Rainbow Dash's Awesome Nightmare Night Haunted House Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Adventure

by TheDriderPony

You Have Nothing to Fear...

The room is more brightly lit than you expected thanks to the roaring fires.

It's a kitchen, of sorts, though a kind of old-fashioned one like you'd see in castles. The whole back wall is a row of brick ovens, all fully fueled and burning merrily, the fire poking through their openings looking like leering grins. There's a fireplace in the middle, also burning full tilt and keeping a giant cauldron bubbling with a thick goopy mass.

The whole place is a mess. All the tables overflow with flowers and dried plants and strange animal bits preserved in bottles in colored liquid. Across the central island counter are scattered a collection of old looking tools. Mortar and pestles, grinding wheels, odd contraptions of glass and brass heated by tiny fires that puff out steam or drip chemicals from one glass to the next. Everything looks freshly used if not actively in use. A rack by the side holds dozens of rounded glass bottles, each filled with colorful liquid and labeled with small slips of paper.

The air is thick with more competing scents than you can identify. Smoke, spices, sickly sweetness, sweat, and a hundred other. It leaves you lightheaded and slightly dizzy.

Aside from the roar of the flames and the bubbling of the potions, all it quiet.

"Well, well weeeelll! What doooo~ we have here?"

You jump as a figure suddenly bursts out of the pantry.

She's shorter than you, but not by much. A mare with a bushy mane tied back in a loose bunch, a white bathrobe, and the wildest most giddy grin you've ever seen.

Something feels... uncomfortably familiar about her.

"Uh, hi?" you venture.

She doesn't respond, choosing instead to take a running leap over a table full of materials like a cat and land way too close in your personal space. She smells of ammonia and smoke, but those only hide a ranker scent you can't put a name to. Her piercing blue eyes measure you up and down like a fresh veggie at the farmer's market.

"Ooh~! Yes, very nice, yes. Quite something, aren't you, sweet thing? Good build, nice lithe muscles." You can't help but smile and preen a teensy bit under the praise, uncomfortable though it is. "Excellent teeth." You snap your lips shut. That's just a step too weird.

You've had just about enough of the creepy-personal-space-invader room. Time to move on to something actually scary and less... skeevy. "Sooo... I think I'm gonna just... go."

The mare pushes up her thick glasses and fixes you with a piercing stare. Her eyes look like she's frowning but her grin stays fixed in place. Her eyes are so bloodshot it looks like she's infested with stringy red fungus. "Go? You can't go! We haven't even gotten to know each other yet! I haven't shown you any of my potions! I make the best magical potions! There's no one alive who's a better potioneer than me! I made sure of it."

You give the room one more glance. Rack full of magical, no doubt potent potions. Cauldron full of quivering slime. Table full of sharp metal tools stained with who-knows-what. Mad pony with too many teeth in her smile. Yeah, no.

"Yeah, I'm out." It doesn't even look like there's anything here that'd be useful later, just junk. You turn to leave, only to feel an unexpectedly heavy and sticky hoof fall on your shoulders.

"Maybe I wasn't clear enough." She pulls a lever hidden amid the mess and a portcullis slams down in front of the door. At the same time, a platform suspended by chains descends from the ceiling. There's thick leather straps bolted to it, arranged just right to hold down a pony's legs, head, and barrel. Every part of it has red stains of various age. "I'm afraid I must insist." She giggles, high and child-like. "It's not every day a fine source of reagents like you wanders right into my lap! You're not going anywhere."

---

Trapped with a witch in the seat of her power. It's like the worst of every fairy tale. There's two options you can see: FIGHT, and fight using an ITEM. There might be something you can use to beat her; most witches in stories have some glaring weakness.

Author's Note:

What Will You Do?

[Fight]
[Use Item: Boot]
[Use Item: Bucket of Well Water]