Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Crawling

It was a small thing, about the size of a large insect by that point. Downright tiny if compared to what it had once been. Yet it had to be, at that point, it could not have survived and sustained itself as anything bigger than that. That besides, its small size aided it in its situation. The ease with which it moved through the spaces of ponies' homes was a welcome thing to it, and the reduced dimensions made it quite hard to be properly spotted, especially with the cover of the night with which it moved. It allowed it too to more easily hide during the day, needing only to find small undisturbed spaces where it could rest in the dark, waiting for the Sun to fall beyond the horizon again.

At that moment, for example, it lay at the bottom of a closet. It had snuck in that morning, when the sleepy stallion who inhabited that house had gone to open it and fetch his suit for the day. It had dashed into it from beneath the pony's bed, taking advantage of his lack of attention. It lay in wait there, knowing the pony would soon return. It had similarly taken shelter in drawers and nightstands and cabinets before, always unseen, always undetected. If the ponies noticed something, they assumed it was nothing more than a bug or perhaps a spider. It knew how to hide well, and those who looked never found it if they thought something had been there.

It would however grow soon. It could feel as much. It had been eating well, and soon it was going to grow. That would make it harder to move around unnoticed, and harder to pass for a simple common insect found in houses. It would not be big enough to yet attack ponies openly however, it still would need to hide and lurk in the dark. It was best if it found a different, more permanent hiding spot. An unoccupied attic or shed would do, something it could easily leave from and return to when hunting at night, somewhere ponies wouldn't often look. It would grow to be about the size of a small dog, perhaps a little more.

Food was plentiful, and rather easy to acquire. The most dangerous parts of the night were the process of reaching its desired destination, and that of moving to a different house when the occasion called for it. There was no way to know in advance how long it would spend in one place, not without first spending a night there. It in general though avoided houses with more than a pony in them, and houses with pets or animals of most kinds. Rarely it made exceptions for groups of ponies big enough for some of them to have their own room, thus allowing it to exist there only having to worry about a single pony during the night. Shared bedrooms were a deal breaker still, it was simply unfeasible to attach to a pony with another one in the same bed or even just in the same room.

Comments

[Speckle]

I almost started singing the lyrics to Linkin' Park when I saw the title, sorry

On a more serious note, could this be the origin of the weird meta-bug-thingy from the earlier chapters?