Thirty Minute Express Train to Story Town

by Predhack

The Dresses of Madness

Twilight jumped as the door to the library banged open and Rarity burst in. The fashionista pony was a mess, her mane was disheveled , she breathed heavily, her eyes were tired and red rimmed, lines of cloth were draped across her body that were shot through with lines where it had been cut torn and ripped.

“Twilight,” she panted, “Help… horror… attacking.”

“Rarity are you alright what’s going on,” Twilight asked.

Rarity’s response was overpowered by a horrifying scream from outside. As though a dozen pony voices were screaming for aid and being shouted down by the high pitched screams of some greater predator.

“What in the world? What is that thing?”

Rolling down the street outside the library was a beast, its house sized body a congeries of unnatural shapes, its mluti-colored skin undulated and shifted in and out of it as unseen forces within writhed and twisted, glittering eyes clung to the surface only to vanish as quickly they appeared. The hollow terrified voices of ponies murmured within the beasts groaning form accompanied by fluting pipe like tekili-li sounds.

“It got Sweetie and Opal, “ Rarity gasped out, “Twilight, are you still working with that parasprite the princess sent you?”

“What? Yes, but what?”

“Good, “ Rarity interrupted, “I need it and the notes you have for the spell for making them eat certain foods and you need to grab everything you need for your force field spell.”

“What? But Rarity,” Twilight started.

“No time to explain dear we have to move quickly. Every moment it feeds. It feeds and grows. If we don’t move quickly it will find us before we’re ready,” Rarity spoke in a voice of quiet desperation. She trotted in place eager to be moving.

“Alright, my things are in the basement. But the forcefield spell takes time to set up how’re we going to set it up?”

“We’re not doing it here darling we have to get to the park.”

Twilight rushed around her basement lab grabbing things and directing Rarity what to grab herself.

Rarity ran, the horror was after her. It had chased all the way from the Boutique. It lumbered slowly but with determination in Rarity’s direction, diverting only to capture ponies that got closer than her.

She chanced a glance over her shoulder and saw as a noose of rope fell over the leading of the horror.

“Settle down there partner. Rarity! What is that thing?” Applejack called, pulling the thing back with her lasso.

Rarity gasped in horror.

“Drop the rope! LET GO OF THE ROPE, APPLEJACK!”

Apple jack had time to give Rarity a confused look before the unpredictable form of the monstrosity changed, sliding jerkily out of the ropes grasp as little protuberances appeared and grabbed it. Applejack was reeled in screaming a dozen feet before she reflexively dropped the lasso for it to be slurped up like a soup noodle. The horror’s mass appeared to well up into a small mountain over the earth pony. Applejack had a single moment to scream before the beastly thing crashed down over her. There was a moment of stillness, and then the beast began to move again, with more vigor and kick in its movements. It’s first shaky lunge smashed into a building and as it pulled away nigh-invisible glistening threads attached to the building. An unlucky pony, thinking it saw a chance at freedom dashed for the opening, becoming entangled and pulled into the horrific thing, unable to do anything but scream.

Rarity watched on in horror, and turned to run again.

Twilight and Rarity ran through the streets of Ponyville, the monstrosity’s now elongated form following them as Rarity kept calling names out to, Sweetie, Applejack, Daisy, Roseluck, Matilda, and so on. Each of them a victim of the thing’s hunger, she explained. While they’d been in the library they had though they heard the crackling boom of Rainbow Dash hitting rainboom speeds but all that they saw as they left was that the beast had redoubled its speed, it’s flesh shifting colors more rapidly than before.

They’d been halfway to the park when Pinkie Pie called a greeting to them, bouncing on the thing like a trampoline, each bounce causing ripple to flow across the thing’s surface, retaliatory tendrils reaching out to grab where Pinkie had momentarily made contact. Several bounces later the beast stopped entirely and as Pinkie landed, instead of bouncing her legs sank into the thing, lines of flesh folding up around her and tying in a smooth knot above her. Horrifically, the thing flexed around the pony, her pony body visible shivering underneath the things flesh before sinking deeper into it. The beast now moved with great bounding leaps. It’s faint tekili-lis sounding disturbingly like gigglng now, along side the tortured screams and moans of ponies.

The pair dashed into the park now, dropping the reagents they had collected only for them to fall into Twilight’s magical grip as she arranged them with organized precision. Rarity scanned scrolls as she pulled a metal box with a padlock on it from her bags. The horror rushed into the park as Twilight finished her preparations. It extended into the air and appeared to wiggle, looking like nothing but a creature that had lost of its prey.

“Rarity, it’ll be inside the field before I can get the spell up,” she hissed as it lurched across the border of where the spell lines were.

“It’s supposed to be dear, now you get out and whatever you do don’t release the forcefield for anything,” Rarity told her, dropping the notes and stepping to the inside of the spell circle as far from the beast as she could get.

Twilight obediently stepped out as her horn lit up in preparation for the spell.

“But what-“

“No matter what, dear,” Rarity cut her off, pulling a final item from her bag, pillaged from one of the stores on the run to the park, Rarity reached out with her magic and pulled the tab on the top of the metal container.

The effect was immediate something deep in the creature lurched and oriented on the mare. Rarity shivered as the great and terrible thing began creeping toward her on horrid pseudopodia. Gritting her teeth she wrapped her magic on the tiny metal padlock on the fist tiny metal cage.

“OPAL DINNER TIME!” Rarity called, snapping open the lock on the cage and opening it to reveal a fuzzy blue creature with insect wings. Her horn glowed and she bowed her head to direct her magic into the stunned little creature.

The horror before her stopped in no way. Something within it letting loose a feral cry as the entire unknowable form of the thing leapt into the air to land within the circle and encompass Rarity. Instantly the forcefield went up and Twilight watched as the thing inside writhed around where Rarity had stood moments before. Then it began to move again, slamming against the walls of the field. Tiny glistening compound eyes pressed against the side, and Twilight imagined they looked into her soul before they slammed in the other direction.

“Rarity, you said I could help you today. I want to try and get my fashionista cutie mark!”

Rarity stopped and considered. It was true she had said something to Sweetie to that effect yesterday, and it wasn’t as though the dress she were working on anything difficult or pressing.

“Very well Sweetie, you can help me with these dresses. Just follow my instructions to the letter or I’ll just have to undo everything we’re working on and start over.”

Sweetie Belle cried with glee, and climbed up on a footstool to see what they were working on. The dress on the bench called for some interesting but easily reproduced designs in the dress. Rarity stopped working herself, and over the next half hour Rarity guided Sweetie Belle through the work before feeling confident Sweetie had it well in hoof, sitting there whistling a little tune to herself.

Rarity busied herself around with other parts of the dresses she was working on, becoming fully ensconced with her work. After an hour had passed she turned back to find that Sweetie had somehow sewn herself into a tight knot and was now picking the stitches out of sections of what she was working on and sewing them down in others. Rarity picked up a loose edge of the former dress and saw that the fabric had somehow blended with itself in places, like it had been rewoven together.

“Sweetie?” Rarity asked, in a dubious voice.

“One sec, Rarity,” Sweetie replied, literally wrestling a new section of the dress down into the an already overtightly packed section of dress.

Further attempts at communication were cut off as Rarity noticed a section of the horror of a dress had begun throwing pins off trying to relieve stress. She ducked under one such pin, then another, and another before the last pin cracked out and the section of dress billowed upward. Behind her Rarity heard a yowl of pain and turned to see that the last pin had hit Opalescence. The snoozing cat, turned and immediately leaped at the first moving thing it could see, the dress.

Claws shredded stitches, and yanked out pins, sections of dress whipped out and snapped taut around things in the workroom and pulled them in. At the center of the mass, the angry cat and young filly continued their campaigns against the offending dress. A shocked Rarity stepped back only to be caught in the wrapping of one of the other dresses she had been working on, snagged by the pin filled fabric of the dress, and was pulled in toward the monstrous mass of cloth that even Rarity could no longer consider a dress.

Desperately Rarity lashed out with her magic as the dress pulled her in. A flash of scissors and a tearing of fabric and she was free, though still wrapped in the remains of the dress she’d been wrapped up by. Around the room sections of Sweetie’s creation pulled more material into itself. At first more fabrics, and thread and such and even the furniture wasn’t safe.

Rarity did the only thing she could think of. She screamed. And horrifically the mass turned toward her.

“I have to admit Rarity, that’s a pretty crazy story,” Twilight said through the field, as parasprites continued swarming over the rags and gems that remained of the pony eating thing, that had been made up of everything in the boutique. Dozens of ponies and at least one cat sat in various states ranging from traumatized to confused to overjoyed. Pinkie Pie hadn’t stopped laughing since she was released, talking about how the thing wouldn’t stop tickling her and how it was great.

“I know dear but hopefully we can get this whole mess cleared up and everything back to normal soon,” Rarity agreed, “You did say you sent somepony for instruments to get rid of the parasprites right?”

Twilight nodded, and the girls settled in to talk while they waited for rescue to allow them to leave the forcefield.

Author's Note:

The Prompt: Rarity stops making a dress.

I would've SWORN this was the first story I did for the TMPS. Huh. Well I still liked this one when it was done.

For more on this prompt from other authors, go here.