Chapter 7 - The Fear
Light Flow was beginning to regret his hasty actions.
The Everfree lay in front of him from where he stood at its edge. The pleasant greens of vibrant grass and the speckled blues and yellows of the springing flowers began to fade away only a few steps ahead. They were replaced by the dull uniform greys and browns of dead grass and fallen leaves, shading the border of the cursed forest quite clearly. It was as if the forest actively sucked the life from the surrounding ground, ensuring that the trees were the only foliage living inside.
Of course, he knew enough about the forest to know that there were multiple kinds of different flora inside besides the greedy trees. Most regular plants couldn't survive in such a nutrient-deficient place, but some particularly hardy greens managed to eke out an existence. Unfortunately, this usually meant that they had found different sources of nutrition.
Like meat.
Like pony meat.
He closed his eyes, and swallowed hard. He shook his head roughly, his still-too-short mane swished against his head; and he reveled in the comforting feeling. He dared to peek an eye open at the forest, before quickly shutting them again.
It was still there, and it was still scary.
He took in deep breaths, in and out. In and out, like his mother had taught him. In and out, in and out. He felt his rising fear abate, and he opened his eyes again.
The forest stood ahead, a rising wall of black trees and dark shade. They were packed tightly together, almost as if the woods were creating an impenetrable defense against intruders. They shot upwards, easily dwarfing the relatively small unicorn. Branches and bushes intertwined together, creating a reasonable wooden facsimile of a chain-link fence. It was like a fortress.
Him and the forest had one thing in common though. They both ended with a reddish-brown covering on their heads. Instead of a normal green shade, the leaves on the trees sported a darker coloring. The brown leaves rustled together in the slight breeze: brushing together and creating dry, hollow noises.
The blackened wood. The grey grass. The lifeless leaves.
It was as if the entire forest was dead.
From where he stood on a nearby crest, Light Flow defiantly kept his ground against the blight. Soon, he would journey inward; and emerge forever changed from the pony he was now.
There was no going back.
After leaving the schoolhouse, and trekking his way across the relatively busy noon-time Ponyville: he had arrived at the edge of the feared Everfree Forest. The forest that parents used to scare their children into complacency. The forest that was whispered about in hushed tones with wary glances; as if it could hear them. The forest that everypony everywhere unanimously agreed seemed fundamentally wrong.
He tried to keep himself calm as his thoughts kept straying back to the forest. He had been angry when he left, full of rage and fire and conviction. But it didn't last, and now he just felt apprehension. He wet his lips, and left his mouth slightly agape. He sucked air in through his teeth, in and out.
He had to prove Applejack wrong. He needed to.
She can't see me weak.
He felt a tightening in his throat, and he swallowed to try and relieve it. He was stalling, he knew he was. It was obvious. He could so clearly identify what he was doing, purposefully leading his thought process in circles so he wouldn't be forced to act. He needed to stop. He needed to move.
He felt dumb. It was just a forest. So what if it looked, sounded, smelled, felt like death? Necromancers didn't fear death. They conquered it. They ruled it. Necromancers were death.
The characters in his books didn't fear anything. They were confident. They were fearless. They were apathetic and cool. They were fear.
But was he?
The shadows cast by the trees seemed to crawl along the ground in front of him. It grew along the ground in unnatural ways, and he watched with unblinking eyes as it seemed to waver in his vision. The darkness boiled and writhed, popping and stretching into new, horrible shapes. Long dark tentacles undulated in the non-space, dripping with inky viscera; and they reached out toward him. They grasped at his hooves, and squeezed and tore at them. Ripping and bleeding and hurting him. Red mixed with black, and he felt reverberations in his ears.
He felt sick. There was a choking pressure in his chest, and he felt his skin blister as the angry appendages slithered over it. A slimy, pushing feeling crawled its way up from where he felt the pressure was, though it didn't didn't abate in the slightest. It only grew.
He opened his mouth in a silent scream as he felt the slimy feeling fill his mouth. Black liquid pooled on his tongue in great, gushing spurts. It kept pushing up and up from his throat, like there was a fountain in his lungs. It grew and grew, until it began to leak out over his teeth, staining them a deep black. It trickled down his chin, and the tentacles rose to meet it. They crawled up his chest, and seemed to absorb the fluid.
It tasted like bunny.
The tentacles slithered up his upper half, and crawled along his body. His skin grew heavy and hot and wet where it came into contact with the nightmarish substance. He couldn't see it from where his eyes were set forward, but it felt squishy and loose on his bones. He felt like it was sloughing off of him, and into the void below them. He could smell the sharp scent of iron on the air. His white bones exposed themselves to the world, and were quickly smothered by the contrasting black tentacles as they forced their way into his opened insides.
They squirmed and writhed inside of him, poking and prodding at his organs and his bones. They wrapped themselves around the squishy bags and tubes, and pulled. His vital parts were torn from their proper places, and the void messily consumed them. His stomach burst in the powerful grip, and the useless acids dripped into the all-consuming emptiness. His lungs and heart were pulled away, and they popped messily like balloons; spraying red fluid onto the black ground below him. His bones snapped and cracked, weak like wet cardboard. The darkness took it all, sucking and gnashing and crushing.
Soon, his skin was empty, and the tentacles roved their way up his body. They slithered up his neck, and forced themselves into his gaping jaw. His teeth were plucked and stolen, and his tongue was similarly torn off in the process. The tentacles finally made their way up his face, and he saw them enter his field of view.
They slowly, so gently, inched their way closer to his still brown eyes. The two orbs were frozen in place, even as his body was cannibalized. He felt the tips prod at the edges, testing the fragile spheres before they pierced them in a swift blinding motion.
All he saw was darkness. Endless darkness.
It felt like an eternity, there in the dark. He felt his body fade away, though his consciousness remained. He tried to move his hooves, but he didn't feel anything happen. No feedback, and no movement. No sound reached his ears, and he couldn't taste the liquid anymore. All of his senses were completely deprived. His mind instinctively tried to panic, but he squashed the feeling before it could begin. Panic didn't matter anymore, not now.
He knew what to do.
He breathed in with lungs he couldn't feel, and opened his eyes.
He looked out into the dark forest in front of him, as silent as ever. The shadows were docile, and they didn't move from their places under the foliage. He felt around his teeth with his tongue, and he flicked his eyes down quickly to his torso. Everything was in its place, and his fur was unblemished. He couldn't smell iron, and he couldn't taste anything either. He shuffled a hoof on the grass, and felt the dull tips poke at his frog.
He breathed out. He was alive.
He stepped forward.
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Pretty good on the points you wanted. Do keep in mind that when you create a scene, you need to invoke as many of the bodies senses as you can. (Without being too wordy or long winded) You did well with those here. -- Light Flow saw the shadows stretching out to him, smelled the iron of his bloody hallucination, felt the phantom pains, etc... The descriptions were solid.
As far as the gore scene goes, the descriptions there were vivid enough. My only point of improvement would be a critique on the perspective of it.
What I mean is this. The whole story is from Light Flow's perspective, so his thoughts and feelings should be a bit more obvious during the hallucination. I think you might benefit from adjusting the way you present his inner thoughts.
Try changing a font, making the thought sequences a different font color, or making them their own lines. That way they stick out more as a deviation from the "current moment".
Hope this is of some use to you. Feel free to tell me to piss off if you want.
10758295
No no, I welcome any criticism! I need it, crave it even! Knowing how you screwed up is the only way to improve!
About what you suggested, I totally get all of it. I had meant to make it seem like he wasn't feeling any pain at all, since it wasn't really happening; but I screwed that up with a couple lines about him feeling pressure and stuff. The lack of thought was also supposed to imply that he was in a sort of daze, but It's not very clear or well-implemented, so.... All my fault!
Presentation has been something I've actively been struggling with actually. I started out by just using italics to highlight inner thought, but as the scope of my writing increased and I started branching out with viewpoints; it became harder to keep things together. I really need to establish hard rules on what kind of text is what, because I'm losing track.
Thanks again for the comment and the feedback! I really appreciate you taking the time to let me know what I did wrong. Don't ever be afraid to tell me why I'm dumb. It's a fact I'm well aware of!
Nice chapter I wonder what he believes happened back there. I wonder if his weird obsession with Necromancy will translate into something positive for him, I wouldn't be surprised his interest in anatomy from it might inspire him to become a doctor or something like that? I wonder if Zecora might swoop in and save and start teaching him alchemy, Celestia knows that won't help either of their reputations
10759529
Some interesting musings there! I'm glad I've created something interesting enough to speculate on!
I won't say anything plot-wise, so as to preserve the surprises I have planned; but Zecora will play a role. I'd be crazy not to include the show's titular shaman character in a story about a Necromancer. Obviously, she's not even living in the Everfree right now, since this chapter in particular takes place in 992 AB, which is a fancy way of saying it's eight years before Nightmare Moon returns. But someday, she and Light will meet.
not actually sure when zecora comes to ponyville but I assume it's a year or two before nmm or maybe she had only recently arrived in bridal gossip i dunnoOkay, I'm hoping he does it.
Holy shit does the kid have a messed up imagination... O_o
This kid seems to have some sort of schizophrenia. That’s straight up hallucinations right there.
I'm afraid he is not sane.
wait the insinuation that he gave in and tasted the dead bunny just took me by surprise despite knowing it was inevitable.
loving this story so far, binged the last 7 chapters all at once, now to finish the others in as short an order as possible
10931143
He's a weird lil' dude, what can I say?
Glad you're enjoying the story so far, and I hope you enjoy the rest, too! I'd love a few more comments here and there, if you feel the urge!
wow that colt clearly reads too much black stuff
holy shit that was fucking disgusting. not in the hateful way but in the way where "holy shit that scene was so disgusting but its ok because it was meant to be gory and detailed). good job author. not to mention 'it tasted like bunny'... rabbits are my favorite animal..... brilliant.
Oh god a scenery writer. Your kind are alike to demons with you twisting words that weave riddles to try and undermine are sacred thought's with nothing but words that really mean nothing and are just used to distract us from what really matters. Lol but really books with scenery are always an instant drop as they bore me to death. I couldn't care less what the world looks like around the characters as I have a good imagination that can do more with less sometimes. Though the writing style would be acceptable if it made more sense and used less metaphors that could mean a hundred different things (no that's not a good thing or what a good writer does (reminds me of literature class in school with the convoluted task of overly reading into everything and assuming the author meant for his work to be as deep as the bible or as complex as history itself) as it's just distracting and leads to useless thoughts)
11173253
No one cares about what you think, you lowly peasant. Don't break your neck talking up to your betters.
He's got an imagination on him, that's for sure, very vivid.
So, uh, that’s not healthy. I mean, I’m all for the villain thing little guy, but get some help. The ending kinda makes it seem like he had a small break through and dealt with his anxiety a bit? Or, pushed through it anyways.
I fear for the little fella.
WHAT DE FUCK.....also cool chapter