Nowhere Pursuit
"Hello?! Where am I? What is this place?!"
Twilight galloped desperately through the forest, her heart pounding in her chest. She could barely see a few feet ahead of her, accompanied only by the dim, purple glow of her horn. She whipped her head back and forth to try and find anything to point her home, but saw nothing but endless trees in her light.
An hour ago, she had been helping a search party in the Everfree Forest. Lyra had recently gone missing and was last seen near the forest. Twilight and her friends had volunteered along with several other ponies to search throughout the day, and had decided to split up to best cover ground. With the light of day illuminating much of the forest around her, Twilight had been making good work searching her area when she stumbled upon something.
Laying on the ground was a small, gold medallion, with Lyra's cutie mark stamped on it. Instinctively, she figured it must have been Lyra's and reached out down to pick it up, intent on using it to get some clues on Lyra's whereabouts.
As soon as her hoof brushed the object, a chill had crawled up her spine. She jumped away in a yelp, but the damage was done. The light seemed to drain away from the world around her, and within seconds the forest and everything around her became an unending sea of black. Instinctively, she poured magic into her horn and released it into a continuous, violet glow, bathing the forest around her in its light. All the ambient noise of the forest seemingly vanished with the light, drowning her ears in a deafening silence where the brush of every breath and every hoofstep she took became an overwhelming explosion in her ears.
"He- hello?" She called out for help. No response. She gazed upwards to try to gauge her location from her many years of memorizing the constellations, but she found nothing but darkness above. She looked around for any familiar landmarks around her, but found all the trees around her to be... different. Where once were strokes of shades of brown now stood a single, monotonous shade of grey upon everything she looked upon. The leaves appeared frail and decayed where they once held a beautiful green hue just a minute prior.
Confused, Twilight closed her eyes and pictured her room in the Golden Oaks library before pouring her magic into a teleportation spell. She heard the distinct pop and felt the whoosh of displaced air around her, and opened her eyes. To her dismay, she was met not with the familiar sight of the warm comfort of her bedroom, but rather more and more trees and grey everywhere.
"What?! What is this..." She tried again and was met with the same result, letting out a shout of frustration. Nevertheless, Twilight decided to carry on, picking a random direction and sticking to it. She kept her eyes peeled for anything that stuck out that could be of interest.
Then the other sounds started.
It started with a gentle rustle far away behind her. She spun around on the spot, but saw nothing. Another rustle, this time in front of her. Still she could see nothing. Over time the sounds would become louder and more varied. A twig snapping. A scratch on a tree. A pebble bouncing on the dirt. Each one just a little bit closer than the last. At first, it didn't disturb Twilight too much. She'd been in the Everfree Forest countless times and had more than her fair share of close encounters with its residents, many of which were not very friendly. She knew what virtually every creature in the Everfree looked like and how to best go about an encounter with them.
What disturbed her was as the sounds continued, she found she could not ascertain a shape to the source. The sound always came from out of her line of sight, and no matter how fast she would turn, she would never be able to see what made it. No face, no arms, no legs, no body. Nothing. Nonetheless she kept trotting on, hopeful she would reach some sort of other light source, or even better, an end to the treeline.
The sightings began a half hour later.
It started out as nothing more than a small shadow at the edge of her vision. Nothing blatantly scary, or intimidating, or dangerous. Just a dark shadow that would flicker barely in her peripheral vision where there shouldn't be one. Whenever she turned her head, or even just flicked her gaze in its direction, it would disappear like it was never there. It wasn't that hard for her to ignore it at first.
After ten minutes, it began to weigh down on her. The unseen, eternally following presence, one that she could not put a single detail to, began to drive her mad. Using her magic, she tried to chuck some rocks at wherever she saw the thing, but nothing seemed to come of it. Her pace quickened, her trot becoming a gallop, and finally Twilight broke the silence.
"Please! Where am I?! What's going on, what is this?! Where is everypony?!"
Twilight's breath came in panicked heaves as she desperately tried to escape her unseen pursuer. No matter how fast she ran, no matter how much she teleported, no matter how much magic blasts she shot, there would always be the rustle behind her followed by a blurred shadow dancing on the edge of sight, each time getting closer and closer.
"Who are you?! Get away from me!"
In a spike of fear, Twilight released a powerful burst of magic in all directions, briefly lighting up the entire forest in a spreading wave of violet light.
Her eyes widened.
It wasn't just one shadow chasing her.
It was hundreds.
All around her, hanging just outside of where her horn light reached, hundreds of writhing swirls of dark, unknown mass skittered about the forest floor. They were infinitely black; no amount of light could cast a hint of a reflection on them, making each of them appear as nothing more than a pure lack of anything wherever they moved. They were small, yet not too much so; they were shorter than an average filly, but behind each of them trailed a black, oozing trail that crept across the forest floor behind them. Any leaves, any twigs, and rocks the creatures even so much as brushed against vanished within its mass as if it had fallen in a hole in reality into an unknown void. And they moved so, so fast, far faster and far more agile than something of that size. Yet, they produced no sound as they shuffled and twisted and crawled about the forest floor, skittering about as close as they could get to her without entering her light.
After a few seconds, the light from her burst faded, and she could no longer see any of the mysterious shadows that stayed outside of her sphere of light.
But she knew they were there.
She knew they now knew she knew.
And now they were no longer so patient.
She could hear them now.
Pouring as much magic as she could to keep her light going, Twilight galloped harder than she ever had in one single direction. She dared not teleport in fear of appearing amidst more of the unsightly creatures. But she could hear them behind her. They didn't make sound like normal creatures, such as hoofsteps stomping on the ground. No. Their sound was the antithesis of sound itself. Before, every hoofstep she made, she could hear its faint echo from all around her as it bounced about the trees surrounding her.
Now, she could only hear the echo from ahead of her.
There was nothing to hear behind her but the deafening silence of nothingness creeping behind her, gaining on her with every hoofstep she took. She dared not peak behind her, for if she even so much as tripped, she knew it'd be over. She knew the suffocating void that awaited her would be there to grab at her, to pull her in and make her its own. Would it put her to sleep? Would it... kill her? Or... something worse?
Tears welled in her eyes as she stumped furiously through the forest, jumping over rocks, sidestepping trees. She cried out, pleading for a response from anypony. She could barely take in air now that her body was being wracked with painful sobs.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be with her friends. With Spike. With Rainbow Dash. With Applejack. With Pinkie Pie. With Fluttershy. With Rarity.
She wasn't supposed to go out alone. Not like this.
Her exhaustion finally caught up to her as she failed to dodge a coming tree. With a grunt, her shoulder rammed hard into the bark, and she tumbled to the ground, her magic cutting off briefly as her focus shattered. She rolled painfully through the leaves and dirt and sticks littering the ground, before smacking into another tree and coming to a stop. It dawned on her she didn't hear any of the debris thrown about by her fall hit the ground, and she quickly poured her magic into her horn.
Her horn lit with a blinding, purple light, and yet this time it reached only half as far from her before dissipating into shadow. It looked as if her light was dimming, but she could tell from an upwards glance at her horn light that it was shining as bright as ever. She could feel her magic reserves beginning to deplete. A desperate thought passed through her mind, and she pointed her horn high to the sky. Crafting together one final spell, she shot a brilliant ball of violet magic into the sky. Twilight watched as it illuminated the trees around it before passing escaping the confines of the forest and soaring high for several seconds before bursting into a powerful explosion of bright purple arcs arcs and swirls. A second later, the boom reached her ears, which folded down on the sides of her head.
"Please... somepony see it... please..." Twilight backed into the tree behind her as much as she could as she put all her focus into pouring her remaining magic into keeping her light alive. Each passing second, the darkness crept closer and closer. She curled tightly into herself, wrapping her tail around herself like some protective blanket.
"Please... somepony... save me..."
BOOM!
"Wha- hey! AJ, you see that?!"
Rainbow's eyes locked onto the sight of Twilight's flare spell in the distance, casting the forest in a faint, purple glow that accompanied the dim light from Luna's moon.
"Ah see it, RD, you go on ahead! We'll catch up! Hopefully Twi's finally found the poor girl..."
Rainbow nodded and unfurled her wings, shooting into the sky and speeding towards the direction of the light. By then, the glow from the spell had already faded, but she was certain of where it had been. With a grunt, she landed directly under here she'd seen the flare and cast her gaze around.
There was no pony there to greet her.
"Uh... Twilight? You here? I saw your flare! Did you find her?"
She trotted around in a circle, looking for any sign that her unicorn friend was there, but there was nothing; not even the ground showed signs of any recent hoofsteps or disturbances of any kind. Except...
"Hey, what's this?" Her eye was caught by something gold briefly glinting in the grass under the moonlight, and Rainbow crept closer cautiously. A small, golden medallion rested on the ground, suspiciously clean for being out in the middle of the forest. Twilight's signature star cutie mark was stamped on it. "Is this Twilight's? I don't remember her having this on her when we left..."
Tilting her head in curiosity, Rainbow bent down and reached forward with a hoof to pick it up.