Chapter 76: Lurker at the Threshold
Before Lilac was a terror emerged from the darkest nightmares. Its body was an amalgam of writhing, bloody flesh, with misshapen bits of bone emerging at odd angles. It stood on two legs, but as a human being it was a horrifying parody.
The flesh that made it had no particular order—organs pulsed and bled, exposed. Eyes poked out from parts of its body, still blinking, while broken skulls formed sharp teeth in its jaws. It was so large it had to crawl forward on its hands-and-knees, leaving a black trail behind it as it went.
Even so, it kept its face pointed towards Lilac. There were no eyes in its sockets, just more melting, bleeding flesh.
“Why did you forsake my memory?” it asked, its voice gurgling and disordered. “You severed the silver cord, snapped the gate shut. Was not finished with it.”
It smacked a meaty fist into the wall. The whole cavern shook, maybe even the whole continent.
Lilac was running out of ground to retreat. Her mother wasn't keeping up with her anymore. Her mouth hung open, and blood trickled from her nose. Lilac felt a little of that herself.
It felt as though the Low Place was following them, tearing the strength from everything it touched. Like that tear in space, this creature defied her eyes to look at. She couldn't focus on it, couldn't look in its direction for more than a few seconds without feeling sick.
Technically, she’d rolled totally past merely sick, and felt utterly disgusted. She had been inside that thing. Her fur was still soaked in its fleshy ooze.
“No more gunpowder this time!” it said. Derek Ashsen continued to advance on her, tearing huge chunks of stone from the ground as it came. Where it touched, the rock became chalky and gray, its physicality leached away by this quivering horror. “Think the door will stay closed? But there are so many waiting to enter! Gods they wanted, so gods they will have!”
Lilac reached where Risk was cowering. As Derek got closer, the magic from his horn went out, and the scrap of metal he wielded as a weapon dropped uselessly to the ground. Not that it would do anything against a primeval terror anyway.
“Get the door open!” she squeaked, gesturing behind her. “Risk, hurry!”
That snapped him out of whatever funk he was stuck in. He lurched sideways, scurrying over to the door and shoving up against it. Good thing he was able to move on his own this time—if the ponies around her collapsed, how could she possibly help them?
“You think severing that thread is enough? Beating hearts, sparks glow in this darkness. You can't flee! Stolen light recaptured. Thin membrane strains at the edges, floating in a sea of darkness. The threads come unraveled, let the midnight in.”
“Got it!” Risk's voice sounded so very small compared to the monstrous form advancing on them. He was loud enough—Lilac glanced over her shoulder, then hurried through the opening, urging Iris along beside her. But her mom was coping with the proximity far better than River Breeze had during their last encounter.
Iris even managed to slam the door closed behind them. The room beyond was filled with cultists, somehow unchanged from the last time Lilac had seen them. There were perhaps a hundred ponies in all, citizens from all across Willowbrook. Most had their faces obscured by masks, their bodies hidden in cloaks.
She could still tell who most of them were. The flight instructor from Whispering Willow stood nearby on the stage, talking with the owner of the general store. That stage waited with a fine wooden throne, empty and expectant.
“Everypony, run!” Lilac screamed. It didn't matter if they believed she was a god or not. If they didn't, they would all die. “Up to the surface, now!”
Her voice cut across the low murmur of conversation. Ponies were already watching her as she entered. Hopefully that meant they would listen. “The way you came, now! There's something coming!”
The metal behind her dented with the first terrible blow. Where it bent, tendrils of flesh wormed around it, reaching for her. “Stolen light is returned!” shouted the demon named Derek Ashsen, his voice only partially muffled by the opening. “Spinning ever faster! What was will be!”
If Lilac's own command had not been enough to motivate the crowd, that did it. Ponies turned towards the entrance, fleeing up into the mines. But there were so many, far more than could fit in the mine's narrow tunnels. Every other entrance had been sealed, they could only flee one way.
“What happened?” somepony demanded. Not to Lilac, though she already had an answer ready.
Her mother spoke first. “The Watcher betrayed us! He sacrificed the Inquisitors to this demon, then fled!”
The metal dented outward again. It hissed and squeaked with the force of the blow, and thin lines of rust snaked around from the point of impact.
Lilac didn't run. The crowd of ponies packed up against the rear entrance would never empty in time. Crossing that space would buy her seconds at most. “W-what do we do?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Th-the last time... it was so much smaller.”
Her mother wasn't frozen in terror like Risk. Maybe she just had more magical strength to give, or maybe her will was stronger. However she did it, she resisted. “I don't... I've never seen hubris like this before. What madness would make a pony reach through the Outer Gates?”
“He was trying to summon more Alicorns,” Lilac whispered. “Like when you brought Firefly and I. I warned him they weren't there, but the Watcher didn't listen!”
The metal door finally gave out, smashing flat to the ground. The demon poured over it, sinuous half-rotten flesh leaving a trail of blood and viscera behind. Quite a thick trail, actually. As it rose to its full height, Lilac saw something she should've realized from the start.
The Derek Ashsen was melting. Not quickly—but everywhere it went, it left bits and pieces of its own body behind. It doesn't have my sympathetic connection to hold it in the world anymore.
“Stall!” she whispered, urging the others back, out of reach. “We just need time! It's dying!”
The demon loomed large overhead, so high its head scraped against the ceiling. Its arms hung down almost to the floor, with sharp bones protruding through the skinless flesh like spines. “Do you think you're better than we are, nameless one? In all the stillborn space, you hail from one where gravity diverged. Singularity torn apart, diffusing across the void. Are we so different?”
It reached up into the ceiling, tearing out a chunk of rock in bloody hands. Cracks spread from the missing piece, and the mine groaned under hoof.
Lilac felt it again, the almost personified rage of the rocks and stones all around them. It was bad enough that there was an opening here, leaching some of their strength across the eons. But to have this monstrosity crawling its way out to torment them—the planet itself was furious.
Then the boulder struck Lilac, itself heavier than a car, and thrown with as much force. It should've instantly crushed her to death. It would have, if not for the magic all around her. The stone smacked up against her, then exploded in a shower of broken rock. There was no time to stop and think how impossible it was to survive such a blow.
She shook herself free just as another chunk of rock came hurtling at her. This time she dodged, gliding away from Risk and Iris, up against the empty stage.
“Too much charge in the electron! Too great a charge to overcome! You would be another like us, unborn! Why should you come into this garden? You're a stranger here!”
“I don't know!” she yelled back. Here in the vaulted throne-room there was far more light than the dim ritual chamber. There was a weight on her forehead that hadn't been there before. How had she got all the way onto the stage again? “It doesn't matter! You're falling apart! You don't belong here!”
The demon roared, lurching for her with both arms outstretched. It blurred through the air with impossible speed—speed that a body could only reach when it didn't care about tearing through its own bones and muscles to do it. Claws stretched towards her, glittering points ready to tear her apart.
Then she heard a scream, and she was somewhere else. She dropped to the ground in front of Risk, just as the stage shattered into a thousand broken shards. Ice crystallized along her skin, her breath and body suddenly cold, stomach swimming.
“Lilac!” He nudged her onto her hooves, desperate. “What were you thinking?”
She had crossed to the other side of the cavern. Not far enough for the demon not to see her. It spun on her, tearing itself free of the broken stage, toppling the huge throne waiting for the arrival of their god. When it stood, it left huge chunks of meat behind—it was no longer tall enough to touch the ceiling. Its flesh warped on thin bone, like a popsicle left out in the sun.
“Better me than you,” she muttered, stumbling forward. Between the demon and two ponies she'd come to care about. “It's not their fault they exist!” Lilac screamed. Her voice boomed across the cavern, louder than her lungs ever could've managed. “And it's not mine!”
“I'll take you back with me!” it promised. “When I go slithering back into outer darkness. You'll be one of us then, you'll know the hatred we feel! You'll understand the crime! You'll help us tear this garden down! You've seen how it was made, you know how it can be unmade!”
The demon attacked again. This time, Lilac was prepared for its speed. The cavern had been magically excavated, and magically reinforced. Thanks to her, this demon had spent a great deal of energy tearing down those spells. Stone rumbled overhead, eager to move. All she really had to do was stomp her hooves. The rock here wanted to be commanded.
The ceiling collapsed. Chunks of rock as big as carts tumbled down all around the creature. It had done its own damage, leaving the cavern strongest where ponies were still fleeing. It would have to be enough.
The cavern fell in, crushing the demon Derek Ashsen under a mountain's worth of granite.
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So, are demons the original "natives" of the place which was carved by Alicorns into "Equus"? If that is the case, I can understand why they are pissed off.
Fffffff- dayum, to face a creature of the void and come out on top, twice, that takes extraordinary luck......which does not last forever sadly.
So many little hints of science and philosophical differences between worlds. Sad that we won't be getting more technical stuff, but the adventure sure is interesting
Horn? Teleporting?
Royal Canterlot Voice?
Is it thick enough to conceal her back completely?
I feel some kind of pity for Derek Ashsen and his like. Though you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped, and you can't help someone who's going to kill you the first chance they get.
11420699
Yeah, you and I are thinking on the same wavelength. She dreamed of alicornication.
No doubt "Derek" was sent back to Hell. If it comes back, Lilac will just do it again. Now is the time to deal with the Watcher though.
This thing certainly overstayed its welcome.
You have your part of Abaddon, we have ours.
11420641
In the end it's still all Abaddon though. But yeah, they're not happy some group of slightly more ordered "demons" set up shop and prettied up the place.
11420699
Time for a bath, Lilac. Let's see those pretty wings.
Lilac severing the connection seems to have broken the link she had to the umbrum. I hope that it stays dead and that Lilac didnt trap herself in a collapsed part of the mine.
11420735
From their perspective, it's like the neighborhood got gentrified and they got kicked out of their houses.
11420699
Slightly above that
She literally flew. She is 100% an Alicorn
11420641
When the Alicorns came perhaps they split all the order and light from all the dark turmoil and chaos, creating a schism where before there was a balance of sorts. Not a complete separation, but enough to create what is and isn't.
That was a good chapter.
11420793
Somehow I missed that one...
I do really like how it slowly drops hints to Lilac being an alicorn and she herself not having realised yet in the action.
11420641
These "demons" are natives of the Outer Darkness.
Beings that "lived" long before any of the universe's came into being through the actions of a Big Bang. Actually older than time, utterly horrified, and enraged at the mere existence of "Ordered Space". What we call "life" is utterly disgusting to them.
No way it's dead. Absolutely not. It'll come crawling out, barely breathing, and there'll be another confrontation. Right?
11420817
Seems more like they shaped the area to their brand of chaos (rules of physics, magic, etc.). Order and Light is less "messy" but still chaos all the same.
I think the "demons" are residents of alternate dimensions where the laws of physics work differently. There are hundreds of physical constants that need to be exactly right for a universe like ours to come into existence with suns, planets, and all sorts of other good things. Their world lacks these and they are jealous. Jealous enough to try to destroy it all.
Another great chapter. And as always, Derek's dialogue is interesting.
Is he dead? Perhaps... If not, Luna's on her way.
11421409
Remember what Derek said in his first appearance. The universe is balanced on a 'valence tightrope', and the demons are on the other side. I think they aren't from other dimensions, but rather the space between dimensions. They don't hail from other singularities, but rather the singularity that our universe (all universes?) split off from somehow. The big bang was unusual, and when the demons finally got in to break it up, humans made walled 'gardens' which behaved the same way, is my take...
Stolen light recaptured
Light is energy. The Unmade are angry that the creation of these worlds makes them lose energy - which considering the lore we know, that they hungrily consume all the magic they can... Implies that they're just in a state of constant starvation, and even the smallest amount of energy out of their reach is considered a travesty.
Swimming deep in the Sea of Dirac, huddling in collapsed vacuum, is it any wonder they loathe these lights that hang so high above them?
In any case, yeah, it definitely seems like Lilac is instinctively using some decidedly non-earth magic. She can react to that when she’s not struggling to survive.
Plot twist: Instead of the typical photogenic alicornification, she instead had wings like a fae and horn with a swept curve back, like Sombra but not glowing red and evil and stuff.
Breezycorn?
This was a good fight. The Horror was on a timer and it was clear that there was no fighting it, just surviving and waiting out the clock. Right up until the planet itself got the chance via Lilac to squash the thing.
I look forward to the aftermath.
Squish!