, but again, nothing. I had no clue where I was.

“Guys? Hello?” I noticed my voice was starting to shake.

No response.

I waited, trying to keep up hope, until my voice echoed back to me. It rang out around me, and it felt like the castle was mocking me.

Then I heard Fluttershy scream.

I ran in the direction the noise came from. I knew I’d probably end up on the ground again, but still, I ran. The only thing on my mind, from the second I heard her, was finding Fluttershy.

I nearly tripped over myself when Applejack turned the corner ahead of me, carrying a small lantern to light her way. I skidded to a stop in front of her.

“Hey,” Applejack said. She sounded strangely calm. “She’s over here.”

Applejack gestured behind herself, then started to lead me down the hallway. In the faint light of her lantern, I could see an open door a ways down.

When we reached it, she stood aside and let me go in first.

It was the library, barely lit by flickering candles on a few of the tables. In the center, hidden from the light by stacks of books, Fluttershy sat at a table with her head in her hooves.

I walked over and quietly put a hoof on her shoulder. “Fluttershy?”

She jumped when I touched her, but calmed down when she saw my face. “Twilight… I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” I told her. “I’m just glad to see you’re safe.”

She nodded and looked at the table.

“Are you okay? I heard you scream.”

“Oh, um… Applejack scared me,” she said.

“That’s it?”

“Mm-hm.”

I took a seat next to her and rubbed her back. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m…” She took a deep breath. “I’m trying to find a way to stop this.”

I frowned. “That’s not something you need to do alone.”

“I know,” she said. “I just… I needed some time.”

I hummed in understanding and gave her a hug.

“What happened at your house? It was a mess.”

“I heard my door open,” Fluttershy said, “and I… Panicked. I thought it was the pony who hurt Starlight, I thought they were coming for me, coming to…” She trailed off.

“Did you see them?”

She shook her head. I tried to hide my disappointment, but I had no idea if it worked.

“How are you feeling?”

She turned her head away from me. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes I am,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I worry about all my friends,” I told her.

“Well then go worry about them,” she replied. There was an edge of frustration creeping into her voice.

I sighed, and sat quietly for a moment as I thought. As I did I scanned the books she’d grabbed. Books on magic, on infections, books I’d read a hundred times. I’d gone through this library more times than I could count, I knew everything she had—

I stopped as my eyes landed on a book I didn’t recognize. I grabbed it from the stack and pulled it towards me.

“What’s this?”

“Hm?” She looked over at it. “Oh, it’s just a storybook from when I was young.”

I looked it over curiously. There was no title, just a picture of a frowning pony and the author’s name. Silver Steed.

“What’s it called?”

“I don’t think it’s called anything,” Fluttershy said.

“Strange.” I turned it over, but the back cover was just a picture of that same pony, except now he was smiling. It made me uneasy, but I couldn’t quite place why. “I’ve never heard of the author,” I said.

“He doesn’t write a lot,” Fluttershy said, “and his books are hard to find.”

“Well, with no title, I certainly don’t know how I’d find this book. Did you find it here?”

Fluttershy nodded. “I recognized it, so I pulled it out.”

“Odd.” I hummed in thought. I knew for a fact that this book hadn’t been in this library the first time I checked here after the first incident. “Well, if you found it here, I guess nopony will object if I take it home.”

Fluttershy nodded without hesitation. I wasn’t sure why exactly I watched her, why I thought she might object, but she didn’t.

“Do you think you’ll be ready to go home once the rain ends?” I asked her.

She nodded. “I think so.”

I squeezed her again, and she leaned against me weakly.

---

The rain striking the courtyard had lessened to a drizzle, but the sound of the droplets hitting the awning above me still flooded my ears. Every dull thump felt like another blow as the world slowly whittled away at what little hope I still had.

Applejack and Fluttershy were still inside. I hadn’t meant to go ahead, but at some point they fell behind, and by the time I got out of my head for long enough to notice it was far too late to do anything about it.

So I was just waiting here, alone again, storybook tucked under my wing, watching the rain in silence.

A cricket leapt from the nearby grass and landed at my hooves. No doubt it was seeking refuge from the rain.

I must have shifted my weight to look down at it, though, because it leapt straight back out into the deluge and away from me. I watched it absentmindedly as it skipped through the mud, landing on leaves and grass where it could, and made the long trek to the other side of the courtyard, where it found another shelter to hide in.

I heard hoofsteps behind me. I turned around, and Applejack nodded towards me. She was carrying Fluttershy, who had fallen asleep on her back.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said. “Just tuckered out is all. We’d best be gettin her to bed.”

I nodded, and we started to make our way home. The wind had mostly died down, so I was able to keep the rain at bay with my magic, and once we were in the forest not even that was necessary.

I could still hear the booming thunder and howling wind off in the distance. The clouds must still have been covering the sun, too, because the forest was dark enough that I had to light our way.

We took it slow. I led the way, pushing through bushes and shrubs, then holding them aside so Applejack could get through with Fluttershy. Our hoofprints from the trek here had long since been washed away, so we had to blindly guess at the direction to Fluttershy’s cottage. My only comfort was the thought that, if we went the wrong way, Applejack would notice. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, if she was thinking the same about me.

It felt like an eternity of silence, but when I finally decided to speak the words started to just fall out of me. “So what happened down there?”

“Heck if I know,” Applejack said. “I hardly got there thirty seconds before you did.”

“Really? I was calling out for you, though, why didn’t you say anything if you were that close?”

“I didn’t hear nothin,” she replied. “Maybe we went different ways.”

“I guess so…” I hummed in thought. “So, what? You just walked into the library and found her there?”

“Well, the scream gave me a pretty good idea of where she might be.”

“What?” I stopped walking and looked at her blankly. “I don’t understand.”

She gave me a funny look. “I was lookin around and heard her scream, so I ran that way. Ain’t that how you found us?”

“Yeah, but…” I hesitated for a moment. “Fluttershy said she screamed because you scared her.”

“Huh.” Applejack looked back at Fluttershy, then shook her head. “We can figure this out back home. She was probably just not thinkin straight.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I lied.

We spent a couple of hours just walking through the forest in silence after that. It didn’t feel right, sharing my thoughts on these things with the others. By the end of things before, I’d been researching things alone for years. Sure, there were other ponies scattered about who I’d go to with questions or share some notes with, but I didn’t tell them what I was thinking. They wouldn’t have had all the context, they would’ve misunderstood. I didn’t want to be sent down the wrong track because I took advice from somepony who was missing information.

I didn’t know what I could even tell Applejack, anyway. My thoughts as we fought through the Everfree were hardly coherent. I had nothing past half-baked ideas and unfounded hunches. I couldn’t have Applejack validate my weird ideas about strange books and mysterious shadows, that wouldn’t help any of us. I had to keep those things to myself until I was more sure of them.

I still trusted Applejack. Of course I did. I just had to be careful.

Finally, once we were sufficiently covered in scrapes and rashes, the trees let up and we found ourselves outside the Everfree. A bolt of lightning cracked down onto the horizon as we emerged, and the loud whistle of the wind confirmed what I was worried of. It seemed we’d only been in the eye of the storm. The worst was yet to come.

Comments

[Cross Lament]

Well that's not good.

[Starlight Nova]

You know, strictly going by the story's title, I'm a little surprised there isn't a Pinkie Pie tag.

[Magpy]

welp, there goes Honesty