A Skeleton in the Closet

by Epsilon-Delta

Darkest

Two left. No weapons remained. Just the lantern.

The night had deepened. Whereas DT had at least gotten a moon and stars, Gloria’s dream was a heavy overcast. Without the lantern, they’d be in absolute darkness.

Even that light felt in jeopardy, though Silver knew it couldn’t burn out. A soft rain fell from that gloomy sky, just enough to notice.

The world was far too quiet. What Silver Spoon wouldn’t give for a lone cricket on a night like this.

She held up a lantern to inspect what first appeared to be an empty field. It took one clue to realize where this was.

Tombstones. Everywhere. And a stone path beneath their hooves. Gloria reveled in it the moment she figured it out.

“Ah! The graveyard.” Gloria put a hoof on her chest and turned slowly in place, taking it all in. “I love this place! Why did it think bringing me here would be a nightmare?”

Silver Spoon had been here only a few times but began to recognize this as the Ponyville cemetery specifically. Gloria might be able to guide them through blindfolded.

“Are you sure there’s nothing in the graveyard that scares you?” Silver Spoon asked.

“Hm. No.” Gloria trotted down the path without a care. She didn’t even wait for Silver Spoon to bring the lantern forth, confidently striding into the pitch-black night. “The gate should be right up here. I feel the exit this way.”

Silver Spoon had to agree the dream demon was doing a terrible job right now. Its target was more relaxed than she’d been since it played its hand. She began walking backward, following Gloria’s hoofsteps, so that nothing could sneak up on them from either end.

She looked over to the graves, imagining the most cliché possible nightmare one could have here.

Burying the dead had been outlawed ages ago. It was too great a liability in these days plagued by undead. You had to burn the body within two days of death. The graves were all urns of ashes encased in cement to form a headstone. Nothing was buried below, though the idea still lingered in popular imagination.

While impossible in real life, a horde of undead could come clawing out of the ground at any moment in a dream. She made sure to glance left and right every so often, watching the ground.

Once Gloria stopped, Silver Spoon turned around to see the gate.

They found the gate locked to absurd proportions. Barbed chains wrapped around the gate so completely that one could barely see the actual bars that made it up. All that and just a single padlock.

Beyond the gate and the fence was Ponyville itself. The warm light of the houses invited them out of the cold graveyard.

Silver Spoon climbed onto Gloria's back briefly to confirm her theory. The gates magically rose when you did. There was no climbing.

“I don’t suppose you know where the caretaker keeps the keys?”

“I do, actually. I love helping out in this place. Making sure everything is exactly as it should be.” Gloria closed her eyes and smiled. “But I know where the key will actually be in this dream. I can feel it. It’s in my tomb.”

“Your tomb?”

“Oh, I guess I never brought you here, huh?” Gloria turned and began leading Silver Spoon down the path. Though it was too dark to see far, she seemed to know the way. “You remember when I got duskle lung in the 4th grade? That’s how I became psychic. I got sick enough for them to send me to hospice. My heart stopped for minutes at a time some days. They bought a tomb for me when I was still there. Dad said he felt like it was the best he could do for me. To be fair, all the other foals in my hospice didn’t survive to the end of the year. All my death-buddies went on without me.”

The rain was picking up, Silver Spoon was certain. It was too slow to notice from moment to moment, but it was heavier now. Gloria kept smiling, hardly caring.

“Isn’t that the most metal thing you’ve ever heard? I go down there all the time. It makes me feel so.” She closed her eyes and hummed. “I can’t describe it. I still have the urn they got for my ashes, too. Had to argue to get to keep it. It’s so pretty. My parents love me a lot.”

Then she was humming the tune of a popular song entitled Forever

They decided not to run, saving their energy for later. All the while, the storm continued to worsen.

It didn’t take long for them to reach Gloria’s tomb– like a large concrete coffin sticking out of the ground, a stone slab at its entrance. A statue of a much younger Gloria slept peacefully atop the threshold. By now, the rain had strengthened enough that Silver Spoon was glad to get out of it.

Gloria pushed open the door and went down the steep steps.

Silver Spoon joined her to find Gloria standing in a room much larger than this sort of tomb should be, one with winding paths leading in all directions. Gloria’s smile was gone.

“This isn’t my tomb.” Gloria spun around in place. Her breath grew short. “None of the decorations I put up are here!”

She took a trembling step back, then went down on her haunches. Having her sanctuary violated like this pulled the rug out from her confidence. She seemed lost completely in the darkness, struggling to know which way to go.

For a moment, Silver Spoon had forgotten Gloria was just a normal filly after all.

“This isn’t your actual tomb,” Silver Spoon tried to reassure her, hoping her guess was right. “The real one is fine. It’s just trying to mess with you.”

Gloria swallowed and nodded, trying to take solace in that fact.

Silver Spoon decided she’d have to take charge from here and took stock of the warped tomb.

Four halls led left and four right, then one going forward. The hallways continued long enough for the darkness to consume the lantern’s light so that Silver Spoon couldn’t see the end of any of them.

Each hallway, at its entrance, had a single portrait of a pony. One portrait was of Gloria herself. Silver Spoon assumed the rest were her family. They all looked like less grey variations of her.

These corresponded to the slots meant for each of her family’s cremation urns, she suspected.

“You said the key was somewhere down here,” Silver Spoon reminded her.

“But which path do I go down?” Gloria’s eyes turned to her hallway, then to one of an elderly mare’s. She didn’t look at any of the others.

It had to be one of those two.

“Which one would you least like to go down?” Silver Spoon asked.

Gloria kept her eyes on the path of the elderly mare long enough to confirm that was the correct choice even before she answered.

“My grandmother is the only one whose ashes are down here.” Gloria pointed down the hall. “I was supposed to be down here with her but–. It might be in that urn.”

Silver Spoon gave a nod and trotted down that hall, forcing Gloria to chase after her.

“Yeah,” Gloria regained some of her confidence. “I can feel it this way.”

More portraits punctuated the otherwise barren, stone hallway. The pictures of Gloria’s grandmother grew increasingly aged as they progressed. They faded into sepia tones, then small distortions began to appear until a brown blur consumed the whole of them.

“I change that photo every month,” Gloria complained. “And none of these are ones that I used!”

Silver Spoon had no idea why she was so hung up about these details when a demon was trying to kill her. It was rattling her cage, though, so the demon’s plan was working.

They crept through the dark until they got to a fork in the path. One continued down into endless darkness. But the hall to the left had an end to it, a light coming from the other side.

It gave the appearance of coming from behind a shut door. Just a thin crack of light at the end of the long, cavernous tunnel. Though the brightest light they’d seen in the cemetery nothing about it felt warm and inviting. It was a sickly light– the kind that illuminated murders in dank sheds off forgotten roads.

Silver Spoon would prefer to remain in the dark than to stand in that light.

Her instincts told her to not go that route, to snuff out the lantern and avoid the light however possible. She suspected her instincts were wrong. She first knelt to confirm something. The crack of light was broken. An object stood somewhere in that hall, blocking the light. Most likely, the urn in question.

Silver Spoon lifted the lantern, letting its light travel farther. About halfway down the hall, reflecting the red glow of the lantern, came the glint of something metal resting on top of the open urn. It had to be the key.

They nodded to each other and moved as silently as possible down the hall.

Holding the lantern up also revealed a portrait on the side of the wall. Nothing too unnerving. It depicted a leafless tree hanging off the side of a cliff above the sea, its roots sticking through the side of the cliff, leaning as though it were about to fall into the water.

More followed.

The next picture was of a wide, open field on an overly foggy night. It was empty save, far off in the distance, the obscured outline of a pony standing on a stump, staring sideways at the two fillies through the canvas.

There was something about this pony, its eyes were just tiny white circles in the blackness.

The third finally made them cringe.

The ‘portrait’ was of a horrifically disfigured pony, all of its fur and most of its skin missing.

It’s eyes and mouth were both wide open in an elated smile, though it had no eyes or teeth, just three huge black holes in place of each. A stream of blood ran out of each of those holes.

They shared a look, then turned to the fourth portrait and–

Silver Spoon withdrew the lantern so she could no longer see the portrait! She stumbled back, struggling to keep herself from vomiting, staggering until she hit the wall. The lantern fell to the ground despite herself.

Gloria dry heaved after collapsing onto the floor.

Silver Spoon took a deep breath to steady her nerves. It was all she could do to keep herself from shaking. Her vision blurred slightly and her head pounded.

She had to get that image out of her mind! She had to think of other things to occupy it if she was going to stay focused. She ran through her mental lists, all the proteins, all the chemicals on the periodic table, as many scientific names of animals as she could remember, until at last, it had been edged out.

Silver ran a hoof along Gloria’s back as she recovered more slowly.

That demon was getting too creative now. Silver Spoon doubted she could have come up with something so horrible if she put her mind to it for seventy-five years. Her only mercy was getting such a brief look at it. If she’d had the chance to study that for more than a second, it’d have scared itself into her brain forever.

Perhaps more worrying was the realization of how this hall worked. Each portrait was more horrible than the last. Already it was this bad and they weren’t even close to the end. There was still such a long, dark, and terrible way to that door.

Gloria swallowed and struggled back up to her feet. Silver might not be able to rely on her for much after this.

“I can get it,” Silver offered.

“It should be me.” Gloria moved ahead of her, exceeding Silver’s expectations. “But leave the lantern back there. And watch my back.”

Having seen that last picture, Silver Spoon understood the preference for darkness. She set the lantern down just far away enough that the glint of the key but nothing else could be seen. Gloria crouched down and crawled in its direction as Silver Spoon watched the hallways they just came from.

Too much time passed listening only to her quiet hoofsteps. At least she was moving.

The hoofsteps stopped for a moment. Then Silver Spoon heard a less welcome sound behind her. A creak.

She turned her head to witness it. The door finally opened, the crack becoming a hole, then from the hole a silhouette.

Gloria fell to her haunches, gaping at the figure emerging from that light.

“Gloria!” Silver Spoon hissed at her.

No response. She had no choice now, the thing was beginning to crawl and wretch its way toward them. Silently, slowly, almost imperceptibly, but steadily it got ever closer.

Silver Spoon ran forward and grabbed Gloria’s withers. She turned to Silver Spoon as if remembering herself. The key was in her mouth, and she managed to give a nod.

They ran!

They reached the fork. Gloria glanced at the untaken path and pointed down it in horror. Silver turned to see the shadow of the figure now down that hall, moving with the same steady crawl but closer than before.

Was this like a psycho zombie? Able to teleport behind you whenever you weren’t looking?

She’d know soon enough!

They galloped back down the hall and into the first room. As they skidded to a halt, they saw the figure. This time, now half the distance away. Silver Spoon could almost make it out now – like a pony covered in ragged clothes, its joints twisting at unnatural angles as it crawled towards them.

It had a sort of black aura around it, one Gloria regarded with too much horror. They saw rotting zombies every day and were numb to such things. It must have appeared as something far more horrible to her ESP.

“Maybe it’s like a psycho zombie and can only move fast when we’re not looking.” Silver Spoon stopped at the bottom of the stairs, staring it down as it drew nearer. “You go ahead. I’ll watch.”

Gloria sped up the stairs before making a yelp. The creature vanished before Silver Spoon’s eyes, destroying her theory.

“It’s no good!” Gloria called down after her.

Silver followed her up to the surface. Outside the drizzle had become a flood. A stream of shallow water ran down the stone paths outside. The earth off the path looked no longer solid, the kind of mud you could sink into down to the barrel.

The rain came down heavy in thick waves launched by a strong wind but even between the sheets the rain still poured.

As if it had been waiting for them, a blast of lightning struck somewhere outside the cemetery. All the lights in the surrounding dream town turned off at once. Only the light of the lantern and the flashes of thunderbolts lit the world now.

Worst of all, the flash revealed the figure to them once again, closer than ever standing amongst the graves.

Gloria stared at it with eyes wide. She shook her head.

“It’s not far to the gate!” Silver gave her another push.

They ran once again, the wind blowing fiercely against them this time. The path, Silver Spoon knew, was stretching out before them. The graves grew further apart. By the time the fork was in sight, they’d ran ten times the distance to get here.

The creature was once again closer to them, now further down the stone path, they were running towards. But it was still so far off they could likely reach the fork and turn long before it intercepted them.

They drew close enough that Silver Spoon could have made out the things face if she wanted to. But she spared herself a close inspection just in case she saw what Gloria did.

They made a sharp turn on the path. Another flash of lightning revealed it closer still to their left, then even closer to their right. The gate would be in sight at any moment!

Then the stone walkway crumbled beneath their hooves like rotted-out floorboards!

At first, it was just enough for one or two legs each to fall through and get stuck, but then the entire path shattered. Breaking away revealed a tunnel covered up until this moment.

And at the end of that tunnel, closer than ever before, was the creature. Silver Spoon could see its rotting corpse of a body, covered in scraps that mangled their way into its flesh. That gurgling, drowning noise it made couldn’t be ignored.

Where to go now? The ground to their left and right had become far too flooded. One step in there and you’d never get your hoof back.

“We’ll have to jump on the tombstones!” Silver Spoon could think of no other way. “It’ll be just like in CT today.”

Gloria’s petrification turned to panic and she charged ahead, jumping onto the nearest one with too much bravado. Silver Spoon followed close behind.

They were solid enough, but the rain made her stumble and need to cling to each one before making the next jump. It was good they practiced something like this earlier.

After just two hops, the ground began to lurch and the tombstones shifted in place. This may have backfired on the dream demon, as they could now jump on the wider parts of the headstones. But they wouldn’t have long before those sunk away.

Lightning flashed rapidly and with each one, the monster stood closer.

But then, at last, one flash revealed the gate! They were almost there!

They both made what they thought would be the final jump, only for the ground to rumble. A wave of tombstones and mud rose from the ground between them and their target, creating a wall of stone slabs.

Both of them attempted to run up the wall as they landed. The mud and rain were so much that Silver Spoon could hardly blame Gloria for slipping.

Silver Spoon slid down the wall, managing to shove a rear hoof into a crack.

“Gloria!” Silver Spoon reached out.

Gloria had already sunken halfway into the mud. Though she flailed about, she only sunk deeper. She gagged for air as the mud worked its way into her throat.

Silver Spoon needed to stretch herself even further to have any hope of reaching her.

“Grab on!”

Gloria gasped and struggled just to breathe. She saw the monster moving across the mud without any trouble, now closer than ever before.

“You can’t see it like I do!” Gloria cried.

“We can stop seeing it once we’re out! Grab on!”

“What’s the point in running?!” Gloria pinned her ears and covered them with her hooves. “It gets closer no matter what I do!”

“Because you can still get somewhere else!”

Gloria gave her a look, snapping back to her senses once more. Gloria just barely managed to get her one hoof into Silver’s. Silver pulled with all her might, gaining mere inches of freedom. Gloria finally gained some traction when she freed up her other hoof, moving up the makeshift ramp. Gloria was moving out of the mud ever so slowly.

Though she’d managed to keep them on through all previous acrobatics, being soaked amongst such terrible wind finally got the better of Silver Spoon. Her glasses fell off her muzzle, past Gloria, and into the mud.

“My glasses!” Silver Spoon couldn’t even reach after them as they fell into the mud. She needed both hooves to hold onto Gloria.

She did manage to get Gloria out of the pit. This time, they managed to scale the wall successfully. Silver turned back to see if her glasses were at all salvageable. They’d already sunk into the mud by then.

On the other side, the gate was still visible. But the monster was at the bottom of the wall, gargling and reaching up for them. Now Silver Spoon’s vision was too bad to make it out properly.

Gloria closed her eyes, and with no other option, jumped over the monster.

She landed right in front of the gate. She fumbled with the key. She got it in the padlock. All the while, the rotting monster came within just a few feet of them. Silver Spoon stood between the two of them, ready to act as Gloria’s shield in the last few seconds.

A heavy thunk sounded from the gate. All those massive chains fell apart at once, raining to the ground in a pile. Gloria shoved the gate open. Then the creature disappeared from in front of Silver Spoon.

One last burst of lightning revealed the creature no more than a foot away from Gloria!

It reached its cold, withering hoof out to touch Gloria, a touch any pony would instinctually know meant certain death.

Gloria stepped back but somehow that drew it only closer.

Silver Spoon grabbed Gloria and physically spun her around. This forced the monster to teleport inside the graveyard. With the path clear, Silver Spoon shoved Gloria backwards out the gate. She and the creature lurched forward as one before the nightmare shattered.

Only one left.

Now Silver Spoon was truly alone.

Now she could die.

---

True to the demon’s promise, the rain had given way to snow. The world was getting ever colder. Silver’s autumn fur wouldn’t protect her for long.

She was in Ponyville but in absolute darkness. The snow came down thick but straight, devoid of even the slightest wind.

Snow dampened sound. It left the world so deafly silent that you’d be forgiven for thinking you could hear a pin drop. That wasn’t the case at all. In such heavy snow, you could hardly hear anything more than a few steps away.

No, this was true silence and true darkness. The kind that couldn’t be so easily penetrated by light or sound. Even if the crickets returned or the lights came back, it would all be consumed by this void.

Her breath was about all she could see or hear. Even that bit of mist was blurred without her glasses.

It took a few steps to realize she stood in the middle of the street. There were shadows of houses on either side, houses she recognized from the block down from her own. She continued onwards, disinterested in any of them.

Muffled hoofsteps in the snow. The shadowy suggestion of buildings across the street. The only things in the world for now.

“Looks like I’m three for three,” Silver called out to the demon. Her voice didn’t get far.

Most likely it was only her imagination, but she could almost hear the silence answer her, reminding her that she was all alone this time.

“Did it look like I needed the others in the last three?” Silver Spoon asked. “I carried them over the finish line. Now I don’t have anypony weighing me down!”

The world answered with profound silence.

“Oh, so now you shut up?” Silver sighed.

Maybe it was trying to get her with extreme isolation or something. The joke was on it, as Silver Spoon knew for a fact she could sit around doing nothing for days and be perfectly fine. Such sloth was ever the dream.

There was no immediate danger. She took her time.

First, she tried leaving town entirely. From the north edge of town, she could see the southern edge of it – the school standing where it shouldn’t. So that was no good. It was like she got put on a tiny planet with only this silent Ponyville.

She thought instead of possible sanctuaries, forced to admit Gloria would have been useful right about now. One idea came to mind, given the lonely nature of this place. But that idea suggested it might just be impossible to escape.

Silver Spoon followed the tram tracks toward her own home.

The ‘industrial’ section, as those who lived outside called it, looked out of place with the rest of town. Three massive apartment buildings stood six stories tall each, with smooth glassy fronts and backsides a jumbled mess of balconies and staircases. They were absolute giants in a farming town of single-family homes.

After the war, refugees poured out of Manehattan, many of them coming here for whatever reason. This included her grandparents. Silver supposed her people preferred living on top of one another, as they built up this one little corner of the town rather than spread out.

Her home probably wasn’t her sanctuary if there was one. Instead, she went up the steep hill just next to it, toward the rich part of town.

Diamond Tiara’s home was just at the top of the hill. They could even see one another’s bedrooms through their respective windows. When they were much younger, they’d talk about making a zip line or slide to connect the two. Instead, Silver would climb to the roof and talk to Diamond on the phone from there.

It’d already been so long by the time Silver Spoon reached the front gate that she wondered if there’d even be a monster this time. But then what? It wasn’t cold enough for her to freeze if she went inside a house. Was it going to trap her here for what seemed like months hoping she’d kill herself? Could it distort time that much?

“How long would I last?” Silver Spoon asked herself.

Silver went into the house– darker than normal but the same as ever. Well, the mirrors had all been removed, the clocks broken, and the books were blank sheets of paper. But other than that, little difference.

Eventually, she reached DT’s bedroom, foam roll and all. She lay down in the same spot she’d gone to sleep, and everything came full circle.

But the nightmare didn’t end. The world remained one of perfect silence. The snow continued to fall.

Warm enough, Silver trotted to a window and peered out at it, down into the streets. Something had to happen eventually. The dream demon would come and reveal its hand. Then maybe Silver would know what to do.

The only alternative was to sit here and wade through the river of time until Diamond Tiara pulled her out.

Too much time passed. Enough that Silver Spoon couldn’t possibly guess how long it’d been.

She had a strategy for times like these. When she was young, Silver helped herself get to sleep by listening to the first chapter of an audiobook The Hatter’s Birthday. It was a favorite not because it was good, but because she’d heard it a million times when she was young.

She’d listened to it so many times she knew the first chapter word for word. That chapter took fifteen minutes to get through. By repeating it, she could keep herself tethered to time. That alone might be the difference between sanity and death in a place like this.

She went through it once all the way through, watching the street outside the house, watching behind herself, keeping her ears perked up.

Nothing.

She went through it another four times in a row. Absolute silence and darkness cloaked her.

It looked to be about the three-hour mark, by her estimation, that something finally happened.

Part of her was relieved to see something at long last. She wondered if that was part of the plan. Eventually, she’d be relieved enough by this monster coming to kill her that it would seem tempting to just lie down and let it.

Given how long it waited before coming to her, she knew it to be a harbinger of just how long it would really take for those outside the dream to wake her up. Silver Spoon realized she may very well be here for days at the least, alone with that demon. She could only hope this was a matter of propriety more than confidence. The latter meant certain death for her.

She saw nothing more than a black shadow moving outside. It walked at a leisurely pace toward the door.

She could see nothing of its body beneath that cloak, but the footprints it left in the snow looked more like somepony had been furiously stabbing at it with a knife than anything an animal would leave.

Eventually, it disappeared.

Silver Spoon had long since thought of her game plan. Once it got to the top of the stairs, she’d jump out the window, then roll down the steep hill back towards her own home.

At last, it came. Sound.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

It was a gentle, polite knock. In this world, even the tiniest bit of noise carried a deathly weight. Silver Spoon ignored it, keeping her eyes on the falling snow outside.

Thump! Thump!

Now the knocking shook the house and rattled the hinges of the doors and windows.

Still, she ignored it.

Then, a wicked screeching noise, like claws ripping wood to shreds. She heard a thud downstairs, the door falling to pieces. Even from up here, she could hear heavy hoofsteps below. Something else, too, little taps, like pins and needles but in auditory form.

They moved to the stairs. She counted the steps until it was halfway up.

Silver Spoon put both forehooves on the window and tried to lift it, only to find that it’d suddenly become bolted shut!

“Seriously?” Silver grunted and turned to run.

Plan B was to smash through the huge window in the next room over. That likely meant getting a bit too close.

She rushed out the door, putting the demon in plain sight, or at least what little of it she could see beneath that hulking cloak.

An invisible wave surrounded the dream demon. Holes, as though created with a knife, appeared on the walls, floors, and ceilings all around it as it moved steadily toward Silver Spoon.

She rolled diagonally through the small hallways and into the room across, narrowly avoiding the stabs as they drew near. She flipped a cabinet in its way as she continued onward, hearing the chopping of it being carved to pieces behind her.

Finally, the huge windows were in front of her. Without slowing down, she slammed the edge of the lantern into it, shattering the whole thing precisely as she’d been taught in school. She gave a leap through the hole and onto the balcony. Then a second towards the ground.

Then she felt a sharp pain in her thigh!

The glass? No, she knew she’d done it correctly. Silver turned back to see the creature standing on the balcony, slowly being torn to bits by stabs, and realized it’d gotten her.

A stab in her thigh was no coincidence, either. It meant she wouldn’t feel it if the ponies outside managed to inject her and there with the adrenaline.

Silver Spoon cursed and rolled down the hill.

She looked back up. The snow was even heavier now and she couldn’t see it, but she knew that thing was standing up there on the balcony, looking down at her. Or perhaps it was already slowly walking back downstairs.

A shudder ran through her, not from fear but from the sheer cold. It had gotten much colder than before.

Silver Spoon gripped the lantern hard in her mouth. The monster wasn’t what it intended to kill her with. It wanted to freeze her. It would keep getting colder until she died.

Silver needed to find some way to stay warm for as long as possible.

She turned back, intending to go inside her apartment building. But instead of being right at the bottom of the hill, it was across a short field.

The buildings were getting further away from one another, too.

But what could she do but run out the clock at this point?

She ran across the field and into the empty apartment building. Normally, she’d kill for the place to be silent but not tonight.

She scoured the place, looking for any clothes she could find to bundle up for later, to drag her life on as long as possible, however far away safety might be.

---

A pattern began to emerge.

Silver Spoon would go into a house and huddle up trying to get warm. She was given an increasingly long period to stay ‘safe’ each time. Three hours, then six, then fifteen, then twenty-two.

But always, a knock came from whatever house she hid in. Always the monster came inside and forced her to flee.

Always she’d go outside to find the world in worse condition, always colder, the buildings farther away, the snow higher and more difficult to run through.

She wasn’t sure if her clothes would be enough to save her much longer. She still had the lantern and was seriously considering burning the next house down.

Even with an army of scarves, five layers of coats, and as many socks, plus the warmest boots she owned, the cold still burned her. It really was like it looped back around to become fire. That nicked her at any time she exposed herself to the air.

This time had been the worst of all. The interior of the buildings had begun to degrade.

The roof somehow malfunctioned. Snow fell straight through it and began pilling up on the floor as though it was never there, to begin with.

Silver Spoon once more went through the beds and closets of this newest house. Some cloth was about, but it was all moth-eaten to barely more than a few ragged threads as though rapid decay had overtaken this place.

She wouldn’t be finding any more. Nor any blankets this time.

Instead, she sandwiched herself between two mattresses and waited.

Silver Spoon liked to think most ponies wouldn’t have held out even this long. It was well into the third day of perceived time she’d been stuck here, half of it spent huddled under this blanket. She didn’t need sleep or food. Only cold could kill her. Cold and that monster.

She’d spent almost an entire day lying here in the dark, listening for another knock, seeing nothing but darkness, hearing nothing but her own breath. She started to imagine she could hear the snow hitting the ground it was so quiet.

Her only tether to sanity was that old fairytale audiobook. She only had the first chapter memorized, but amused herself by trying to recreate it as near as possible in her mind.

Yet she could never truly relax. The windows or door could open at any one of the relentless hours she had before her.

All the while, the outside got colder. The temptation to stand up and trot around for a moment was a deadly one. She might lose too much warmth in the attempt.

How many could hold against this freezing void with no end in sight? For all Silver knew, only a single second had passed in the outside world. What if each second seemed an entire day? Buying her friends a single minute could mean holding out for two months for all she knew. If they needed five or six, could she be stuck here for an entire year?

The hope seemed so weak and distant. The cut on her leg never healed, meaning she’d never feel the prick of the adrenaline injection. She had no idea if the other had even begun to help.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Silver’s ears perked up. Had it made a mistake?!

She calculated that it’d been twenty-one hours, less than the last time. That clearly violated its pattern.

Was it shaking things up hoping that would drive her made faster? Or was it worried about something? How far could it even stray from its script? Most ponies wouldn’t have been able to tell this time had been shorter than the last.

Thump. Thump

Maybe Silver Spoon’s mind was getting overly analytical toward the end. It didn’t change her course much either way.

The door shattered downstairs and Silver Spoon stood up.

The cold!

It had gotten so much worse than before! Even with her boots on, each step was painful.

She shattered a window, making sure since the first time to always be near one she could break and jumped outside.

Outside she encountered something she’d been dreading since getting here.

Wind.

Just that slight breeze might as well have been daggers pressed against her. It made surviving the cold so much more difficult. And it blew from the direction of the nearest house– now several miles away at the least.

This was it! She had a tiny chance of making it there alive.

Silver held up the flickering lantern to see rolling hills of snow before her.

Hopeless… it really seemed hopeless. She had two hopeless options. Break the lantern and start a fire, or try to charge through those endless hills.

She took a step forward. The wind picked up into a painful gale that forced her back. The monster appeared, cutting up the walls to the right.

Mistake!

Silver Spoon smiled.

It’d never come at her this fast before. It’d never escalated the snow and cold this much in one round.

“You’re–” Silver had to force her lips apart. They’d nearly frozen together. “You’re running out of time, aren’t you?”

Her decision was clear. She would trust Diamond Tiara. Her friend was close!

Silver Spoon smashed the lantern into the house, setting it on fire. The demon knew its game was up and charged toward her.

Comments

[Griseus]

Silver's nightmare is a great setting.

[equestrian.sen]

Well, that was horrifying. I thought Diamond had it rough, but my god does Gloria deserve a hug.

[Jello swingsets]

Oh my gosh, I love how you write horror! Silver's nightmare is so desolate. When she is so much more capable than her friends, she has no one to rely on. She's alone...

Amazing chapter as always!