First Outting
Trains had always fascinated the silver maned stallion sitting next to the window. He loved the idea of a machine that could do work without any need for a unicorn to act as a battery. The landscape moved by as the stallion sat back and looked around the train car. The compartment was nearly empty save for the green mare asleep in her chair, and a grey stallion a few rows down reading a newspaper.
The silver stallion looked out the window and watched the rolling farmland roll by and sighed.So, I'll be spending a few weeks in a small town, searching for a creature that hasn't been seen in centuries... all while having to memorize this tome. Silver Lining lifted the small tome up and opened its pages. “The Monstrum Codex: A guide to monsters and how to kill them”... and I have to find one of the creatures in this book. Fun.
As Silver looked over a page about how to decapitate a hydra, and burn the stump, the conductor came into the car.
"We will be arriving in Ponyville in six minutes. Please gather all of you belongings if you are getting off, Ponyville in six minutes!"
The silver maned pony took a moment to take a deep breath then closed the tome. He gathered the bags that had been packed by the servants and watched as the small town rolled into view. It looked quaint and rather peaceful to the stallion, and that helped calm him for a moment. He felt himself lean forward as the train slowed down to pull into the station.
He watched the train pull in and waited for the doors to open. As the doors opened he caught a fresh waft of warm autumn air that smelled lightly of fresh baking, and of pumpkins. The sweet air filled his lungs and made Silver smile a little. He spotted a stallion with a slicked back greying mane and walked towards the pony and reached out to take his hoof.
"Ah, Mister Lining, it’s pleasure to meet you. I trust the train ride went well?"
Silver took the extended hoof in front of him and discovered the stallion had a firm hoof shake. "It was pleasant. I hope me joining you for some time isn't an issue for you and your daughter."
The aged pony shook his head and motioned for the younger pony to follow. "Nonsense, I enjoy having company, and I'm certain this will be entertaining for you as well."
Silver nodded then swallowed. "So... um, how exactly did you learn of the story and information you sent my fath—er... Lord Silver?"
The elder stallion shook his head. "We can talk about that later my lad. I want to show you around the town a little; after all you will be staying here a few weeks. Also feel free to call me Rich. No need to be formal or anything."
Silver nodded. The pair made it to a small manor located near the outskirts of the time and dropped off the bags that Silver had brought with him. Rich kept talking about the history of the town and how it had been founded by the Apple family and his own long before either of them had been born.
The older stallion pointed to a structure standing in the center of the town. "That's the mayor’s office. She's a nice mare and is prone to a little bit of delegation from time to time." The stallion chuckled at his own joke that went over the younger ponies joke. "Over there is the local market. It's an open air market and has some pretty good produce. Might, want to check that out if you have a fancy for something to eat or to cook."
Silver nodded. "Alright... shouldn't we get down to business? I think this is only going to make my stay longer."
The older ponies’ relaxed posture tensed up for a moment as he sighed. "We will get to that. Let's enjoy the rest of this wonderful weather before we get to that sort of thing. I need to pick up an order from the local bakery, so let's head over there."
"Oh... okay then."
They walked through the busy streets and came upon a small bakery that amazed Silver. The building looked as if it had been made from gingerbread. Silver pointed this out to the older stallion the moment he spotted it.
"Oh yes, that's the Sugar Cube Corner, that's where we are heading." A slight pause from Rich caused the younger pony to stop as well. "The young baker under the employ of the owners is rather... eccentric, to say the least. She's the pink blur you will see when you walk in."
"Pink-blur sir... Rich?"
The older stallion walked past Silver with a knowing smile. "You'll see what I mean."
The pair reached the bakery and walked inside. The jingling of the bell was quickly joined by a loud gasp and one Pinkie Pie barreling up to Silver.
"Riiich, you didn't tell me that you were bringing a new pony into town for Nightmare Night! Hiya mister, I'm Pinkie Pie, and welcome to Ponyville. This is the Sugar Cube Corner, and we make the bestest baked stuff ever! What's your name stranger?"
Silver looked at the bouncing pink mare for a moment then to Rich, only to notice that the elder stallion had left him to his fate with the energetic mare. After barely a moment of inaction from the stallion, Pinkie began to poke Silver lightly, but rapidly.
"Um... Silver Lining. Who are you, and please stop poking me."
The cotton candy maned pony stopped instantly and beamed at the stallion. "I'm glad to meet you. Are you visiting the town for family, friends, family friends, marefriend, friends’ marefriend, friends’ family, or something in between or something else entirely?"
Silver could barely keep up with the mile-a-minute talking coming from the pink mare in front of him. He noticed, with a great measure of discomfort, that she was well inside his personal bubble. His mind caught back up with the mare once she started poking him again.
"Uh... I'm here to visit Rich, and his daughter for a little bit, while working on a... um, project."
The pink pony stopped poking him an began bouncing in place again. "Oooo a project! Are you still in school? Because you kinda smell like school. Also is Rich your uncle?"
Silver shook his head. This mare is a little more than eccentric Rich. Thanks for the last minute warning. He cleared his throat and tried his best to smile.
"No, he's a friend of the family, he works with my father."
"Ooh. That's neato. So, do you like cookies?"
"Um, yes?"
"Great! I need a taste tester."
Silver's mind took a moment to realize that he had just been drafted into something as Pinkie dragged him across the room to a table near the counter. The young stallion spotted Rich chatting with a tall, skinny yellow stallion, and holding a pair of boxes on his back. Rich gave the younger stallion a small wave before continuing his talk with the owner.
Over an hour later Rich and Silver walked out of the bakery. Silver had three boxes resting on his back, all of which had been given to him by Pinkie.
"I think that went very well, don't you?"
Silver looked over at the older stallion and gave him a small scowl. "She force fed me over twenty types of cookies. I must have eaten at least a baker’s dozen of those snicker-doodles before she was happy. Is she always like that?"
Rich nodded and chuckled as he carried his order. "Not all the time. She's very insistent of meeting everypony that comes into the town. You're lucky she didn't roll out the Welcome Wagon, and no, I'm not talking figuratively."
The younger stallion had a mental image of Pinkie with a large wagon bouncing through the town. The image was both amusing and terrifying to Silver in equal measure. He sighed and followed Rich back to his small manor. They were greeted on the small path to the front door by a pink filly wearing a tiara.
"Daddy! Where have you been? I was waiting for a whole three minutes out here for you!"
The stallion gave the filly a smile and a fond hug. "Well, I had to get some Nightmare Night goodies for you and all the little ponies coming to our house in a few days, as well as pick up our house guest. Diamond, meet Silver Lining. He's going to be staying with us for a few weeks."
The filly gave Silver a small scowl then gave her father a pouting face. "But I don't want any guests, my friends might not like him!"
Silver flicked his ears as the whining tone of the fillies voice and had to chew his cheek for a moment to keep himself quiet.
Rich chuckled for a moment. "Now sweetheart, that's no way to treat a guest. Now, let's get inside and talk for a little bit. Our guest would like to hear about that story Apple Bloom told you."
The filly huffed and groaned. "Fine."
Silver pressed his hooves together and rested his head on them, an old habit he developed whenever he thought about things. The story that Diamond Tiara had told him really gave him pause. The filly Apple Bloom's description of the creature, and how it moved, all seemed to fit with only a few creatures he knew about. However, one portion of the story stuck out to him the most. This creature had saved the filly from Timberwolves, but didn't harm or attack the filly.
He flipped through the pages until he rested on the section that was devoted to a creature that had more pages devoted to it than any other monster in the entire book.
"Arachnapony. Exterminate with extreme prejudice... oh great, just my luck."
The stallion sighed and tapped his hooves together for a moment. I can't be certain until I've had a chance to look around. Can't jump to conclusions. Okay, I'll have to talk to the filly that told this story to see if original can give me more insight on what I'm dealing with here. Should also talk to some of the ponies familiar with the forest. If anything has changed suddenly, if any of these creatures are here then they will need to eat a pretty good amount of the wildlife.
Silver looked down at the open page and looked at the image. It was of a massive shadowy figure attacking a defenseless pony with sharp fangs dripping with blood. The look of terror on the victims face sent shivers down his spine.
I hope it's not one of these. If it is then I'm going to be in some very deep trouble.
With a suppressed shiver Silver closed the tome.
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oh great prejudice writing. Just goes to show any idiot can pick up a pen and write. Not you by the way, just the book in the story.
2949225 Was worried there for a moment...
YAY!
New chapter! really love this story and its a really good read. hope you can keep writing!
nice chapter, can't wait for more
doesn't that mean he WANTS to be in trouble? that makes little sense
Dear lord!
That cover art! I'm gonna have nightmares from that! Not to say it isn't good, mind you, just incredibly creepy. Def reading later.
I want to kick him in the dick... with spikes.
2949786 The fuck you talking about?!
That cover art is adorable!
2949996
True Stuff.
2950009 Is your avatar Eris?
(I have no idea who Eris is exactly)
2950101
I don't know who Eris is.
For some reason I have a bad feeling about all this. 0_o
2950239
2950222
ERIS
Greek goddess of chaos, strife and discord, her name being translated into Latin as Discordia. "Discordia" means discord.
for the fandom a female Discord
2950732 Well holy crap. That's something i would have never known.
What the frick. Plus i sercahed up eris mlp and the female discord has white hair.
So i don't think my avatar is eris.
2951214
And random piece of knowledge saves the universe
Silver Silver... Why does that ring a bell......
Oh FUCK.... Lets see how this goes
2951214 Just a cuter verson.
2955740 Ok then.
3273339 I didn't mean to! Don't hurt me! *hides under desk*
3273350 Oh... *comes out from under the desk* In that case I'll keep working on the next chapter.
piclair.com/data/liumg.jpg
3273369 Sorry... do you need a hug?
3273349
lemme guess, hit the publish button when you meant to hit the edit button?
I've done that before...
3273732 That, and I put up a edited version of a chapter... so both.
Cover image scared me.
3273879 You are not the first, and might not be the last.
Strange, this was just featured. I wonder if it's getting a rewrite or something?
3274258 I'm doing some editing and working on a new chapter. I accidentally hit the publish button when trying to edit the new chapter.
3273920 didnt scare me, and i have arachanphobia!! It make it look weird but also cute. Still, spiders are annoying, they act like overpossesive girlfriends when around me, threatening to bite if I remove them as they forever stare into my..... Eck!!!!!
He teases us! Dangles the precious before us!
Looking forward to when you release the new chapter to the masses.
How come this fic got into featured again without even posting a chapter? :D
(unless I missed something)
3275254 I know, I even had something in my favorites alert, and when I saw this in the featured box I was like, yay, and then I opened my favorites to see it was something completely different. At that point, I was like, wait, what?
Hmm, i haven't seen this story in such a while that i thought it had died.
Its nice to see it still alive.
Oh and its good, very good story, not to mention original.
3275578
At several times some of the fics that updated did actually NOT show in my unread favs, so I had to double check. And there are no new chapters. So the only reasonable cause for all of this I see is that it was linked somewhere and new flood of readers bumped it into the feature box again. I guess. I don't know how the feature box script works though.
2949225
Ahem...
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-049
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1285
And here we see that ponies have their own SCP foundation. Maybe a little bit more paranoid.
And for more paranoia.
In case you don't feel like sleeping tonight, read more.
I am the only one here with arachnophobia... Right?
When I first tried to read this chapter it gave a weird message about putting in a password. What's up with that? Also I can't wait for this guy to meet Guardian. WHOO boy is it gonna be funny when he finds out he's no threat!
WHY
3278431 There was an error on my part. I hit the publish button when I meant to hit the edit button. (You'd think they would put the buttons on opposite ends of each other so that doesn't happen...) So if you're trying to get to Chapter 15 then you won't be able to. It's still very much a WiP. I hope to get it off to get edited soon.
3278695
I came to blame,
But now I forgive.
We all face troubles. However, I hope to read the next chapter soon.
Aw, when will we get the next update?
It sucks when I finally catch up with a story because then I have to actually wait.
3324111 The current chapter is being edited so, hopefully in the next week or so.
3324299
Awesome :3
And then I had spent four hours reading a story about a bucking spider pony and his friendship with little fillies. God I need to stop reading things in one sitting. XD Seriously though, very nice story so far, Raijing. Infinite Carnage recommended this story to me, and it didn't disappoint so far. Can't wait to see where you take it from here!
When I first saw this, I didn't want to read because I am EXTREMELY arachnophobic.
But this... this pleases me somewhat. Guardian is so frikkin' aweshome.
What happened to the maid that was on the train with Silver?
Wait, so the Silver family has inverted their duty? That's not so great,,,