Chapter One: Stay Out of the Everfree
Scootaloo looked at the dark, silent forest that opened ahead of her. Nopony would enter such place in the darkest of the nights, just a couple of days before the Nightmare Night.
Yet there she was. All alone, thinking of going in.
But what options did she have? She had caused all this by herself and now it was time for her to pay for her actions.
That’s what you get for bragging about your bravery. That’s what you get for saying that you could do anything. That’s what you get for calling out loud that you are not afraid of the Everfree.
Her friends had not swallowed this. They had demanded for proof. But how was she going to prove it?
The other two had not found a possible cheat-proof way to prove that she had visited the forest. She had almost got clear. She had almost managed to escape the sanctions of a lie.
But then Twilight had come out of nowhere. She had heard the little bragging. She had noticed her chance.
And so, Scootaloo was stuck with the task of going to the forest and bringing Twilight some poison joke so that she could perform some of her crazy tests to make the Nightmare Night even scarier. Scootaloo had no idea how Twilight was going to do that with poison joke, though.
She gulped loudly. Why now, the darkest of nights before the Nightmare Night itself? The forest was barely visible, only the outlines of the twisted trees catching Scootaloo’s eyes.
The fog that was circling around the thick trees wasn’t making it any easier. It cloaked even more of the scenery, making it nearly impossible to see clearly beyond one’s hoof.
But she had to go in. She was not going to go back and admit that she was a scaredy-pony. She couldn’t let her friends get the joy of mocking her, picking on her lies. She couldn’t let Twilight down.
She took a final look behind, just to see where the safety began, and took a step towards the forest.
She kept on taking steps, slowly getting closer and closer to the part where the forest officially began. As she did so, she could feel the warmth escape her body. She could feel the empty spot it had left behind get filled by pure coldness.
When she finally had reached the entrance, she was shivering. The coldness had taken over, making its way deep into her flesh and killing all the warmth she had felt before.
But when she took the one fatal step that placed her hoof inside the borders of the forest, there was no going back. She was doomed to go fetch some flowers in the middle of the night.
“It’s going to be okay. I just go there, find a patch of poison joke, take some of them and get out as fast as I can. Easy,” she tried to tell herself, but it was no use. The coldness and fear had come to stay.
She tried her best to ignore her stubborn feelings and started walking deeper into the forest, careful not to take a single step away from the safe-looking path.
As soon as the fog absorbed her body, the darkness got even deeper. Not even the light of Luna’s moon could penetrate the layers of leaves, branches and fog.
The good thing was that Twilight had forced her to take a small lamp with her. Without it she would basically be doomed.
She dug the lamp from the small bag she had with her. The lamp was magical. It could last for twenty minutes before the spark of magic died down.
She would have twenty whole minutes to get to the flowers, pick some of them and get back to the safety of the town.
In other words, she had twenty minutes to spend alone in a dark and scary forest, accompanied only by the dim light the lamp gave off and the possibly-dangerous creatures that lurked nearby.
Scootaloo tried to push such thoughts back. They certainly didn’t make this little trip any easier. She spent some time trying to figure how to light the lamp, turned it on by tapping the small button it had on the bottom and kept on walking deeper into the forest.
The further she got, the bigger the fear grew. Every step she took made the shadows get a bit closer to her. Every breath she took made her throat dryer and her body colder. Every tree that passed by looked scarier than the earlier ones. All this was slowly getting the better of the mind of the little filly.
And when she saw one of the shadows move, she just couldn’t hold it anymore.
“Aaah!” she screamed and jumped high into the air. The panic took over and soon enough she was running aimlessly, having no idea which one was the right direction.
After running for a mighty good amount of time, the stinging in her chest forced her to stop. Normally she would have been able to run through the whole forest, but the air was making her breathing harder.
As she stood there in the dimly lit path, violently inhaling more and more oxygen, she tried to think of a worthy plan. She could not go deeper to get the flower. It was just too dark and way too scary. But she didn’t want to go home with nothing, either. She didn’t want to be a loser.
She had to get the flower. There was no other way out.
After a while of thinking, she remembered a life-saving thing: Zecora.
She, if somepony, would have some poison joke stored somewhere. The fact that her hut was closer to Ponyville than the still-blooming patches of poison joke made the decision even easier.
Scootaloo turned around, made sure that she was on the right path and started walking towards the supposed location of Zecora’s hut.
But she failed to notice a single thing. One of the shadows was looking after her.
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The path to Zecora’s hut was in a better condition than all the other paths of the forest combined. Zecora took a good care of it, though Scootaloo didn’t know why. Almost nopony aside from Apple Bloom and Twilight ever visited her and she didn’t visit the town too often.
But on the other hoof, Scootaloo didn’t get a lot of things that Zecora did. Maybe it was just some zebra tradition.
The surroundings of the path were better, too. The trees didn’t look so scary and it was actually better lit than the other parts of the forest. All in all, Scootaloo felt a lot more conformable to walk to Zecora’s place than to walk to get the flowers by herself.
But what should she tell Zecora? Should she just say that the flower was for Twilight? Or should she lie? What if Zecora told Twilight that she had given the flower and then everyone would get to know that Scootaloo had been a scaredy-pony?
She could say that it was for pranking. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie did poison joke –related pranks all the time. It was completely safe now as the Ponyville Spa had the recipe for the healing bath.
But Scootaloo didn’t think that Zecora was much of a prankster. She took things so seriously sometimes.
Or she could just go in, chat nicely and take the flower when Zecora wasn’t looking. But that wouldn’t be too nice. Zecora had done nothing to her and she was planning on stealing flowers from her.
“It’s not stealing, I’d just borrow it,” she tried to say to herself, but it didn’t seem any better. She’d have to stick to telling the truth.
Soon enough she arrived to the small hut. Her lamp had started losing its brightness, so she would have to do this quickly. The spark had ten minutes left tops.
A quick look told that Zecora wasn’t sleeping. The lights were on and the door was open, welcoming everypony inside.
Scootaloo gathered all of her courage from the depths of her mind and sneaked close to the door.
“Hello? Zecora, you home?” she asked in a hopeful tone.
No answer.
“I’m coming in!” she yelled, but still got no answer.
After hesitating for a second, she pushed the door more open and stepped into the small hut. The smell that welcomed her in gave out the fact that Zecora had been preparing a brew. But the maker of the brew was nowhere to be seen.
“Zecora?” Scootaloo tried, but once again there was no answer. Zecora wasn’t home.
“Where would a zebra go at this hour?” she asked herself, but got no answer to that question either. Zecora usually left a note of some kind to tell the possible visitors where she had gone. But where could such note be?
Scootaloo took a quick look around the hut and noticed a small white note on the table right next to the brew. She rolled her eyes and walked over to the table, curious to see where Zecora had gone.
The note was simple.
I’ve run out of ingredients for my brew,
I’m sorry, my quest, but wait must you.
Well, Zecora was in the woods, looking for an ingredient. Scootaloo knew that sometimes Zecora could be out in the woods looking for things for days, so it was no use to sit down and wait.
Knowing that the time was running out, Scootaloo knew that she’d have to find the flower by herself. The problem was that Zecora had multiple shelves full of ingredients, most of them stored into brown jars that had no label on them.
But luckily she had heard something about the hut from Apple Bloom. Zecora kept herbs on the left, spices on the right and flowers on…
No matter how hard she thought, Scootaloo just couldn’t remember the simple advice. She’d have to dig through the shelves on the front and on the back of the hut.
Seeing that there was no other option, she started going through the jars that occupied the shelves.
Not until the floor was covered in shards she was able to find the familiar-looking flower. She pulled the safety pliers Twilight had gave her from her bag, carefully took one of the flowers out of the jar and dropped it into the bag. She then closed the jar and put it back to the now-empty shelf.
Her mission was accomplished, now she just had to get out as fast as she could. She was relieved by that fact. She’d get out of this damned forest and back to the safe town of Ponyville as a hero. She could already hear the envying whispers of her classmates.
She turned around, about to leave, but stopped when she noticed another, older-looking note on the table, right next to the earlier one. It had not been there when she had arrived.
Out of curiosity, she walked over to the table and took a good look at the note.
It was just as simple as the earlier one, but far more scary.
Those who stare into the abyss may eventually find the abyss staring back.
The text itself wasn’t scary, but the picture under it was. A tall, black figure stood in the forest, barely visible between the trees. It had a black skin and a white head, if the round shape on top of it was a head.
The body was not normal. It was tall and thin and seemed to have extra limbs in the back. The limbs were just as black as the rest of the body, creating a terrifying shape against the fog that was floating behind the thing.
It was standing on two hooves, if the lower limbs even were hooves. Scootaloo knew no living creature that could hold such a huge body only on two limbs.
The head was only a head. No face, no mouth, no eyes, nothing else but whiteness.
Something on the picture made her feel uneasy. The warmth the hut had given her was now pulling back, leaving the body of the filly just as cold as it had been earlier. Her mind was running in overdrive, trying to process the image.
All of a sudden her throat felt like it was burning. She started coughing, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. The coughing just kept on going and she was starting to feel bad. She quickly grabbed her bag and rushed outside, entering the darkness of Everfree again. As soon as she lost the sight of the hut, the coughing stopped and she could breathe well again. She had no idea what it had been all about, but she wasn’t about to go and find out. Heck, she wasn’t sure if she was ever going back to the hut again.
She turned to look forward for a second, just to make sure that the path was right. But when she turned back, the horrible feeling got back.
In the distance she could see a dark silhouette, darker than the night surrounding it. It didn’t take long for Scootaloo to realize that it was the same thing from the picture. That was all she needed to start shaking of fear. It was after her. It wanted her.
She tried to turn, to run, but her hooves refused to move. She was stuck on the place, looking at the figure that was looking back. The moment seemed to last forever.
But when Scootaloo blinked, the figure was gone. She immediately felt her hooves move as she collapsed to the ground. Her head felt like Pinkie was having a party inside, and that sure wasn’t good. Her vision was blurred up, making it hard to even see her hooves.
But she knew that if she stayed there, it would come. She had to get up. She had to get back to Ponyville. She had to get back to safety.
She forced her hooves to push her up. It hurt, but it was worth it. Soon enough she was standing and ready to run.
She shut her eyes, turned around and ran as fast as she could.
But running can be hard if you can’t see anything. After only a few steps she stumbled and felt a horrible pain in her left wing. She forced her eyes open, just to see her wing being twisted into a completely unnatural position.
She tried her best to ignore the pain, jumped up once again and ran as fast as her hooves could go, hoping that the thing would leave her alone.
Even though she didn’t look back, she knew that it was right after her. It was just as fast as she was, if not faster.
But she wouldn’t give up. She was fast. She could escape. She could get back to Ponyville.
The path started to get bigger. It was a good sign. It got bigger when you got closer to Ponyville. That meant that the town was just behind the corner.
She forced her hooves to go even faster, knowing that tripping would be fatal. The lights of the town were visible by now. Only a minute to go. Then she could rest.
She could see the river. The bridge crossing the river would be safe area. There she would be out of the reach of the thing.
She heard the drumming sound her hooves made when they hit the rough path. She heard the fast heartbeat that was coming from her chest. She could feel the pain the injured wing caused pulsating in her body.
Only a few more steps. A few more. A few…
When she could see the outlines of the houses, she finally stopped, careful not to look back. She immediately collapsed to the ground as her hooves were not strong enough to hold her body up.
As she lay there, she could hear the far-away screams of ponies that had seen her. She could hear the hoofsteps that were getting closer. She could hear the questions they asked from each other.
When she could see the figure of a pony in her own eyes, she let a small smile take over and everything went to complete blackness.
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Scootaloo cracked her eyes open. The afternoon sun was setting, casting an orange light into the room. Despite being a dim afternoon light, it managed to burn her eyes for a while, but she refused to close them. She had woken up and she sure was not going back to the same nightmare.
A quick look around the room told her that she was not home. The curtains were green, the bed sheets were green, the white beds were adjustable and she had some green hospital-clothing on. Her best guess was that she was in the Ponyville Hospital.
This guess got confirmed soon as a group of nurses rushed into the room. They told something about a shock, a broken wing and a surgery. They also told that there had been a whole lot of visitors whilst she had been asleep. The huge pile of presents and “get well soon” –cards that had been waiting behind the curtain were what they had left behind.
Soon after Scootaloo had opened some of the well-wrapped boxes, the nurses left, saying that she needed some sleep. She had just woken up, but they had refused to let her out of the room. She had no other option than to go back to sleep.
But there was nothing she should be afraid of. She had won. The thing had been too slow. She was safely in the hospital, out of the reach of the horrors of the Everfree. And she had proven that she was brave. She was a hero.
A small smiled formed up on her face. Scootaloo, a hero. That sounded mighty good.
She closed her eyes and let her thoughts wonder. She had a lot to do tomorrow.
As soon as the eyes of the filly shut, a tall figure appeared next to her bed, watching over the sleeping filly, its target.