Last Days in Ponyville 2: Spooks and Solace - Chapter 1
The schoolhouse bell tolled its incandescent chime across the peaty plains of Ponyville. Nopony knew why or how it still rang: its masters were long gone, occupied elsewhere in their ravaged minds. Still, every day at noon exactly, it would toll eleven times and then still. Perhaps it was a remnant of magic; perhaps it simply mourned the loss of the greatest village this side of Canterlot.
Ponyville itself had long fallen into disrepair. Shutters hung open obtusely, and many once-magnificent doors had long since been kicked to splinters. The grass itself was thin and brown, as every day a cloudless sky withheld its nourishing rains. Even the stones felt drier than he remembered.
Cloaked and hooded, he crouched in the shadows of an overturned hay cart, sweating under the beating rays of the sun. The bells struck their final chime, and silence descended once again. Usually, around this time, the monsters slept. It was too warm for them to care, and even too warm for them to snuggle – not that it stopped them. The hooded figure took a deep breath, glanced from side to side. Two ponies were curled together in the shade, old brown blood smeared on their mouths and hooves. To his right, another indistinct shape in the shadows alerted him to the likelihood of a pair of slumbering ponies. This was dangerous, but he had to do something. He couldn’t just slip from shadow to shadow forever.
His heart hammered in his chest, and he stared across the cobblestone streets to the shamble of what used to be the Golden Oak Library. In there, he was certain was the secret to saving this Celestia-forsaken town. One of the ponies twitched, made a noise; he froze. But it was just a snore. He let out his breath.
One step forward. If he ran for it, they would surely wake up, determine him to be a threat. He couldn’t risk that. So he crept forward. One step at a time. As quietly as he could. He could feel his pupils pin as he watched the sleeping forms of ponies he once knew: Berry Punch was sprawled in her characteristic way across Minuette. Cloud Kicker snuggled with Roseluck. It’s adorable, he reflected; or would have been, if not for all that dried blood.
He made it to the threshold and took a deep breath. No one had spotted him yet. But it was no time to relax! He was in the lion’s den, trapped in the open. He pushed the door open.
It scraped noisily and he froze.
“…Pumpkin?” murmured Cloud Kicker.
Roseluck, still in the depths of sleep, didn’t respond. Cloud Kicker’s heart stopped and she sat bolt upright. “Sweetie Sugar?” she shrieked. Other heads lifted, and Roseluck blinked awake, but it was too late: Cloud Kicker rounded on the intruder in the doorway, who had frozen in fear. The expression on Cloudy’s face was inequine with rage. “How DARE you threaten my Cutie Wutie Smeepy Bear?!” she screeched, flashing bloodied teeth and leaping. Others began to scream in protective anger as well, and the intruder yelped and slammed the door behind him.
Little good that did: the bisected door couldn’t hold a candle to the kick of a protective mare, and the top half swung in with a smash and sent him falling to the ground with a grunt and a sea of stars in his vision! He rolled to his feet and grimaced, taking a fighting stance. These had been his friends once. Once.
Bloody mares and maddened stallions clawed their threatening way into the dank and dusty hollows of the library. He didn’t want to fight them, but his life – and their lives – depended on it. As Cloud Kicker leaped into the air and dove at him with a scream, he slammed a fist on her snout, sending her reeling into a solidly constructed wall. A shower of heavy tomes descended on Cloud Kicker’s head, knocked free from their carefully alphabetized nooks. As he expected, Roseluck was next with an incoherent shriek, and he spun around, striking her with a powerful kick. He backed up quickly and put his back to the wall, striking out with a karate kick that sent Twinkleshine smashing through the library table. Books went flying; candles (thankfully unlit) cascaded through the air to land clunk-achunk on the dusty wooden floor.
Twinkleshine was not to be outdone, however. Enrobed in dust and splinters, she charged him with a shriek and snapped her teeth onto his cloak. The bite would have caught his flesh, but he darted away with a yelp, letting the cream-and-blood-colored mare keep the garment. “Twinkleshine!” he shouted.“Sweetie Drops is in trouble!”
The mare stopped dead, eyes snapping wide open. Her darling? In trouble? “No!” she cried. “Not my Sweetie Baby!” She whirled in place and reared, overrunning the approaching Roseluck and charging toward the mass of ponies at the door. She screamed and shrieked, rearing and kicking, biting and rending like a madpony! When only corpses were in her wake, the one-mare stampede rushed into the skeleton of Ponyville, unaware that one of the corpses was her beloved Sweetie Drops.
Such was the Love Poison Madness.
The intruder shuddered. He hadn’t expected that; he had only hoped to distract her. Fighting down his feeble lunch, he turned away, paler than before. He touched his arm, where he had nearly been bitten, and looked over at the still forms of Cloud Kicker and Roseluck. He had only a little time before they roused, and he planned to be out of here and out of sight long before then.
He gathered his bitten cloak and slung it around himself but neglected the hood for now. He trudged upstairs to where Twilight had once slept: his most wonderful and smartest of friends had long succumbed to the curse, but she left behind research that he was certain would be useful. Stepping over the destroyed pile of furniture and planks that had served as a barricade, he was reminded of how he had helped her build it. It had been sufficient…
It didn’t take long for him to find what he was looking for. Her brilliant notes were scrawled on countless scraps of paper. He remembered she had spent night after night trying to fix the mistakes that had wrought this apocalypse on Ponyville. She had run herself ragged, and he had watched, from his terrified vantage under the bed, as Rarity and Fluttershy had dragged her screaming from her desk…He could still hear the last horrific echoes: Cutie Patootie Lovey Dovey!
He shook his head. Now was not the time to reminisce. Much had changed in the last decade and change.
He bent down to start quickly gathering notes. They were a big pile, splattered in places with blood or smeared with tears, and he was certain he would never be able to understand such a complicated bunch of mathematics and alchemy… But he could try. He was all that was left. He glanced around, and found that she had a copy of a book up here too, one she had heavily marked and bookmarked. Flipping over the cover of Supernaturals: Natural Remedies and Cure-Alls That Are Simply Super, he stuffed the pages of notes inside and then wodged the book into his shoulder bag without a second thought. He could hear the sounds of mares rousing from their stunned states, and he whirled around. His eyes fell on the window and he rushed for it.
The glass, or what was left of it, reflected his strong jaw, his elongated neck; the green of his eyes. But he had no time to dwell on that. He pushed the window open and hopped onto the ledge, looking down to the ground below. No ponies were napping below, and there was a straight shot into the fields beyond if he was lucky.
Spike slung down, dug his claws into the bark, and descended.
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