Chapter 1: Impact

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It was hungry. Hungry for something more, someone more. It desired to feed on anything. The never-ending hunger that could never be satisfied for very long, only for a time. It was waiting right where it was last placed, a grave. The sentience of it was questionable, but what wasn’t was the fact that even without a physical mind it could think. It knew what it wanted, and it wouldn’t stop until it attained it. It was ruthless.

It could detect other living beings near it, and it lapped hungrily at their very beings. It could feel them recoil when its dark essence neared them. The ones with the strongest connection to the ethereal essence that surrounded all had the strongest reactions. As if they could tell just how wrong and unnatural it was by just being anywhere near it. It pulled back its essence, not wanting to scare off those who could help it, feed it.

As it felt itself being pulled out from its coffin it noticed very few living beings were near it now, compared to before. It was being held in some metal contraption that could best be described as a claw. It felt one of the few remaining beings approach it only to be swiftly pulled back by one of the other beings. These beings seemed dead set on acquiring it and then getting it away from them, not even letting anything touch it. It felt itself being put into a new place, surrounded by a few inanimate objects. It didn’t react, didn’t move, it simply waited for something to take it. It waited for what it knew had to be coming very soon. Its next meal.

Rarity awoke with a start. A loud banging making itself known coming from the direction of Carousel Boutique’s front door. “Ugh,” she groaned with slight irritation in her voice. “Coming darling!” she exclaimed with a slight slur to her words. As she dizzily started to get up Rarity realized that she was not in fact sleeping soundly in her bed as she first thought, but was in fact splayed out on the floor right by one of her mannequins. Said mannequin having only two pieces of fabric crudely laid on it, and a few sketches of dress designs messily strewn about the floor under and to the left of Rarity.

“Huh, I must have fallen asleep in the process of making this dress,” she mused. “I guess I was bound to lose steam after three straight nights of this.” For the past three days now, Rarity had worked all through the day and all through the night. Each time swearing to herself that she wouldn’t do it the next night. However, she continued, desperate to finish her most recent and very important order. Fancy Pants had ordered fifteen dresses and suits for a party he was hosting soon. He wanted these clothes to be able to give them out to those who wanted to attend but didn’t have the proper attire and so felt like they couldn’t attend. He wanted to make sure the burden wasn’t too much on Rarity, but she insisted she’d get them done within two weeks. So, Fancy Pants placed his order and set his party for the day after the two weeks Rarity was going to take to make the garments.

Rarity was pretty sure that she could’ve gotten the order done in time if the gems she ordered arrived on time, like always. Except this time the gems had not arrived on time, in fact they were extremely late. So, she waited for them only for it to dawn on her that a week had gone by. She then scrambled to get the order done without the gems she designed the dresses around and on time, not wanting to disappoint Fancy Pants. Which led her to here, forgoing three days of sleep to try and get the order done.

The knocking increased in intensity, which did not help Rarity’s splitting headache in the slightest. “Coming I said!” Rarity yelled, in what she hoped sounded like a genuinely cheerful tone. As Rarity made her way to the noisy door she stopped dead in her tracks and gasped. The thought just hit her of how atrocious her mane must be and how smeared her makeup must look. As she quickly looked around the Carousel Boutique she saw that it was in no better shape than she was.

With a quick use of her magic she tried her very best to clean up Carousel Boutique, which would best be described as looking like Rainbow Dash had tried a new trick entirely located inside the boutique. Then with another quick use of her magic she sound proofed the entire boutique, in an attempt to block out the increasingly annoying and loud knocking. She did not want the knocking to wake up Sweetie Belle who had just come back from a weeklong sleepover at Applejack’s with the rest of the CMC, who she doubted got any real sleep all week.

Speaking of Applejack, she and the rest of Rarity’s friends were a bit worried about Rarity taking such a big order, and trying to complete it in only a week after the first week was wasted waiting for gems. However, Rarity assured them that everything was fine, to which her friends agreed to back off as long as she took a break for her own health and joined them for a picnic tomorrow.

With another use of her magic Rarity summoned a hoof held mirror from her room and looked at her reflection. She surmised the damage and quickly fixed up her mane and makeup with some more magic. Then with one final use of her light azure magic she put away her mirror and beauty supplies and opened up the front door.

To which Rarity was met with a very fretful looking mail mare. “Derpy? Dear, you look absolutely dreadful. What happened?” Rarity asked. Derpy looked completely stressed out and her mane was all frazzled.

“Hello miss Rarity,” Derpy replied, “I have a package for you.”

“Oh, you do Darling? Where is it?” Rarity said back with confusion as she looked all around Derpy and saw no package on or near her.

“Well that’s a little bit of a funny story,” Derpy quietly replied looking absolutely crestfallen. At the sight of this Rarity felt the last bit of her irritation melt away, feeling quite sorry for whatever happened to the light gray pegasus.

“Oh?” Rarity hesitantly asked.

“Yeah, well a package came in for you today at the post office from a Fine Stone. It was marked as being ready for delivery about a week ago, but for some reason it only arrived today.” Derpy said quickly. ‘Ah, Fine Stone’ Rarity thought. He was one of her major gem suppliers for exotic gems that couldn’t be found anywhere nearby. ‘So that must be those gems I ordered, but why was he so late this time? Usually he’s always on time with his deliveries.’

“Anyway,” Derpy continued, “I went to grab the package, as you were marked as a part of my route today, but it felt weird.”

“Weird?” Rarity asked with some confusion. Derpy just replied by shaking her head up and down.

“It was also really heavy,” She said, “I was running a bit late and so nopony else was there to help me lift it. I make a point to never be late delivering a package, letter, or anything else. So, I hurried here to let you know before I started on the rest of my route. I’m really sorry!”

‘Poor dear,’ Rarity thought, ‘She must be driving herself crazy with worry.’ “It’s okay Derpy, I’ll just go down to the post office and get the package myself.” Rarity consoled.

“Really?” Derpy asked with a mixture of surprise and sadness, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t even start Darling, it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m certain.”

“Okay then miss Rarity, again I'm really sorry.”

“It’s fine I assure you Derpy. You’re fine.”

“Alright, well I have to be on my way and start my route,” Derpy explained as she started to take off, “Once you get to the office just go through the back door, I left it unlocked for you.” And with that she was gone.

Rarity questioned the idea of just leaving the back door of the post office unlocked for anypony to practically just waltz in and take whatever they wanted, but she brushed it off not thinking that anypony in Ponyville would do that. She then locked up Carousel Boutique, hoping that Sweetie was not awoken by all the noise. ‘I really need to get some rest after this,’ she sleepily thought. She then tiredly started her way towards the post office.

As she walked through the streets of Ponyville she noted a few strange things. For one, it was mid-day, meaning Rarity and Sweetie had both overslept. ‘At least it’s summer break, so Sweetie won’t be missing any days of school.’ Rarity reasoned. Second, there seemed to be a severe lack of Unicorns out and about today. The only few who were actually out seemed to be very uncomfortable for some reason. Third, Rarity didn’t feel right. She felt like she was being watched and that something was wrong. She just felt off, especially as she drew closer to the post office. However, she just chalked it up to her extreme dreariness due to the lack of sleep she’s had.

As she continued on her way she was greeted by a few denizens of Ponyville. She greeted them back, but she quickened her pace as she was in no mood to chat. All she wanted to do was just get her package at the post office and get back to her home. One of the very few unicorns out, Lyra Heartstrings, tried to flag down and ask Rarity if she could place an order to have a hat of her's fixed. Rarity, already on edge and having Fancy Pants’s order to finish, quickly and curtly shut Lyra down and told her to ask her another time. Lyra was disappointed but understood. She wished Rarity a good day and left Rarity to her business.

Rarity was so distracted by Lyra that she didn’t even realize that she had almost made it to the post office. She quickly made her way there and went through the back door Derpy had unlocked for her. That’s when it hit her, just how wrong this place was. It just felt so off and to some degree unnatural.

“Just calm down Rarity, get your package and get out,” spoke Rarity nervously, “It’s just your weariness. I mean you’re talking to yourself out loud; you clearly aren't in the best of conditions.” Rarity proceeded to make her way around the post office, looking for her package. Derpy never specified where it was so Rarity was just searching blindly. But as she searched, she felt a wave of that wrongness wash over her.

At this point she was so aggravated, at not being able to find her package, and tired, due to lack of sleep, that she just chose to follow that feeling of wrongness hoping that it would lead her to her package. And it actually did, it led her straight there surprisingly enough. She didn’t care how wrong her package for some reason felt, she just wanted to grab it and get back to the Carousel Boutique. Heeding what Derpy said about the package’s weight she chose to lift and levitate the package with her magic. Instantly the feeling of wrongness tripled before immediately lessening to almost none. It was still there, but very small. Rarity thought nothing of it, again chalking it up to her fatigue.

Even lifting the package with her magic it was still quite heavy. ‘It’s just a box full of the gems I ordered, why is it so heavy.’ she pondered, ‘Did I really become that magically weak from my lack of sleep and continuous work?’ It was a question for another time, because for right now all Rarity wanted to do was get home. She carried the box outside and promptly shut the post office’s back door behind her. She was intent on making her way home and fast.

However, as she was making her way away from the post office she saw a brown unicorn stallion she didn’t know. With how heavy the box was in her magical grip combined with the exhaustion that was plaguing her, she thought it best to ask for his help. “Hey! Excuse me sir!” she proceeded to call out to him. He looked over her way and began to approach.

“Thank you darling,” She began to say in a friendly tone, “Can you help me? This box I have here is a bit too heavy for me right now, and I was hoping you could help-” but before she could even finish her sentence the stallion stopped just a little ways away from her.

“No…” he uttered, fear evident in his voice. His eyes shrinking to pinpricks.

“Excuse me darling?” Rarity asked, extremely confused and a bit offended. ‘Do I still really look that bad? Derpy and Lyra both didn’t say anything though.’ She thought. The stallion then turned tail and ran in the opposite direction from Rarity.

“Wait, come back!” she yelled, “I just want some help carrying this pac- oh nevermind.” With the stallion completely out of sight the rest of Rarity’s words died in her throat. She grumbled to herself as she sulkily continued to make her way back to the Carousel Boutique. Her mood sufficiently soured by that stallion. All she could say about the stallion was one thing. And Rarity decided to vocalize this one thing aloud, so if anypony was listening to her they would know her thoughts on the matter exactly.

And so she said, “How rude.”

As Rarity finally got to the front door of Carousel Boutique she let out a sigh of relief. She had finally made it home. All she needed to do now was make sure her package’s contents were all there, quickly clean up the Boutique a bit more thoroughly then she did earlier and check up on Sweetie Belle. After that she could finally get some much-needed rest. She’d continue working on Fancy Pants’s order later, and now with her gems having arrived she could give the garments some much needed pizzazz.

She put down the heavy package, setting it next to her and poofed her keys into her magical grip. As soon as she let go of the box she instantly felt lighter, like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She started to get nervous, thinking perhaps the wrongness she’s been feeling was not due to her fatigue. ‘But that’s crazy, it’s just a box full of gems I ordered! There’s nothing wrong with it. It must be my exhaustion…’ Rarity thought nervously, ‘It just has to be. Well, maybe to be safe I’ll ask Twilight to come over later and examine the gems. She’ll probably find nothing, and I won’t feel anything after resting. But just to be safe I’ll ask her.’

With that final thought Rarity unlocked Carousel Boutique’s front door, picked up her package, and stepped inside. After locking the door back up, making sure her sign said closed, and levitating her package over to a small table off to the side of the main foyer, she sat down. She was just so glad to be home, although everything was strangely quiet. It was dead silent, unnaturally so.

“Oh right,” Rarity spoke aloud, “I sound proofed everything earlier.” She tried to disperse the magic but to no avail. Annoyed, she tried again but stopped. ‘Wait a second, if I leave it sound proofed then Sweetie and I will get a better sleep. With no noise to disturb us we’ll get peaceful and long rests.’ Rarity pondered. It made sense to her that she was too magically weak from her fatigue to be able to stop the spell right now. She’d just use it to her advantage for now and disperse it later after she had rested.

“Alright then, time to fix up this boutique,” Rarity said. She proceeded to use the last vestiges of her magical strength to go from room to room fixing everything up. She tried her best to make everything look nice and to her standards of quality again. All the while unconsciously avoiding the ominous package.

‘Kitchen? Check! Showroom? Check! Stairs? Check! Work Room? Check! Displays? Check!’ Rarity thought, ‘All that’s left to do is open that package and check on Sweetie.’ And so, Rarity started to cautiously make her way to the box. She had made herself paranoid with all her worrying about the package possibly containing something malicious. But the rational part of her brain told her it was a ridiculous thought. Still though, by the time she made it to the package ready to open it she was practically shaking.

“Clam down Rarity, it’s just a box of gems,” she said shakily aloud. ‘What’s come over you? It’s just a box of gems, there’s nothing bad inside,’ she fearfully thought, ‘just calm down, calm down.’ She breathed in, then out. Slowly, but surely calming herself down. A little voice in the back of her head kept saying, ‘this is a bad idea, there is something wrong with that package!’ She brushed it off, the logical part of her brain telling her that nothing is wrong with the package. After all it was just gems, and besides she was going to ask Twilight to come over and check out the gems after her rest. Everything was fine.

So, with some apprehension she opened her package only to find…

“Gems. Just gems, the ones I ordered from Fine Stone’s cataloage.” Rarity said with relief. Just as she kept telling herself it was just some gems. Nothing but what she expected, nothing wrong with them. In fact, that weird and wrong feeling she’d been getting had almost completely disappeared. ‘I knew it was just my weariness, and probably some anxiety too.’ She casually thought to herself.

Rarity looked over the gems and saw it as she suspected. She saw a total of twelve gems, the twelve she had originally designed some of Fancy Pants’s garments around. However, something struck her as odd. For some reason one gem was wrapped individually in a layer of tan cloth. It was quite big too, about the size of her hoof. She swiftly unwrapped it with a light flick of her depleted magic. It was black, with a swirled misty looking center. It was oval shaped and extremely smooth, almost as if somepony had personally taken very good care of it. It looked shiny and polished too. Fine Stone’s gems were always nice, but not this nice.

It was…

“Beautiful!” Rarity squealed with excitement. Only to remember Sweetie and immediately quiet down. ‘Oh it looks so good!’ She thought, ‘No wonder this order took so long to get here. Fine Stone must have personally cared for this gem to give it to me as a thanks for being a very regular customer. I’ll have to remember to write him a thank you note and give him some extra bits for this.’

She couldn’t even begin to imagine all the clothes this gem would go with. Right now though she just grabbed it in her magic and inspected it a bit closer. She for whatever reason started to feel as though the gem was giving her magical feedback. She however, just chalked it up to tiredness completely sure now that these gems held no dark secret. She knew she was just being ridiculous earlier with all her paranoia. Her cat, Opal, however clearly didn’t think so. Who up till now was peacefully resting under some curtains this whole time. But as Rarity inspected the black gem Opal awoke and then launched herself at Rarity’s face.

“Opal!” Was all Rarity managed to get out before her feline flew into her. Opal grabbed onto Rarity’s face, giving Rarity enough of a scare to make her already weak magic to fail. This caused Rarity to drop the black gem onto the floor. As Rarity redirected her magic from the now dropped black gem to the cat on her face Opal responded in a panic by giving Rarity a small scratch under her eye.

“Ouch! Opal!” Rarity angrily yelled, completely forgetting about Sweetie Belle. Rarity managed to peel Opal off of her and proceed to teleport Opal to her room. Rarity then magically locked her room’s door, saying to herself that she’d reprimand Opal for her bad behavior later. First however she should probably check the gem. She looked down and was not pleased with what she found.

“Oh no, the gem.” Rarity quietly murmured to herself, now remembering Sweetie Belle. The gem on its part now had a slight fracture in its surface. The crack ran from nearly the top of the gem to just below the middle of it. As Rarity stared at the gem some blood fell onto it and into the crack on its surface. To which Rarity was confused for a second before remembering the fresh scratch Opal gave her, right below her left eye. ‘I best get that cleaned up and patched before checking on Sweetie.’ Rarity thought. She hurriedly put the black gem back in the box with the rest of the gems, vowing that she’d deal with that mess tomorrow after sleeping.

Rarity turned and went up the stairs to the upper section of the boutique. The section that housed her room, a guest room currently filled by Sweetie Belle, a personal bathroom, and more rooms that weren’t part of the boutique’s store section. As she reached the top of the steps she noticed that a vase she kept at the top of the steps on a small table was missing. She knew she hadn't touched it in years so it struck her as odd. She’d just ask Sweetie about it in the morning, maybe she knew something. For now though her destination was her personal bathroom at the end of the upstairs hallway on the left side, right across from Sweetie’s room.

She started to walk down the hall passing a storage room on her immediate right, then her room also on the right, which inside she heard what sounded like scratching. She knew it was just Opal, it had to be. A closet was now on her left, and then finally she had reached the bathroom on her left and Sweetie’s room on her right. She turned left to enter the bathroom but felt something brush against her left hind leg. She quickly turned around and saw nothing. Although the door to Sweetie Belle’s room was now slightly ajar. Rarity was sure it hadn't been earlier, but perhaps she was wrong just like with the gems. And she assumed the feeling on the back of her one hind leg was just due to her lack of sleep. She decided that she would just quickly peek into Sweetie’s room now that she was facing it. Just a quick check up on Sweetie and then clean up and go to bed.

She grabbed the handle of the room’s door and instantly felt like she was being watched. She quickly looked behind her and saw…

Nothing…

She looked back in front of her and screamed. But as soon as she blinked it was gone. She could have sworn she saw a smiling face with an unnaturally wide grin and beady eyes peeking out at her from behind Sweetie’s door. But now it was gone. ‘I really need sleep.’ she simply thought to herself. She breathed out and slightly opened up the door to Sweetie’s room, peeking in. She saw the curtains had been drawn as she left them, not letting any sunlight into the room. Everything else seemed fine. It was extremely quiet and Sweetie Belle was dead still, facing away from Rarity.

Perfect.

Rarity backed out of the doorframe and shut the door tight. Content and for some reason feeling very against checking the room again till morning when she’d wake Sweetie. Feeling good, she turned around once more and entered her personal bathroom. She treated and cleaned up her cut before applying a small white bandage to it and leaving the bathroom. She made her way back down the hall and entered her room, shutting its door behind her.

In her weariness she didn’t even bother with her pre-rest customs. She simply shut her room’s curtains, put a grumpy Opal in her little cat bed, and flopped down on her bed. She pulled the covers over her and as soon as her head hit the pillow everything went black. She had finally done it, she made it home and now could finally rest peacefully. She could finally sleep and get all her energy back, to face whatever the next day would bring. She finally is getting a much-deserved rest. Rarity was finally able to drift off into hopefully dreamless sleep.

Rarity woke up in a cold sweat. ‘Of course I couldn’t have a dreamless sleep for once, I had to have nightmares,’ Rarity thought to herself as she calmed herself down, ‘And of course Luna was nowhere to be seen this time, figures.’ Rarity looked at her window and noticed the curtains had been opened, as well as her window being slightly ajar.

‘Strange, I was sure my window was closed, and the curtains were drawn earlier,’ She ruminated. ‘Oh, and it looks to be the middle of the night now.’
“Fantastic.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. She continued to scan her room and saw nothing out of the ordinary. However, she did see that Opal was now missing from her cat bed and Rarity’s bedroom door was slightly opened. Putting two and two together Rarity reasoned that Opal must have left and managed to open the door up while Rarity was sleeping. Not feeling tired anymore, feeling completely refreshed magically, physically, and mentally, and for some strange reason compelled to find Opal, Rarity decided to get up from her bed and exit her room. Once she was in the hall, she shut her bedroom’s door and set out on the search for Opal.

Almost immediately, she regretted her decision. A Strange sense of dread began to creep up her spine. She worriedly took a glance behind her only to see nothing but shadows. So, she continued forward quietly looking all about for Opal, and occasionally whispered Opal’s name. Her senses told her that it was probably a good idea to try and keep quiet, and not just for Sweetie’s sake. She made it to the end of the upstairs hall, making sure that all the doors were closed so Opal couldn’t have been anywhere upstairs. As she stood at the top of the steps looking down into the black abyss that was the downstairs of the boutique she shuddered. Never in her life had she not wanted to go somewhere as badly as she didn’t want to go down those stairs now.

“Opal! Opal where are you!?” Rarity called in a whisper. She got no response, only a strong sense that something downstairs was very wrong. She kept getting the feeling of being watched, but every time she’d look around she’d see nothing. This time was no different. She really hoped that Opal wasn’t downstairs and she had just missed her upstairs, but as she saw a flicker of movement in the dark her hopes were dashed. At least she hoped that thing that had moved downstairs was Opal, and not…

Something else.

As Rarity began descending the stairs she started to shake. ‘Y-you're being r-ridiculous, Rarity there’s nothing bad i-in the boutique. It was just Opal you saw moving down there.’ Rarity fearfully thought, trying but failing to calm herself.

‘And if it wasn’t?’ a small voice said in the back of her head. ‘T-then I’ll use my replenished magic to deal with it!’ She thought back.

‘If that doesn’t work?’

‘It will.’ Rarity thought back firmly as she reached the bottom of the steps. She pushed those thoughts to the back of her head and ignited a luminesce spell on her horn to brighten up the dark room. It bathed the whole place in a light blue light. She took a quick look around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. She could have sworn however that she saw things scuttling around at the edges of her light, and dark figures in the corners of her vision. Sufficiently scared now, Rarity was determined to find Opal as soon as possible and then promptly return to her room. As she started to walk away from the bottom of the stairs she thought she heard a faint noise coming from upstairs.

A giggle…

She backed up fearfully and pressed herself up against the far wall, away from the steps. ‘Sweetie’s door is open again,’ She fearfully noted, ‘It wasn’t like that before…’ Her thoughts trailed off, not wanting to let her imagination get the better of her anymore.

‘This is all probably some prank Sweetie is playing right? Or perhaps Pinkie Pie? Rainbow Dash?’ Rarity tried to reason. And before that small voice in Rarity’s mind tried to return and convince her otherwise she steeled herself and resumed her search for Opalescence.

‘I’ll find Opal, check on Sweetie, and then go to bed,’ Rarity thought, ‘I’ll lock my bedroom door, reprimand whoever is pulling this prank on me in the morning, and then I’ll laugh it off with the girls.’ That reminded her that she was going to ask Twilight to check the gems she got tomor-

That’s when she saw them, the gems.

“Wha…?” She murmured aloud. Right where she left them, but something was different. Something was wrong. The gems had all been moved to the side of their box, except the black one. It sat in the middle of the box, that was not where Rarity had left it. The crack on the black gem had grown much worse. What was once practically a hairline fracture was now a huge crack that nearly split the gem in two. It was only being held together by the bottom of it, still fused together.

As Rarity got closer to the gems she could see more detail. The black gem was now emitting its own small and dim light. There was also some ominous black, thin, and syrupy liquid running down the gem’s surface from its newly widened crack. Rarity felt strangely attracted to the gem, and so with her right hoof she reached out to touch it. As her fur just began to lightly brush the gem’s surface she heard a loud crash coming from the kitchen. This noise caused Rarity to yelp and be broken out of her trance-like state, retracting her hoof.

‘W-what was that?’ She thought. Rationally that loud of a noise couldn’t have been Opal, but then what was it? ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Rarity thought as she started to approach the kitchen and charge up her horn with magical energy, ‘Whatever it is I can deal with it.’ In her haste to figure out what the noise in the kitchen was she failed to notice a small amount of dark liquid leaking from a part of the roof, right above the boutique’s stairs.

As Rarity entered the kitchen she noticed the kitchen’s window had been smashed in. Meaning something from outside had come crashing into her kitchen. The main dining table currently in her kitchen had been flipped over by the impact, obscuring the back part of the kitchen floor from view. She began to charge her magic a little more, before slowly and cautiously making her way towards the back side of the table.

“Now whoe-ever you are, you better come out right now, I’ve got magic and I k-know how to use it,” Rarity stated to the perceived intruder, trying but failing to keep the fear out of her voice. But as she started to slowly round the table’s corner, her face scrunched up in a fearful expression, her magical serge went out and almost all fear left her. For she saw a tuft of a rainbow mane.

“Rainbow Dash darling, I knew somepony was pranking me. But I’d like to know why you crashed throu-,” The rest of what Rarity was saying immediately died in her throat as she fully turned the corner and saw what was in front of her on the floor. Rarity’s mouth tried to form words, but nothing came out. Her eyes shrunk to pinpricks. She began rapidly backing up until she hit and tripped over the dining table. This caused her to break out of her shock and let reality sink in. She screamed, louder than she had ever screamed in her life.

For right in front of her on the floor was Rainbow Dash’s decapitated head.

Staring right at her.

Cold.

Dead.

Chapter 2: Split

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Rarity vomited. She was shaking, her whole body wracked by grief. She wailed in anguish. She didn’t know what to do, so she just continued to sob. She had pressed herself into the corner of the kitchen closest to the door and farthest from her. She was curled tightly into a ball and had no intentions of looking up any time soon. She just couldn’t believe what she saw was real, how could anypony even do that? Even conceive of doing that?

‘Why?’ was all Rarity could think. Why would somepony do something so wretched and horrid, she just didn’t get it. ‘Why would they throw Rain…’ She couldn’t even bear to think of her friend’s name, the more she did the more real it became. The more it sunk in that this happened, this was real. And Rarity just couldn’t accept that, she couldn’t let it be true. Even if it was, she wasn’t ready to accept it.

Against her better judgement Rarity dared to look up, if only to confirm with one hundred percent certainty that she was really real or not. She regretted it almost instantly. As her eyes peaked above her curled up body she saw her. She saw her friend’s, Rainbow Dash’s, severed head staring right at her. As lifeless as it was before, or so Rarity had wished. Except it wasn’t, for Dash's head...

...began to move.

Rarity couldn’t believe her eyes; Rainbow Dash’s head was moving all on its own. However, upon closer inspection Rarity noticed that it looked more like something was moving inside of Dash’s head, rather than Dash’s head moving autonomously. In Rarity’s state of shock she just continued to stare blankly at Dash. And then the wiggling in Dash’s head began to concentrate around her eyes, ears, muzzle, and neck stem. Rarity was absolutely baffled as to what was going on, so in morbid curiosity she continued to stare.

She really wished that she hadn't.

Because not a second later after the wiggling concentrated on specific spots in Dash’s head did blood begin to squirt from those locations. The flesh around those areas began to bubble and expand, being pushed out to an unnatural length. Then the flesh sacks popped, and thousands of maggots began to pour out of Dash’s head. Her eyes popped as the maggots ate and wriggled their way through.

Rarity screamed and tried to vomit again, but having already emptied her stomach earlier she wretched and nothing came out. She did it so violently that it made her gag and cough. Rarity pressed her ears against her head and her eyes shut tight, fresh tears began to stream down her face. ‘What is happening,’ Rarity sorrowfully thought, ‘Why is this happening, why?’ Everything was so quiet, the only noise being Rarity’s own sobs and the wet slaps of the maggots feeding on and dropping out of Rainbow’s head. But soon even the maggots stopped, leaving Rarity with only her sobs to break the silence.

‘Wait, why did the maggots stop?’ Rarity fearfully thought. Her question was answered almost immediately when the maggots began to make a quiet slithering noise. A noise that kept getting louder. Rarity decided to look up to see what the maggots were doing, only to see them coming towards her. She quickly stood up just in time to see more maggots than what was physically possible explode out of Rainbow’s mangled remains of what once was a head. She stared in horror as she watched more and more maggots pour from the ceiling and draws of the kitchen. As well as emerge from the kitchen’s floor and through the broken window into the kitchen.

She began to back pedal out of her kitchen corner and to the kitchen’s only door. All the maggots were coming for her, they were hungry and she looked like a good meal to them. Rarity turned and went to leave the kitchen, but an unbearable pain began to flare up in her cut that Opal had given her earlier. This caused her to stumble and double over in pain. She started to scream as she felt her cut begin to bubble up and bleed. She felt something big squirm right under the cut’s surface.

Rarity shrieked as the pain became too much for her to bear, her mind becoming numb as agony became all she knew. She began to feel something wriggle its head out of her cut, she screeched in terror. Only one thought pervaded in her mind...

‘GET IT OUT!’

With the use of her magic Rarity grabbed whatever was in her face and ripped it out. As she did her agony only doubled in intensity. What she had pulled out of her face had nearly made her faint. For she had pulled out a large, fat maggot. She threw it against the kitchen wall and it splatted. Instantly some maggots around it began to cannibalize the thing. As she stared at the engorged thing her cut felt as if a fire had been lit inside of it. Momentarily distracting her from the thoughts of that maggot consuming her innards.

The burning became too much for Rarity, she promptly ripped off the bandage she had put on the cut not too long ago. And then maggots began to seep out of the cut in a quick fashion. Rarity instantly tried to throw up again, only for a few maggots to slide out of her throat instead of anything normal. Rarity gagged and began to desperately claw at her face with her hooves and magic in an attempt to rip out the maggots. Her wound only became angrier, discharging pus and more blood. The maggots coming out more intensely. Rarity could somehow see and feel more maggots moving behind her eyes, dining on her flesh.

Rarity in her haste to remove the maggots from within her forgot about those chasing her. The maggots chasing her took this opportunity to close the gap between them and Rarity and burrow into her. Rarity’s attention instantly snapped from her face to her limbs as new maggots began to dig into them.

“NO!” She screamed in a mix of terror and furry. Enraged she grabbed some in her magic and ripped them out. She incinerated them in her magic and then stood up. She used a magical repulsion spell to force all the maggots away from her and then she leapt for the kitchen’s door. She made it through the doorway and slammed the door shut behind her, magically sealing the door so as to make sure no maggots could escape that room. She heard the maggots pile up and pound against the door, but the door held strong. She backed away from said door and collected her breath. She then used a magical scan on herself to find all the maggots stored within her and then try to destroy them, only to find none. Confused, she rescanned but got the same result.

‘But I’m sure there are maggots in me,’ She pondered. Just then she noticed that the kitchen had grown extremely quiet, unnaturally so. And as she unconsciously touched her face she became more confused, the gashes on her face were gone, Not entirely gone, but they were a lot smaller. ‘What?’ She questioned, ‘Am I hallucinating? No, I couldn’t have been. It all felt so real how could it have just been fake-’ And then, out of nowhere it struck her, Sweetie.

‘I have to get to Sweetie,’ She worriedly thought, ‘If those things were real she could be in serious danger.’ Rarity knew what she had to do now. No matter what she was not going to let anything hurt Sweetie. She was going to get Sweetie, they were going to get out of here, and then she’d get the girls’ help and figure out whatever was going on in the Carousel Boutique. Rarity, now confident in her goals and repressing the memories of what happened in the kitchen for another time, started to walk away from the kitchen to go and complete her hopefully simple tasks.

Rarity strode into the main foyer of the boutique while checking her newly enlarged facial wound. Despite what the pus had suggested earlier it didn't seem to be infected. Though she wasn’t quite sure if the pus that had spewed out earlier was even real, it could have all been delirium if the possibly fake maggots were anything to go off of. Just the thought of those things caused her heave, only for once more nothing to come out of her increasingly sore throat. Constantly throwing up and screaming was not faring well on her throat. No matter if those things were real or not, Rarity swore she would never attempt to enter her kitchen again until it had been thoroughly, properly, and magically swept and cleaned. Because if those things were real, and the only things fake were the ones in her body, then she would not take the chance to actually let them into her body.

Her wound was still freshly bleeding and bubbling. She needed to get it cleaned and rebandaged up quickly. In her mind she could still feel the sense of wiggling behind her wound, but another magical scan only proved to her that there were no foreign entities in her body. ‘It’s just my mind playing tricks on me,’ she reasoned. Deciding to permanently forget her experience in the kitchen, as to stop the upcoming attempt at once more vomiting, she continued through the main foyer of her boutique.

As Rarity made her way towards the boutique’s stairs she stopped. The thought striking her that maybe those gems she had written off earlier really were causing these unnatural events to occur. ‘Maybe it wasn’t just paranoia and fatigue earlier that caused me to get those weird sensations.’ she thought to herself. In her newfound revelation, she felt compelled to check out the aforementioned gems she had left in the room she was currently in. She changed course from the stairs and over to the gems. As soon as she approached the box they were housed in she gasped.

“The g-gems are g-gone.” She fearfully said aloud. All the gems that she had left there were gone. And to top that off there was a hoof sized hole burnt into the box where she had last laid the black gem. By what Rarity could see, said hole seemed to have burned through not only the box, but the table it was laid upon as well as the floor underneath that. ‘M-maybe that strange black g-gem wasn’t a gift after all,’ she fearfully thought, ‘Is it causing all this? M-maybe…’ Rarity began to shudder and slowly back away from the now empty gem box.

“I’m not insane am I-I?” Rarity whispered, continuing to back away from the gem box.

‘You’re not?’ Asked a small voice in Rarity’s head.

“I’m sure of it! Why would I be insane?”

‘Why wouldn’t you be?’

“Because normal ponies don’t just become insane!”

‘Normal ponies don’t have hallucinations.’

“What are you getting at…?”

‘Maybe this has been a long time coming, Darling. Slowly building up over time perhaps?’

“I’m not insane! I know that.”

'Sane ponies don’t have conversations with voices in their head.’

And with that the voice was gone, disappearing back into the recesses of Rarity’s psyche. Rarity was left in a state of disbelief. ‘D-did I just have a conversation with m-myself…?’ She confusedly and fearfully thought to herself, ‘Maybe I really am i-insane? No, I can’t think like that. I know I’m not insane. I’m completely sane, I’m sure of it.’ In her stupor Rarity had failed to notice that she had continued to back away from the gem box during her little chat, and was now pressed against the front door to her boutique. The noise of something hitting a window next to her broke her out of her daze and made her aware of her current situation.

“Hmm?” She hummed as she approached a window to her left, right of the door. She carefully made her way there, now in fear that anything could happen at any time and for any reason. And with great effort she managed to force herself to look out the window, only to see nothing. Absolutely nothing, there was nothing but a swirling, shadowy void outside the window. Ponyville, everything, was gone. The only thing Rarity could make out outside were vaguely pony shaped shadows moving irregularly through the endless darkness.

“What?” She questioned as she got closer to the window to take a closer look, “This can’t be, where is Ponyville? Where is everypony else? What is going on-” Just then the window Rarity was staring through cracked as something large impacted against it. She yelped and stumbled back, landing on her rump. A large crack had now formed in the window, nearly splitting it in two. She quickly got back up and began to back away from the window. As she stepped back she heard a crunch coming from under her right hindleg. She lifted it up and looked down only to see the shattered remains of her missing gems. Confused, she looked back to the window in front of her only to see the crack in it begin to seep blood. Weird symbols began to carve themselves on the walls of her boutique.

Rarity was terrified. She kept backing up until she heard a splat sound. She looked down and saw maggots squirming around on a few bones beneath her. The maggots began to writhe as more began to emerge from the floor and leak from the ceiling. The floor and ceiling of the boutique began to tear and bleed, as if the boutique itself was alive and breathing. The walls of the boutique began to shudder violently as more maggots and blood rushed from them too.

Rarity became soaked in maggots and blood as they poured down on her. She wailed in horror and began to run at full speed towards the boutique’s stairs. Using her magic, she rid herself of all the maggots landing on her and tried to shield herself from the blood that was raining down. Her eyes were pinpricks as she began to discharge mouthfuls of bloody maggots from her throat. She felt her flesh begin to rot and be eaten away by the stray maggots that managed to burrow into her.

She made it to the stairs and began to ascend them at a fast pace. Tattered pieces of the garments she had made for Fancy Pants started to rain down around her. Chunks of rotting flesh began to peel off the boutique’s walls, hitting Rarity in the face as her home began to sag. Rarity felt as though she was being hollowed out and gored on the inside, skinned on the out. A mix of blood and pus started to stream out of all her orifices. She felt as though her entrails dragged across the stairs, getting tangled in her tail. She felt maggots squirm and burst out of her eyes. She felt horrible.

She felt her bones break.

She felt pain.

She felt her horn being ripped out of her head.

She felt numb.

She felt a syrupy liquid come from the ceiling above the stairs and try to choke her as it forced itself into her mouth and down her throat.

She felt like she was going to die.

But as she crossed the threshold from the stairs to the upstairs hallway of the boutique, it all stopped. Everything just stopped, becoming normal once more. Rarity slammed into the back wall away from the stairs, nearly knocking off a vase she kept on top of a table at the top of the stairs. It had always been there. She breathed desperately, trying to catch her breath. She was shuddering aggressively as she looked down at herself, checking magically if anything was different. When she found nothing, she looked around and saw everything was relatively normal. She squeezed her eyes shut and flattened her ears against her head, collapsing onto the ground in a terrified mess. She began to cry in relief and terror at what had just happened.

“Am I going m-mad?” Rarity said with a stutter, “No, no! I already went over this, I'm fine. It must be that black gem causing these hallucinations! These very, very real feeling hallucinations…” Rarity could feel something in the back of her head begin to move, as if she could just tell that the small voice from earlier was trying to rear its ugly head. Wanting to argue with Rarity. ‘The black gem must be behind this voice,’ she reasoned, ‘It was never here before, that I can remember.’

And before that voice could attempt to speak, Rarity got up and put her recent horrors behind her, deciding to bottle them up and tackle them at another time. She wiped away her tears with a foreleg, causing it to be stained by the deep and bloody gash on Rarity’s face. Reminding Rarity that she should focus on getting that gash cleaned up, hoping that these hallucinations were only happening to her and that Sweetie was fine.

As Rarity began to walk down the upstairs hallway towards the bathroom she began to try and come up with a rational solution to her situation. ‘Maybe I haven't woken up yet and this is all just a nightmare? No, a nightmare this bad would have drawn Luna’s attention immediately and she would have stopped it way before it got this far. I couldn’t have been poisoned by anything, I haven’t left the house in three days.’ Rarity looked around the upstairs hall as she was thinking, noting some cracks on the walls that had previously not been there. Rarity quickened her pace, not wanting to go through another situation like the one she just experienced. ‘So then the only logical explanation is that the black gem has magic. But what is it? And where did it come from-’

“Oof!” Rarity said as she walked into the bathroom door. Having been so caught in her thoughts that she hadn't even realized that she had made it to the bathroom. She worryingly looked behind her, only to see a dark, empty, and normal looking hall. ‘Dark?’ She thought, ‘Oh right my luminescence spell went out when I first saw R-Rain… Her h-head. I can see well enough, but the extra visibility wouldn’t hurt.’ So, with that thought Rarity attempted to reignite a luminescence spell on her horn. Only for the magic to fizzle out and die on her horn. She tried again but had the same result. Rarity felt fine magically, the only explanation she could come up with was that something was blocking her luminescence spell. As when she went to grab the bathroom’s door handle in her magic, she succeeded in opening it instantly. ‘Perhaps that black gem is blocking my luminescence spells?’ She reasoned, stepping into the dark bathroom.

As she entered the bathroom she stopped dead in her tracks. She was just able to make out the silhouette of a pony standing behind her tub’s shower curtain. Quickly breathing in and out she worked up the courage, grabbed the shower curtain in her magic, and ripped it back. It revealed that nothing was behind the curtain after all. Rarity decided to peer into the tub to see if she saw anything. She gagged at the sight, the only thing in the tub was a bit of blood and a few small lumps of flesh near the tub’s drain. While relatively tame to what Rarity had seen and experienced so far, it still disturbed her nonetheless. Looking away from the gruesome tub and peering into the bathroom’s mirror, Rarity assessed the damage and got to work. Quickly cleaning up her, thankfully not infected, wound and bandaging it back up.

After that was done she wasted no time in exiting the bathroom, then closing its door behind her. Now back out in the hall she looked around, noting that the cracks in the walls had grown much larger and were now seeping some kind of liquid. Feeling as though she was running out of time Rarity approached Sweetie's door in a hurry. It was closed, which was not the way Rarity remembered it last. But perhaps that was just another illusion.

She tentatively gripped the door’s handle in her magic, turning the knob and pushing the door open. And what she saw caused her to momentarily step back. Sweetie’s room had been infected by some sort of black vine, it ran all up and down her room’s walls, ceiling, and floor. It coated mostly everything in a slimy substance. But that wasn’t all, for in the room surrounding Sweetie’s bed were twisted and deformed mannequins. These mannequins seemed to be pointing directly at Sweetie’s bed, however the mannequins themselves seemed to be inanimate. The mannequins seemed also to be covered in crudely made clothes, though the materials that these articles were made of eluded Rarity at the moment. She couldn’t get a clear view of the garments in this light. She was drawn from her thoughts when she noticed a shaking coming from under the sheets of Sweetie’s bed.

“Sweetie…” Rarity murmured as she made her way through the bedroom towards Sweetie’s shivering form, weaving in and out between the mannequins. She reached the bed’s right side and grabbed the sheets in her magic. Slowly she peeled them back to reveal a shivering Sweetie Belle, curled up tightly into a ball. Crying and whimpering, she had her ears pressed tightly against her head and her eyes shut while tears slowly streamed down her face. Sweetie Belle, feeling that something had removed her sheets began to cry harder and scoot away from the edge of her bed towards the middle of it. Before Rarity could speak, she felt a gust of wind blow into the back of her mane. She turned around and saw that Sweetie’s bedroom window had been broken in, curtains torn to shreds. Rarity turned back to Sweetie and tried her best to comfort her.

“Sweetie?” Rarity said cautiously, “It’s me, your big sister.”

“Rarity…?” Sweetie Belle whispered, looking up. Rarity and Sweetie locked eyes and just stared at each other. For a second neither dared to move, scared that any movement may reveal the other to be a mirage. But as they kept staring at each other, it became clear that both of them were very real. Rarity hesitantly reached out to Sweetie with her right hoof, but before she could make contact Sweetie rushed her. Wrapping her forelegs around Rarity in a tight hug, startling Rarity, but comforting her all the same.

“Oh Rarity!” Sweetie said with tears of relief running down her face. Rarity was momentarily stunned by Sweetie’s display, but soon enough she leaned into the hug.

“Sweetie, I’m so glad you’re alright,” Rarity responded, “So, I take it you’ve been experiencing u-unnatural things too?”

“Mmhmm,” Sweetie murmured, her head buried in Rarity’s chest soaking it with tears. They sat there together in a tight embrace for a few moments before Sweetie began to panic. Rarity, confused by this, pulled out of the hug and looked at Sweetie worryingly.

“Sweetie? What’s wrong? Why are-” Rarity was interrupted when Sweetie put a hoof to her mouth in a shushing motion. Sweetie looked completely terrified; the way she was before Rarity had shown up. She slowly lit up her horn, with great effort, and cast a luminescence spell. This cast the room in a light green light, the same color as Sweetie’s magic.

“You can cast a luminescence spell? But I can’t-” Rarity was once again interrupted by Sweetie, who emphasized her shushing motion before pointing her right hoof over Rarity’s left shoulder, directing Rarity’s attention to the far-right corner of Sweetie’s room. Sweetie began to shiver and cry fresh tears as her light bathed the corner in her light green magical light. Rarity gasped as she saw what Sweetie had pointed to. Because in the corner of Sweetie’s room was a pile of flayed ponies, writhing in agony, almost unrecognizable due to their severe mutilation.

The vine covered walls in Sweetie’s room began to crack and seep a strange dark substance. The whole room was shaking as a horrifying wail ripped through the air, coming from everywhere and from Rarity’s head all at once.

“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle screamed, pointing with her hoof and light at the mannequins. Rarity looked to the mannequins around her and Sweetie, and nearly vomited. The mannequins were twitching violently, clawing at their faces, almost as if there was something trapped inside the deformed things trying to get out. However, the worst thing about the mannequins was what they were wearing. With Sweetie’s light now revealing the mannequins in a clear light Rarity could see every grotesque detail of their macabre garments. The mannequins were all wearing clothes made from pony skin, torn and tattered near the ends, and crudely stitched together by some crazed seamstress in the middle. As the mannequins continued to twitch, filling the room with the sound of plastic rubbing together, they slowly turned back towards Sweetie and Rarity and reached out.

Sweetie became more frantic and panicky at this, her luminescence spell going out and screaming in terror. Rarity in a daze grabbed Sweetie in her magic, put her on her back, and jumped over Sweetie’s bed. She made a break for Sweetie’s bedroom door, determined to get Sweetie out of there. The mannequins gave chase, sprinting after the fleeing duo. Some mannequins bipedal, some quadrupedal, all were fast and gaining on the two. Rarity burst out of Sweetie’s room at full speed, slamming the door behind her. The mannequins however didn't care. They just broke through the door, shattering it completely. Rarity continued down the upstairs hall towards the stairs. The walls around her began to crack more as more dark liquids streamed from their respective breaks.

Rarity was almost at the stairs. She was just in front of her room when a mannequin lunged at her and grabbed Sweetie. Sweetie screamed and Rarity panicked, grabbing Sweetie in her magical grasp. She pulled Sweetie back to her before blasting the mannequin with energy from her horn. Seeing the other mannequins gaining on them and the blasted one getting back up, Rarity decided to dive into her room. She slammed the door closed behind her and locked it with her magic, and then huddled on the ground with Sweetie in a tight embrace.

The mannequins pounded on the door to Rarity's room, but by some miracle did not manage to break it down. As the noises of the mannequins slowly faded Rarity and Sweetie sat together on the floor, crying and hugging each other in relief. A slight breeze on the back of rarity’s neck caused her to panic slightly. She turned around and saw her window open, the swirling void beyond. She grabbed the window in her magic and closed it, swiftly covering it up with its curtains. She then turned back to Sweetie, and they began to talk.

“Sweetie darling, are you okay?” Rarity asked hesitantly.

“They came in the window…” Sweetie responded, looking slightly stunned.

“Sweetie, what?”

“The mannequins,” Sweetie looked up to Rarity and explained, “I was laying in my bed and woke up when I heard a scream.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sis, I’m glad it woke me up. Because when I did, I saw those mannequins outside my window. They broke it and crawled in. They weren't wearing anything at the time. They just crawled in and surrounded me. I was scared and didn’t know what to do. I thought If I moved they might attack me.”

“So, you hid under the bed and waited for me to arrive?”

“Mmhmm,” Sweetie finished looking worryingly at Rarity, “What are we going to do now?” Rarity looked at Sweetie and saw no injuries and she didn't hear any mannequins outside.

“I guess it’s time we get out of here,” Rarity said looking over to her bedroom’s window. Sweetie noticed Rarity's bandage and inquired about it, but Rarity just told her Opal scratched her and that was all that happened. This reminded Sweetie of something, so as Rarity went to her bedroom’s window to see if it was a safe way to leave the boutique Sweetie interrupted her.

“Hey Rarity, where’s Opal?” Sweetie asked. In Rarity’s terror she had completely forgotten about her cat, who she had gone searching for just earlier that night. Who she had never found.

“I don’t know Sweetie,” Rarity said back, “But right now we have to work on getting out of this mad house. We can look for Opal later after we’re safe and have other ponies to help us.”

“Rarity! We can’t leave without Opal!”

“Sweetie I know, but what other choice do we have?”

“No! I won't leave until we’ve looked for her.”

“Sweetie dear,” Rarity started to say as she looked from the window and back at Sweetie. Once she saw Sweetie’s face however, and the puppy dog eyes watering on them, she caved. She couldn’t say no to that, so hesitantly she agreed to look for Opal. Sweetie cheered in delight and a warm smile graced Rarity’s muzzle. It was the first time she had smiled all night, but deep inside she was worried about the horrors that awaited the two outside of her room.

“Sweetie, stay close to me,” Rarity demanded, “I don’t think leaving you alone in a room is a good idea. So, you'll stick with me and I can keep a good eye on you. You got that?”

“Y-yes Rarity,” Sweetie said hesitantly. It clearly had dawned on her how awful things may get out in the boutique. With some reassurance from Rarity that she would be right there and that she’d protect them, the two slowly opened Rarity’s bedroom door.

Looking around, Rarity saw no sign of the aggressive mannequins. The only thing left to signify that they had once been there was an article of pony flesh clothing laying to the right of Rarity’s bedroom door. Rarity directed Sweetie’s attention away from the grim garment as the two walked together down the upstairs hall towards the stairs. They proceed to make it to the stairs and descend them without incident.

They stood in the main foyer of the boutique as everything was calm. Sweetie cast her luminescence spell and they began to search for Opal, softly calling out her name. Rarity had no idea why her attempts at casting a luminescence spell were blocked but Sweetie’s weren't. ‘That’s a question for later perhaps,’ Rarity thought.

As Sweetie and Rarity checked the boutique, nothing abnormal happened. They also saw no sign of Opal. Sweetie asked if perhaps Opal was upstairs, but Rarity told her that she had already checked earlier and hadn’t seen any sign of their feline friend. They had checked almost all the boutique now, the only place yet to be checked was the kitchen. And as they made their way there Rarity began to shake, remembering her previous experience in said kitchen.

As they approached the kitchen Rarity asked Sweetie to stay back a bit from the door, not wanting her to see anything that was potentially in the kitchen. Sweetie obliged as Rarity went to open the kitchen’s door with her magic. Very slowly she opened it and peered inside, only to see everything was normal. There were no maggots, no head, the table was upright, and the window wasn’t broken. Rarity breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the kitchen’s door and turned around. In her haste to leave the kitchen however, she failed to notice a bloody crack on her kitchen’s window. She confirmed to Sweetie that she’d seen no sign of Opal, to which Sweetie sighed disappointedly and began to make her way back to the boutique’s main foyer with Rarity.

“I’m sorry Sweetie that we couldn’t find Opal,” Rarity began, “Maybe she already left, perhaps she jumped out a window down here or something?”

“It’s alright Rarity,” Sweetie responded dejectedly, “Hopefully we’ll be able to find her later.”

“Indeed.” Rarity responded as she went to open the front door. She teleported her keys from her room into her magical grip and unlocked the door. Just as she was about to open it something dawned on her. Why hadn’t she just tried teleporting around and out of the boutique.

“Hold on Sweetie, we're going to teleport to Twilight’s library,” Rarity said. Sweetie gave a little nod as Rarity readied the spell. She cast it, but nothing happened. She tried again and again, but to no avail. Even Sweetie tried, but predictably wasn’t able to. Rarity tried teleporting her keys once more back and forth, between her room and her magical grip. It worked without fail, but when she tried to teleport Sweetie nothing happened. ‘Maybe I can only teleport certain things?’ Rarity wondered, ‘I could teleport Opal before, but I don’t know if the black gem was doing anything to me yet at that time. I don’t know how its magic works! If Twilight was here she’d know, I should have just gone and got her earlier before I went to sleep. Oh well, I’m at the front door anyway. Might as well just go out there and navigate that void. Anything is better than being in here another second.’

Rarity turned back to the front door of the boutique and grabbed its handle in her magic. But as she pulled the door didn’t budge, it was stuck. Rarity told Sweetie to get back as she charged her horn with more light azure magic in an attempt to force the stuck door open. She started to feel it give way. However, out of nowhere the door suddenly burst open, shoving Rarity backwards and to the ground. Sweetie started to scream and Rarity looked up to see why. And to find out what had blasted open the stuck door. What she saw made her wish she had never looked up.

In front of her was a massive hulking monstrosity. The creature looked at Sweetie and then fixed its eyes on Rarity. Then it spoke in a scratchy, deep, and distorted voice. All it said was one simple word, a name. A name that shook Rarity to her very core. For this monster she had never seen before uttered the name...

“Rarity…”

Chapter 3: Fractures

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Rarity took a few steps back, shaking all the while. The creature before her was double her height and pitch black. It had slimy looking skin with patches of fur sticking out of seemingly random parts of its body. Dark liquids seemed to endlessly ooze from different parts of its body. The creature was hunched over, and due to its emaciated frame, its spine and ribs could be seen poking out from beneath the creature’s stretched skin. The parts the bones were poking out of were covered in dried blood. The creature was not only twice Rarity’s height, but twice her length too. The creature's front half was much larger than its spindly back half. The creature had four long and double-jointed arms. Massive four fingered hands with large sickle like claws were at the end of its four arms. It had two hindlegs with clawed feet planted firmly on the ground. It stood in a quadrupedal stance. It had a circular head attached to its neck with eight black and glazed over eyes that were unblinking. It had a large split jaw filled with thousands of sharp teeth.

The creature was imposing, terrifying Rarity when she looked into its soulless eyes. The creature looked as if it was born from the deepest pits of Tartarus. Rarity managed to tear her eyes away from the creature’s eyes and looked at it directly. She noticed one detail she had not noticed before. In the middle of its chest seemed to be the black gem that she was convinced was responsible for this whole nightmare in the first place. The gem’s surface was heavily cracked and fractured and seemed to be pulsating, kind of like a pony’s heart.

The creature, reared up on its surprisingly sturdy hindlegs and let out a terrifying roar. This caused Rarity’s vision to swim and for a sudden wave of nausea to hit her. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to get away from this thing, to which she obliged. Rarity sprinted to her right and snagged a horrified and shaking Sweetie Belle along her way, placing her younger sister on her back. The boutique’s front door slammed loudly shut, rousing the beast from its screeching fit. The creature’s eyes locked onto the fleeing white mare, it snarled and slammed its forearms back onto the boutique’s floor. The boutique shook slightly at this and only shook more violently as the creature began to give chase.

Rarity banked a hard left, just barely avoiding a swipe from one of the monster’s clawed hands and headed towards the boutique’s stairs. The beast’s swipe of its claws ended up with it lodging its sharp claws into the wall right next to Rarity. The creature screeched in a high-pitched wail enraged by its current circumstances. Rarity, still terrified and having a screaming Sweetie on her back, wasted no time in rushing to and then onto the stairs in front of her.

The brute managed to rip its razor-sharp claws out of the wall before proceeding to lunge up the boutique’s stairs and at the unicorn duo. Rarity charged up her horn with almost all of her magic, putting all she had into the spell. Her magic went from its usual light azure to more of a blinding white. And after taking one more step she picked up Sweetie in her now white magical aura and flung her up the rest of the stairs, letting her come to rest at the top of the stairs. Rarity then turned on a dime to face the creature and screamed, nearly losing her footing. For the creature was a lot closer to her than she’d thought.

The creature swiftly reared up on its hindlegs, ready to bring its powerful arms down on the white unicorn and crush her. But before it could Rarity let go of all the magic she had built up in her horn and blasted the creature at full force. The thing howled in pain as it was flung back down the boutique’s stairs due to the power of Rarity’s magical blast. Rarity, impressed that she even managed to shoot out a magical blast that powerful, was slightly stunned. She looked down at the beast as it writhed in pain at the bottom of the stairs, just watching it. She noted the damage on its already deformed skin, it was bleeding heavily and had severely burnt skin. A small smile crossed her face at the realization of how much damage she had caused to it. She even noted a few broken bones protruding from the monster’s body.

That smile swiftly faded as she heard Sweetie Belle scream out her name. She turned and looked at Sweetie, and while now feeling extremely drained and winded, she ran up the remainder of the stairs. Once she reached the top she turned to quickly look at the creature, gasping once she saw it. It had somehow healed itself, its bones snapping back into place, skin repairing itself, and blood ceasing to pour from now nonexistent wounds.

“But...I hit it with all I had…” Rarity mumbled aloud. Sweetie was yelling at her about something, but she didn’t hear it. All her focus was on the creature slowly getting up in front of her at the bottom of the stairs. She just couldn’t believe that the thing managed to survive her blast. For some reason she just could get past that, she was mentally stuck.

So when the behemoth rushed her she only survived because of Sweetie’s intervention. Sweetie grabbed a vase, off of a table near the top of the steps, in her magical aura and flung it at the creature. The vase shattered on the monstrosity’s face, impaling the thing with a good number of ceramic shards. Rarity did manage to avoid being killed by the demon and being hit by any vase shards; she however did not get away unscathed.

The creature screaming in pain swung its claws around widely, momentarily blinded by the vase shards embedded in its face. And as Rarity came back to her senses she tried to turn and run away from the beast. However, Rarity wasn’t quick enough. In her escape attempt one of the creature’s claws connected with her face, ripping its way right through her left eye. She screamed in agony as she stumbled backwards, away from the aggressive beast.

Rarity’s sight in her left eye began to flicker in and out, before becoming fuzzy and then going out altogether. As blood continued to pour from the freshly shredded optic Rarity, in her half blind panic, slipped on her own blood and fell backwards into her room. In a slightly dazed state she managed to grasp a crying and stunned Sweetie Belle in her magical aura and yank her into her room. With both of the sisters in the confines of Rarity’s room and the creature regaining its senses Rarity got up and attempted to grab her bedroom’s door handle in her hooves. Due to her newly lost depth perception she missed the handle, stumbling forward and smacking her extremely sensitive horn on the door instead. She reeled from the pain, rubbing her horn with her right hoof. She then attempted to grab the handle in her weak magical aura, but due to her magical fatigue her magic simply flickered out and dissipated from her horn altogether.

“Rarity, look out!” Sweetie screamed. At this Rarity looked back to where the beast had once been, only to see it leaping at her with claws outstretched. Unlike last time however she managed to dodge the creature’s attack, swiftly backing up and avoiding the creature’s claws. And in this dodge she also managed to successfully grab her bedroom’s door handle, slamming the door shut in the process.

She heard the creature roar in rage from the other side of her door as she prepared herself for its assault on her bedroom’s door. She locked the door with the very last vestiges of her remaining magic and took up an offensive stance, head down and horn pointing at the door. Sweetie got behind Rarity and braced herself. And as expected the monster slammed into Rarity’s bedroom door, causing the whole door to bow inward slightly and the wall surrounding the door to crack a little. Surprisingly enough however the door…

...held.

‘It actually held.’ Rarity thought to herself, calming down slightly. That sense of calm wavered a bit when the beast slammed into the door twice more. Each time Rarity thought that was it, that the door was going to shatter. That the creature would break in and maul her and Sweetie to death. But by some miracle the door continued to hold, enough so that the behemoth let out growl and gave up trying to break down Rarity’s bedroom door. Its footsteps could be heard fading off to the left as the creature presumably went back downstairs. Rarity sighed in relief before turning around to check on Sweetie.

“Sweetie are you-” Rarity was cut off as a teary-eyed Sweetie hugged her tight. Rarity, exhausted, drained, and in pain gladly leaned into the embrace. She held her sister close and tight, tearing up at the thought of letting anything bad happen to her. Sweetie broke off the embrace looking at Rarity worryingly, specifically at her left eye.

“Sis, are you okay?” Sweetie questioned Rarity.

“I’m fine dear.” Rarity replied.

“Are you sure, that doesn’t look so good.” Sweetie said back while gesturing with a hoof at Rarity’s shredded left eye. Pieces of the eye hung from a now pitch black and bloody socket, tendrils of ruined flesh strewn about within. All in all it sufficiently grossed out Sweetie Belle. It also did not look, as Rarity put it, “fine” to her.

“If it's bothering you that much I could put some spare cloth around it,” Rarity responded, “I always have some spare fabric in my room.” As Rarity finished speaking she got up and headed towards the back of her bedroom, aiming for a dresser she kept spare fabric in.

“Thanks, I guess?” Sweetie said, “But does it hurt, you didn’t say.”

“No, I’m quite fine dear.” Rarity explained. ‘It’s weird however, that my eye doesn’t hurt as much as it should,’ Rarity thought to herself, opening and reaching into one of her dresser’s draws. ‘I mean it still hurts a lot, but I know for a fact that this wound isn’t hurting as much as it should be. Adrenalin or that black gem’s dark magic perhaps? Whatever it is I’m way past questioning things at this point, I should just be glad that it doesn’t hurt.’

‘Maybe this wound is another hallucination? Whatever, I should just focus on patching this up for Sweetie’s sake.’ Rarity pondered as she finally found her stash of extra fabric.

“Okay…” Sweetie said a bit dejectedly, “I guess if you say so, you’d know better than me anyway.”

“Hey Sweetie!” Rarity said excitedly, trying to lighten the mood.

“Yes…?”

“Which fabric is your favorite out of these?"

“Ummm….” Sweetie hummed as Rarity weakly levitated out five square pieces of colored cloth. The first was nearly all white with only a few specks of black spewing out of the cloth’s bottom right corner. The fabric looked silky smooth from what Sweetie could tell. The second fabric looked a lot rougher. It was dark red with squiggles of white and light purple going through it. The white ones going from the top left corner to the bottom right and the light purple ones going from the top right corner to the bottom left.

The third fabric was a deep and rich dark blue with a black crack-like pattern running through it. The crack expanded from the center of the fabric. The fabric as a whole looked quite soft around the edges and middle, the area between those two however looked quite rough. The fourth cloth was a vibrant purple, Sweetie’s favorite color, with black streaks running parallel down the cloth from its top to its bottom. Upon closer inspection, dark red almost black specks could be seen throughout the fabric too. Which looked overall very fluffy, minus the dark red splotches that looked very rough.

The fifth and final cloth seemed to be an exact mirror of the first, with the slight difference of the white and black switching position. Now having the fabric be mostly black with only a few specks of white in it. Said fabric seemed mostly rough, with the exception of the smooth looking white spots. After looking all of the fabrics over Sweetie easily chose the fourth one, as its vibrant purple catered to her likings the most.

“I’d have to say the fourth one, the one that’s mostly purple.” Sweetie spoke.

“Somehow I knew you’d pick that one!” Rarity exclaimed as she proceeded to wrap the bright purple fabric around her head and left eye. Letting her mane flow over the bandage but making sure that the fabric covered her gruesome eye. ‘I’ll get that treated later along with everything else, and maybe some therapy for me and Sweetie too.’ She thought.

“How do I look?” Rarity asked, hoping to distract Sweetie from their grim situation for just a bit longer.

“Pretty!” Sweetie exclaimed happily with a genuine smile. A smile that soon faded as both her and Rarity let the reality of their situation sink in. A long silence passed between them, neither saying a word. As Sweetie sat looking up at a standing Rarity the slightest bit of moonlight sliced through the void and into Rarity’s bedroom through her window and curtains. For the briefest moment illuminating Rarity’s mane, giving it an almost white and ethereal look. And Rarity could have sworn that when the moon’s light hit Sweetie she looked different somehow. But just as she noticed this the moonlight vanished as the void outside covered it up once more. ‘Must have been my imagination’ She inwardly reasoned.

Rarity was the first to break the silence saying, “So, are you fine Sweetie?”

Sweetie Belle responded with, “Yeah I’m good, just a bit shaken up.”

“Good to hear. Well not the shaken-up part but hearing that you’re fine is good.”

“Well, what now sis?”

“Well…” Rarity trailed off as she looked at her bedroom’s window. She magically gripped the curtains of the window but struggled to pull them apart. Seeing this Sweetie grasped the curtains in her magical grip and pulled them apart. Rarity gave her a quick thanks for her help before taking in the sight before her. Dark black vines, like the ones in Sweetie’s room, covered the outside of her bedroom window. She tried to push the window open, but it predictably didn't budge. What very little of the outside world could be seen through the dark vines did not fill Rarity with any hope. All she saw was the swirling dark void from earlier, though by the looks of it considerably thicker than the part of the void she saw outside by her front door.

Rarity had no idea what to do. They couldn’t get out her bedroom window, Sweetie’s room was a no go for a multitude of obvious reasons, and the downstairs of the boutique was presumably being guarded by the creature.

“Sis?” Sweetie questioned, getting worried by Rarity’s prolonged silence.

‘I just don’t know what to do. We can’t sneak past that beast, it's already on high alert and it'd sense us in a heartbeat.’ Rarity pondered, ‘And who knows what more that black gem could do, it’s already done enough-’ And that’s when it hit Rarity, the one and only solution that’d work. One that she was sure Sweetie wouldn’t like, one she herself wasn’t the biggest fan of. It however seemed to be the only thing she could think of that could even have the slightest chance of working. ‘If it means Sweetie is safe, then I don’t care what happens.’ She thought determinedly, though still a bit hesitant.

Rarity turned around to Sweetie and told her to sit still and be quiet, Sweetie tried to protest but Rarity shut her down immediately. Sweetie decided then just to watch curiously as Rarity made her way over to the bedroom’s door. Rarity grasped the door’s handle in her left hoof, fumbling it slightly, and opened the door just a crack. She peered out with her still intact eye and gazed down into Carousel Boutique’s main foyer. And just as she suspected she saw the beast pacing around the foyer, occasionally looking at the boutique’s front door. The monstrosity swung its head up and caught Rarity in its sight line. Rarity quickly pulled back into her room, heart pounding as she closed the door.

“Rarity, will you just talk to me now?” Sweetie questioned in a whiny tone. Rarity turned and looked at her sister, her dear sister and knew exactly what she had to do to ensure her safety.

“Sweetie, I-I need to tell you something…” Rarity stuttered and trailed off, fear and sadness slowly growing in her.

“S-sis?” Sweetie questioned with a stutter of her own,

“I think I have a plan on how you can get out of here Sweetie.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but I don’t think you’re going to like it…”

“What? Why wouldn't I like it?” Sweetie said, confused. Rarity looked off to the side, tears pricked the corner of her still working eye.

It was then that Sweetie realized something, “Wait, you said you have a plan to get me out. What about you?”

“Sweetie, that’s what I need to tell you.” Rarity said, wiping the tears from her eye and steeling herself.

Sweetie put two and two together and protested, “No!” Sweetie rushed and grabbed onto her sister’s left foreleg, “I won’t let you do this!” Sweetie began to cry.

“Sweetie it’s for your own good,” Rarity said in a sad yet determined voice, “I’ll just go out there and distract that thing while you escape out the front door, I’ll be right behind you.”

“No, it’s too dangerous. I won't lose you!” Sweetie balled. Rarity knew that she had to do this for Sweetie’s sake, even if she didn't want her to. So, with a heavy heart she used her slightly replenished magic and pushed Sweetie backwards with a repulsion spell. Sweetie screamed in protest as she was shoved backwards towards the back wall of her sister’s bedroom. Rarity turned to look at her sister for possibly the last time and then opened her bedroom’s door.

“Goodbye Sweetie…” Rarity said knowing that this was a suicide mission.

“No Rarity!” Sweetie screamed as she got back on all four hooves.

“My dear sweet sister…” Rarity trailed off sentimentally.

“No!” Sweetie yelled in fear as she rushed Rarity and ignited her horn. ‘I will not let my sister sacrifice herself for me!’ She mentally screamed.

“I love you.” Rarity said, tears streaming down her face. And with that Rarity rushed out her bedroom’s door closing it behind her. Sweetie skidded to a halt to avoid smacking into the door and doubled over in fear and anguish. Her horn went out as she continued to ball. Her sister was sacrificing herself for her, all to ensure her safety. She just couldn’t believe that this was happening, that she was in this situation, or that this was real. Her whole body shuddered as she cried her soul out.

Her sister was gone. And she might n-

Never…

Never c...

“Never come back…” Sweetie spoke aloud, crying over the loss of her dear beloved sister. Rarity, the best sister anypony could have asked for...

Gone...

Chapter 4: Shattered (Part One)

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Sweetie Belle, who was she?

Really, who was she? Just a little white unicorn filly with a curled pink and purple mane. Her head constantly pointed down in anguish as she let life pass her by. Her two-tone tail curled over her face to protect her from the horrors of the world. She was safe in her little bubble, she was happy in her little bubble, and her sister wasn’t dead in her little bubble.

But, no…

Rarity wasn’t dead, at least not yet. And her sister was currently out in the boutique fighting off a monstrosity to give Sweetie a chance to escape, a chance at life. A chance that Rarity potentially no longer had the luxury of, and yet Sweetie was just sitting in her big sister’s room crying in anguish over the potential that Rarity had gone off to die for her. She wasn’t even humoring the idea that perhaps her big sister was stronger than that, and that Rarity might survive.

Sweetie had just jumped to the conclusion that all was lost and that her sister was as good as gone. She didn’t even give it a second thought; she had just stopped right at the door out of her sister’s room and started crying. She immediately gave up, possibly wasting her one and only chance at survival and her sister’s sacrifice, making it all meaningless. And when the realization of it all hit Sweetie she almost instantly stood up from her spot on Rarity’s, now damp, floor.

‘I’m a disgrace…’ The realization smacked Sweetie in the face like a ton of bricks. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers, and she stared blankly at the closed door in front of her, ‘I’m wasting Rarity’s life! I’ve just cried, I haven’t even tried to go help her or escape!’ Sweetie backed away from the door numbly, her muzzle scrunching up as she let her thoughts wash over her.

The idea of what she was doing and what she had yet to do was practically tearing her mind asunder in terror. She knew that what she was doing, cowering in fear as her sister was desperately trying to give her a chance at life, was horrible. But at the same time, even the thought of stepping out her sister’s bedroom door shook her to her very core. The possibility of stepping out that door just to have her worst nightmares confirmed, it was all too much. Sweetie didn't want to see her sister nothing more than smear across the walls and floor, eviscerated by that beast. As long as Sweetie stayed in Rarity’s room, Rarity was alive. In Rarity’s room, she was safe.

Yet, if she never left this room then Rarity was surely gone. She would never come back, and she would have been lost for nothing. Everything Rarity’s done would then be for naught. Fresh tears began to roll down Sweetie’s matted cheeks anew and she shook violently. It was just all too much for her.

She’d been trying to act brave for not only Rarity’s sake, but her own as well. If she could just fake it, pretend that none of this got to her as much as it did then maybe she really could be brave enough. But she wasn’t, she was scared, more scared than she’d ever been in her entire life. And no matter how much she tried to hide and deny it, she knew that deep down she was weak. It horrified her to no end that one day that weakness would get in the way of something important to her, and now it has. ‘If Apple Bloom or Scootaloo were here they’d just do it. They'd steel themselves and go help, but I can’t. I just can’t…’

Sweetie looked around in a panic. Her eyes darting from left to right, trying so hard just to find a reason to move or an excuse to stay. She just needed something to justify her decision. Something to help her make up her mind. Just something to get her to stop gawking at the door in front of her and standing as still as a statue.

‘No,’ Sweetie internally yelled, ‘you can do this Sweetie. You won't just sit here and let your big sister d-die.’ Sweetie shook her head trying to banish the dark thoughts invading her mind. She looked up to the bedroom door and then at her little white horn tucked between the curls of her mane.

“I can do this,” She whispered to herself, “I know that I can.” She narrowed her eyes and ignited her horn, instantly bathing Rarity’s room in a lime green light. Sweetie concentrated and willed the magic that flared out of her horn to coalesce onto a single point, the handle of the door right in front of her. She wrapped the magic around the bedroom door’s handle and turned. The door creaked open slowly revealing the darkness of the boutique beyond. ‘I can do this; I have to for Rarity. I just have to clear my head and think. I just need a plan on what I’m going to-’ Sweetie’s thoughts were interrupted by a sudden noise. Her ears perked up at the disturbance as she listened closely.

The air was still for a moment until it was broken once more by a loud crash. Her ears and eyes both swiveled towards the dark abyss of a doorway in front of her. Sweetie started shaking lightly again and began to lose her nerve. The dark and uninviting hallway, the noises, and the terrors she has experienced so far were weighing on her now. She had tried to push it all off, but that bravery was faltering now in the face of an actual danger. Thinking about there being a threat didn’t scare Sweetie enough to stop her, but physically having something to confirm it did.

‘I just, I don’t know, maybe I should try the window again. But Rar-’ Sweetie started thinking before being cut off once again as a loud crack split the air. The air grew deadly still for a moment before a piercing screech of pure agony broke its tranquil state and roused the stunned Sweetie Belle from her momentary daze. And once Sweetie registered what she’d heard she realized with a drawing horror that she recognized that agonizing scream. It belonged to…

“Rarity!” Sweetie fearfully let out as she tore out of Rarity’s bedroom. She turned a sharp left as she headed straight towards the boutique’s stairs. She skidded to a halt at the top of them before swiftly proceeding down the entire flight. Upon hitting the bottom Sweetie left the stairwell and burst into the main foyer to see what horrible scene would await her.

And before her was a truly horrifying scene to the young filly that, if not for Rarity’s panicked and determined glare, would have sent the foal into a bout of terrified screaming. Sweetie stood shell shocked and stared at the scene in front of her, just trying to make sense of it. The dark creature had its back to her as it stared down at a prone Rarity who laid on the floor, fore hooves clasped tightly around her head and eye opened as wide as the surface of the moon. Her pupil had shrunk, and her eye was bloodshot as it darted around in a wild and crazy manor before landing on Sweetie. Her white fur stained a dark red as blood oozed from multiple cuts, gashes, and wounds. A river’s worth of the red viscous liquid seemed to seep from a nasty gouge across her forehead that she vainly seemed to try and stop with her hooves. A large chunk of her purple mane was also missing, seemingly stuck in a clump between the monstrosity’s blood-soaked claws. Beneath the missing mane on her scalp was an angry looking wound that seemed to bulge ever so slightly outwards. The cloth she had wrapped around her eye had been eviscerated; pieces of it stuck to the walls and floor of the boutique being held in place by some generous latherings of vital fluids. The empty eye socket, once concealed by the purple cloth, now lay exposed. And out of it seeped a large amount of pus and a black liquid as dark as the midnight sky.

The creature that towered above Rarity seemed to be only slightly damaged in comparison. Upon its black body it had only a few barely visible scorch marks and one small gash on the right side of its deformed face. The creature’s wound seeped a black liquid in a similar manner as Rarity’s fleshy tendril strew eye socket. If it was not for that, the wrecked remains of the room’s old adornments, and a few magic fueled azure flames smattering the scorched and bloodied floor of the boutique one would assume Sweetie had come across a mutilation, not a fight.

The huge beast simply stared at Rarity now seemingly frozen still in an almost shocked like state. Something then seemed to glisten within the abyss of the creature’s pitch-black eyes, and it began moving its contorted jaw in a seemingly specific pattern. At the same time the thing’s vocal cords came to life and it began to let out a series of distorted grunts. Rarity’s eye then shifted from Sweetie back to the beast as it leaned in closer towards her. Her eye once more shot to Sweetie, then back to the preoccupied beast before shifting between the boutique’s front door and Sweetie again constantly.

It dawned on Sweetie what Rarity was trying to tell her and she did not like it. She opened her mouth to protest but was once again silenced by Rarity’s quick and panicked glance at the beast that was followed by a hard look at her. Sweetie stared back harder and put on a face she hoped exuded confidence and determination, and not the terror she really felt on the inside. It mustn't have worked as Rarity’s stare only hardened forcing Sweetie to take a step back and her face to fall. She saw Rarity’s own mask had also slipped for the briefest of moments as a quick flash of terror crossed her face, before it returned to a determined but somewhat nervous state. Seeing this caused Sweetie to take her grievances inwards and to reevaluate what she wanted to do versus what her sister wanted her to do.

‘I know Rarity wants me to leave but look at her she needs help!’ Sweetie thought before another voice in her head fired back with, ‘And what exactly can you do Sweetie? I mean look at that creature and look at Rarity, what exactly do you think you could do to it that Rarity hasn’t already tried and failed at?’

‘I don’t know, but something?’ Sweetie meekly suggested back at the voice. The voice in turn responded with, ‘Think Sweetie, I am just another part of your mind. A part that is thinking rationally rather than emotionally, but still a part of your mind. Meaning if I can’t think of a way to help Rarity and you can’t think of a way to help Rarity, then we can’t think of a way to help Rarity collectively as a whole.’

‘Meaning there is no way I could help my sister?’ Sweetie nervously thought. The voice responded with a resounding, ‘Yes! So, let’s go and not make Rarity’s sacrifice in vain.’ Sweetie pondered this epiphany for a moment before scrunching her face up and shutting her eyes tight. ‘No!’ She shouted in her mind. The voice confusedly asked back, ‘What do you mean, you’ll die if you try to help! What you need to do is leave and not let Rarity die for noth-’

‘I said no!’ Sweetie cut the voice off and shot back, ‘What do you mean sacrifice and die? I just thought I lost Rarity once, I’m not about to leave and lose her again permanently this time. Clearly, you’re not the rational part of my brain, but the bad and stupid part. The part I was always taught by Ms. Cheerilee to ignore. The one that makes bad decisions like agreeing to go along with Scootaloo’s plan to get a jumping through flaming hoops cutie mark, or Apple Blooms’s plan to get a tree climbing cutie mark, or coming up with the idea of abandoning my sister to die by the claws of this monster!’

Sweetie’s cheeks had turned a shade of light red in her concentration and upon thinking her last thought caused tears to prick the corners of her eyes. ‘But Sweetie-’ The voice tried once more to protest but was once again swiftly cut off by Sweetie Belle, “I said no, and I mean it! I’m not listening to you anymore. I’m going to help and save my sister and that’s final!” Sweetie waited for a few seconds after that retort to see if the voice would respond, but she was only met with silence. Satisfied she let her features relax as she let out a sigh and opened up her eyes. The black creature was staring dead at her as its distorted face contorted in a malice filled snarl, saliva dripped from its maw and pooled on the blood-soaked carpet below it.

Sweetie’s ears splayed back, and her pupils shrunk in fear. The previously unspilled tears began to freely flow as she lost her conviction and started to tremble at the sight of the beast’s gaping maw. She was almost too scared to move, but she dared to anyway. She slowly put one hind leg behind her as she attempted to move backwards away from the snarling monstrosity. The beast in turn put forth one of its own gnarled claws as it moved slightly forward. A dangerous look crossed its twitching face as if daring Sweetie to move even one more step. In fear Sweetie stopped her retreat, but to her and her sister’s horror the beast did not. It set down another one of its mangled limbs and advanced ever so slightly towards Sweetie, just enough off of Rarity to allow her to wiggle slightly out from its grip.

“Rarity…” Sweetie let out in a high-pitched whine as she shrunk back. The creature responded with its own low and guttural growl as it moved ever so closer to Sweetie.

“Sweetie-” Rarity started before sharply inhaling as the monster whipped its head around to look at her before it let out its own ear-piercing whine.

“Rarity what I do…?” Sweetie let out in barely a whisper. Rarity's eye shifted from the beast back to Sweetie and saw her little sister trembling like a leaf. Sweetie stared at her big sister imploringly wishing that she’d find a way to save her as Sweetie thought she could save Rarity before. The beast swung its grotesque head back around to Sweetie as it continued its prowl. The creature was closing the gap between it and Sweetie fast, within a matter of moments it would then have her.

“Sweetie, there is only one thing you can do right now!” Rarity shouted drawing Sweetie’s and the creature’s attention. Rarity stared right into the beast’s eyes as it turned back to fully face her, an almost quizzical look appeared to strike its features. To Sweetie it looked like Rarity seemed to squirm under the creature’s vision at first, but the closer she looked the more it appeared like her movements were controlled. Rarity grit her teeth as her face contorted in anger and she turned her head to look at Sweetie Belle before shouting one simple command as loud as she could.

“RUN!”

Sweetie wasted no time in following her sister’s command, immediately bolting away from her and the beast toward the boutique’s front entrance. She heard the beast behind her let out a loud roar before suddenly being cut off as it let out a screech of agony. A loud crash was heard as the Carousel Boutique shuddered under the weight of an enormous impact. Sweetie, having reached the far side of the foyer by the door and a window, turned to see what had happened between the monster and her big sister.

The creature was splayed out on the boutique’s floor on its side with its back facing towards the stairs. Rarity was standing on three legs with her right foreleg curled close to her chest, it was stained a dark crimson. Her mane messily strewn over her forehead, covering the gaping hole that was once her left eye. Its purple color now muddled and turned more of a marron as it stuck to her fur, its indigo locks slicked with blood. She stood tall with a strange and frightening glimmer in her one working eye, her face contorted into a snarl of rage to match the one previously adorning the monster’s features.

“Pure hatred…” Sweetie murmured, and just for a second her fear of the monster subsided to make way for a new and uncomfortable feeling. A fear of her sister, she was scared of Rarity. She looked to her sister and recalled all the lessons she’d heard over the years about the nature of ponies. How it wasn’t in their beings to feel pure and unadulterated hatred. Sure, ponies still could hate and loathe but the level of hatred that seemed to emanate off of Rarity was bone chillingly unnatural.

Sweetie had always been taught that it was in a pony’s nature to be loving and kind. While they could be pushed to feel despise towards others it was never lasting or that intense. It was only if something seriously bad happened to them to break their minds and shatter their mental states that they'd display that type of rage. Based on her history lessons only a select number of creatures on Equus had ever been pushed far enough to feel that kind of pure and vile hatred. And now she saw that exact same hatred displayed across her sister’s face, and it shook her to her very core filling her with a deep seeded feeling of terror. To her drawing horror it also seemed that those feelings weren’t fleeting either, they stayed on her sister’s face for much longer than they had any right to.

“Rar-”

“GO! Now Sweetie!” Rarity had cut Sweetie off with a harsh bark before refocusing back to the beast that laid in front of her. Sweetie mentally refocused herself and dismissed her worries for her older sister for now. She quickly turned around and looked behind her to find one of the front windows to the boutique. She peered out of it and noticed that the dark black mist around the boutique seemed to be clearing up with some spots even completely bare and translucent.

She saw that the moon outside had been replaced with the morning sun as it steadily rose into the sky. Still however, figures just beyond her range of vision in the corners of her eyes could be seen moving about sporadically in the vestiges of the darkness outside, and they were getting closer each passing second. It was enough of an oddity to cause a momentary hesitation in Sweetie’s vie to escape. The beast behind her let out another screech of pain and anger as a wet sound met Sweetie Belle's ears. It caused her to pause long enough for her to second guess her decision to leave at Rarity’s behest, causing her to turn her head back to see what Rarity was doing with the monster.

The beast now lay on its back, head lolled back towards the boutique’s front door, with a sizable and bloody slash cut along its face. Rarity stood upon the thing triumphantly, she was panting heavily but a small smile adorned her face as she looked down at the beast. Her right foreleg was slicked with even more blood and some kind of black liquid as it hung in front of her still curled inwards.

She let out a small giggle, that when combined with the gruesome sight before her was enough to cause Sweetie to turn away and dash to the door she’d make her escape through. A strong sense of urgency washed over her as she saw the shadow of the beast begin to move in a way that could only suggest that it was regaining its footing. She got to the closed door and tried to push it, but it didn't move. She backed up and then raced towards the door slamming her small frame into it only for it to not budge.

She got back up and shook her head while backing up from the door a bit and ignited her horn. She then took the door handle in her lime green magic and pulled with all her magical might, still nothing. Without turning around she shouted to Rarity as dread began to fill her, “Rarity it won’t open! Is it locked?”

The sense that Rarity and her would never get out of this nightmare of a boutique filled her upon Rarity’s response of, “No it must be stuck, try pulling it again!”

“Okay!” Sweetie shouted back and gave a quick glance over her shoulder. She saw Rarity struggling to stand as the monstrosity tried to right itself. Sweetie turned her attention away from the creature and back to the door in front of her. This time she tried to grasp the whole of the door to pull at it and get it unstuck. The door was then ripped off its hinges before exploding in a mighty display.

Sweetie marveled at her own strength for a second before she saw that the door had not been thrashed about by her magic but somepony else’s. Particularly it looked to be pink in color if the pink magical flaming pieces of the door were anything to go by. ‘Somepony must be coming to help us finally!’ Sweetie thought overjoyed at the possibility. Looking through the now open doorway she saw what looked to be five figures quickly making their way towards the boutique and out of the darkness. Sweetie smiled as the figures approached and the sunshine that split the darkness washed over her.

Though she felt strange and almost fake in her being when the sun’s light touched her, but that feeling was quickly washed away and replaced with terror as she saw the five figures more closely. They were just like the dark creature inside the boutique, except they seemed to be differently colored then their companion if only slightly. Each had slight variations from each other, but Sweetie didn’t pay close enough attention to see because she had more important things on her mind. She attempted to turn around and warn Rarity of the coming threat.

“Rarity! Ther-” She was then drowned out by a blood curdling scream of pure agony and terror as the world around her began to shake and come undone. Her vision blurred as a wave of nausea hit her, and in her dizziness she began screaming in terror as the boutique seemed to start filling with all the darkness that was once outside. Tears streaked down her face as she swung her head around in an attempt to locate Rarity. However, no matter how much she looked she couldn’t find her in the confusion. She looked back towards the open doorway of the boutique and saw the five monsters from outside had made their way to the boutique and were piling through its front entrance. They surrounded Sweetie as some made their way past her and began letting out their own roars. In all the confusion and her inability to locate her sister caused her survival instincts to kick in.

She ran past the new multicolored beasts that seemed to ignore her as she made her way to the door where one still stood, a black one with some yellow and pink streaks going throughout its twisted body. She ignored it right back as she raced towards the gap that would lead her to the hopeful safety of Ponyville. As she neared the threshold a few joyous and scared thoughts crossed her mind.

‘I’m going to make it; I'm going to live! And once I get out I’ll see Rarity racing right behind me, because I know that she must be fine!’ A few more steps and she was almost there.

‘We’ll get Twilight and her friends, and they’ll help us! Then they’ll stop those monsters, and everything will be normal again!’ Only four more steps.

‘They’ll help us out and we’ll fix up the boutique and everything will be normal again! I can't wait to tell Apple Bloom and Scootaloo about this, they’ll think it’s so funny!’ Only two more steps.

‘Scootaloo will call me a chicken and Apple Bloom will tell me how if it was Applejack in Rarity’s place her big sister would have bucked that creature into next week! And everything will be normal again!’ Sweetie’s fore hooves crossed through the entrance as the rest of her body followed through and she spoke her thoughts of elation aloud.

“I can’t wait for everything to be normal again! I can't wait to see everypony again and put this all behind me! I can’t wait to celebrate with and see my friends again! I lived, I made it! I’m out of here! I can’t wait to see how okay Rarity is!” She fully made it out of the boutique and into the fresh Ponyville morning air, free of the horrors of the boutique and the darkness it brought. And as she felt the sunshine wash over her, she never thought that she’s been this happy in her whole life.

So at the top of her lungs, she screamed out in joy with one solitary thought on her mind, “I can’t wait for everything to be nor-”

…

….

…..

……

Dead silence filled the air as darkness washed over everything.

When Gems Break

by Child of Stars

Chapter 1: Impact

Chapter 2: Split

Chapter 3: Fractures

Chapter 4: Shattered (Part One)