A deserted mansion in the middle of Everfree forest

About three hours of foot from Ponyville

No one knows how long has it been there or who used to live in

Rumors had it that it was haunted

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“Guys, we’re finally here!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed at the sight of the mansion that stood tall and intimidating in front of them.

“Oh my Celestia, i-it’s huge…” Twilight Sparkle said in awe.

It took a while for the six friends to find the mansion mentioned in that urban legend Rainbow Dash had heard the day before. All they knew about it was that it was located somewhere in the middle of the Everfree forest and that’s it.

If only that forest wasn’t so confusing to walk through.

But after a lot of insistence from Rainbow’s part (and some morbid curiosity from the other girl’s part too) they finally managed to find the “mysterious haunted mansion” Rainbow Dash was talking about.

“Ah have to admit it’s pretty impressive,” Applejack said crossing her arms. “But ah still can’t believe ya actually dragged us to see this.”

“Ha ha! Don’t try to deny it, you were curious too,” the rainbow haired girl said mockingly.

“Okay, just a little.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s that interesting,” Rarity said taking some spider web from her skirt. “Seriously, all this walking and exploring this creepy forest just to see this?”

“What? Are you kidding me? Who said we were going to just see this from the outside?” Rainbow grinned. “The door probably is unlocked. Let’s go see how it is inside!”

There was a faint whimper from behind her. Rainbow Dash turned around just to see Fluttershy shrinking and hiding an eye behind a bang of her light pink hair. She seemed pretty uneasy near that house.

“Hey, Fluttershy, you okay?” she asked concerned.

“You really want to go in there? What if it’s really haunted, like the story said?” the girl asked removing the pesky bang from her blue eye.

“Oh, c’mon! You’re not going to tell me that you believe in that story?” Rainbow chuckled.

“No, but… you really are going in there?” Fluttershy asked, her voice showed more disappointment than actual fear.

“You don’t know Rainbow? She won’t give up until she sees what’s so interesting about this place,” Pinkie Pie giggled, also excited to explore the house.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, sugar cube,” Applejack said. “Just wait here for us. We promise we won’t take long.”

“And I can stay here with you, if you want to,” Rarity offered.

Fluttershy shook her head and gave a shy smile. Oh well, she should have known that Rainbow Dash wouldn’t give up.

“No, if you’re going, then I’m going in too. It’s better than staying in this creepy forest, right?”

Twilight went ahead and knocked the door out of impulse. She turned the doorknob and slowly opened it, unsure to what expect. The six friends entered the mansion and started to look around, all of them very surprised for the fact that the lights were working and how clean everything looked.

“Wow, you’d think that for an abandoned mansion this place would be a lot messier,” Twilight commented.

“Yeah, this looks even tidier than your place Twi,” Pinkie joked.

All of a sudden, they heard the sound of something breaking coming from the corridor in their right. Fluttershy jumped and hid behind Rarity, who held her hand like if saying it was okay.

“What was that?” the light pink haired girl shrieked.

“Sounded like something fell off and broke,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Ah’ll see what happened. Wait here for me,” Applejack said walking in direction of the sound.

“Be careful!” Rarity warned, only to be answered with a thumbs up gesture from Applejack.

As Applejack crossed the corridor, she noticed a door on the left wall. She tried opening it out of curiosity, but it was locked. Shrugging it off, she continued walking until she reached the kitchen. Near the sink there was a broken porcelain plate, but something seemed wrong with that scene.

“How did this fall off and break? There are no windows here, so it wasn’t the wind for sure,” she thought as she got a piece of the plate to exanimate.

Unless…

Suddenly, Pinkie Pie’s high pitched scream pierced through the air, making Applejack jump. The young woman put the shard on her jeans pocket and came running at their encounter, only to find the hall completely empty.

“What in the tarnation? They left?” she asked in disbelief.

Applejack noticed that the front door was closed and, as she feared when she went to try to open it, locked.

“Guys, this ain’t funny! Open the door!” she said out loud, trying to open it one more time.

There wasn’t an answer, not even a giggle from Pinkie Pie. Okay, that didn’t sound like a prank at all and that definitely wasn’t time to panic. She would keep calm and search for them. She took the left corridor to see if any of her friends happened to take that direction.

“Okay, where could they have ran off to?” she thought.

After trying to open yet another locked door, Applejack turned the L corridor. On the end of the corridor thought, she saw something she rather not have seen.

“What…”

A tall and bulky grey creature stood with its back turned to her, giving the blonde a not so nice vision of its butt. Applejack held her breath and stood there, paralyzed, as the creature entered in the room ahead and closed the door. A few seconds passed until she could get a reaction.

“What the heck was that?!” she thought while controlling herself from shouting. Illusion or not, that mansion was getting really creepy. How she wished she found her friends now…

Applejack made a U-turn and decided to go upstairs. The second floor was as clean and spacious as the ground floor. She turned right and tried opening the door near her. Thankfully, this one was unlocked.

“Guys…?” she asked quietly as she entered.

The room was pretty modest, having only one bed, a desk, a carpet and a closet. As her green eyes scanned the room, she heard a very faint shriek coming from the closet.

“Fluttershy, is that you?” she asked, the tone of her voice a little higher.

“N-No…”

Applejack opened the closet, only to reveal a very shaken Rarity in it. The country girl helped her get out and stand up, thought her legs were still shaken.

“Rarity? Rarity! Please talk to me. Tell me what happened,” she tried making her friend calm down, but Rarity was still in too much shock and didn’t seem to want to talk.

“Maybe if I get a cup of water Rarity will calm down,” she thought.

Applejack was about to leave the room when Rarity grabbed her arm. The blonde turned around, relieved that at least she wasn’t entirely paralyzed.

“W-Where do you think you’re going? You can’t just leave me here!” the purple haired woman whined.

“Ah was just gonna get a cup of water for you,” she answered.

“And where exactly would you get that?”

“Ah dunno. In the kitchen’s sink?”

“Eww… that water probably isn’t filtered,” Rarity stuck her tongue out in disgust.

“Glad to see ya gettin’ better,” she said sarcastically. “Anyway, what happened?”

“We were waiting for you when that…” she gulped, “grey thing appeared and tried to attack us. And then Pinkie screamed, and then… we went through different ways. I-I don’t even know what to say about the others.”

There was an awkward silence between them. That really wasn’t good. But at least she found Rarity, so that was something, right?

“Okay, let’s do this. You stay here and organize your thoughts. Ah’ll try to find the others. If ah find at least one of us, ah’ll come back, okay?”

Rarity nodded and bit her lower lip. Yes, she just needed to organize her thoughts.

“Oh, if you’re going out there, take this with you,” she said giving a silver key to her friend. “I found it in the closet. It might be useful.”

Applejack took the key and gave her friend a reassuring smile. Rarity then hid herself in the closet.

“Let’s see where this thing goes…”

There was a “LIBRARY” written in black letters in the key. Twilight sure would like that. Even though it didn’t indicate which door was, at least she knew what kind of room that thing opened. Applejack went back to the ground floor and tried opening the first door she found, the one she first tried to open when she went to check the noise out.

And lucky her, that was the library’s door. Maybe Twilight teleported herself to there. That was a possibility. Even though she didn’t know if people who could do magic could teleport themselves to places they didn’t know it existed. If she had all that magic, she would teleport herself outside house, but oh well.

“Twilight, ya there?” she asked.

The library was very spacious and was filled with occupied bookshelves. But even the large quantity of books in the room didn’t manage to make Applejack less bored. Ugh, how Twilight could like a place as boring as that? She walked through the entire library and then went to the table in the lower left of the room to see if she could find anything interesting there. A big red apple caught her attention and the girl got it with hungry green eyes.

“This apple looks delicious!”

However, before she took a bite on the fruit, that huge grey creature jumped out from the books shelves, ready to attack her. Screaming, Applejack dropped the fruit on the floor and escaped from the monster’s claws before they could rip her apart. She ran like crazy to the door but then realized something was missing.

“Darnit, the key!” she said desperately turning the doorknob. “Ah must have dropped it!”

Much to her despair, the monster was now blocking her way. Applejack would have to fight, or else, she’d be killed! Taking a deep breath, she ran into the creature’s direction, quickly formulating a battle strategy. When she was close enough, the monster tried craving his claws once again on her chest, but Applejack avoided the attack and gave a swift kick on the monster’s stomach. Thanks to her having very strong legs, the kick was effective and made the monster let his guard down for a few seconds, the sufficient for her to pass by him and search for the key.

“Where is it? Where is it?”

Finally she found the key on the upper left corner of the room. Of all places she could drop the damn thing she had to drop the farthest possible from the door. Sometimes the universe didn’t like copping with her. The monster managed to corner her again and tried attacking her. This time, Applejack wasn’t as lucky, as the creature managed to scratch her arm.

“Ugh!” she winced at the pain.

Applejack tried giving a combo of kicks, making the creature retreat little by little. The monster also tried attacking her, but Applejack was agile and managed to avoid each blow. Once the thing started to show signs of exhaustion after some minutes of fighting, the blonde made haste to the door, not even caring on finishing the creature anymore. She quickly unlocked the door and ran away to the second floor.

Thankfully, it seemed like the monster gave up on attacking her, as it wasn’t chasing after her anymore. Applejack sighed in relief and fell to her knees on the floor.

“T-That was close…”

Finally the pain in her arm hit her. Cussing under her breath, Applejack put a hand on the injury the monster made. Good thing it wasn’t that deep. The bleeding would stop quickly.

She needed to find her friends fast. After that encounter, Applejack was more than determined to find them before that thing did.