"NO!"

The bright morning sun beat down on Twilight's face as her eyes snapped open. All she could see was a blurry haze of colour, with a piercing white light above her.

Blinking a few times, the haze cleared and she looked around.

How in Equestria did she wind up in the town square?

"…Wha..?" was all she could muster as she looked at her surroundings. She held her head in her hooves as a sharp twinge throbbed through her skull. She had never had a hangover in her life, but Twilight was certain that this must be what it feels like to have one.

Her limbs shaking with exhaustion, she stood up, holding her had low to ease the pain. Looking about more, she was relieved to see that the town square was empty. The sun was still relatively low in the sky.

Mustn't be much later than dawn, she thought to herself.

As she headed home towards the library, a myriad of questions and puzzles ran through her head. Why was she in the town square? How did she get there? Why was she so exhausted that she felt like she would pass out at any moment? The last thing she could remember, she was lying in her bed, trying to get to sleep at around midnight. Then that sound disturbed her dozing, and she saw…

Her stomach clenched over as the memory returned to her. Last night, when she had heard that noise, and saw that…thing in the window. That strange figure, which had just stood there, framed by the moonlight. Who reached out with some sort of extra limb to… wrap around her…

Further speculation and rumination was cut off as she suddenly succumbed to a fit of coughing. Hacking and wheezing, she staggered a few paces more before collapsing.

But as soon as it had begun, it passed.

Twilight got to her hooves; her ears drooped in a mix of fatigue and utter bafflement. Hardly like her to suddenly collapse in a fit of coughing. It hadn't been like she had swallowed something or she was choking; more like the sort of cough one gets with a bad cold, trying to hack up phlegm or mucus.

And yet, for all that coughing, she felt fine!

"That's it!" she muttered irritably to herself "I have to figure out what's going on here. And I know the perfect place to start!"

The door of the library swung open and Twilight staggered in. The hollowed-out tree seemed ominously quiet, even for a library, at this early hour. She smiled as she heard the gentle snores of Spike in the next room. He'd be up and about preparing breakfast in about an hour, completely oblivious to anything that happened.

Twilight then hurried to the camera she had left perched in the hall, facing the doorway, eagerly casting her eye about the floor, hoping to see a pile of photos from last night.

"Nothing?"

The word echoed gently through the library. The camera hadn't taken a single photo all night.

The other camera!

She scurried up the ladder to the landing where she slept, pausing in surprise as she clambered onto the ledge.

Below the camera were piled dozens upon dozens of photos. So it wasn't a dream after all, Twilight thought to herself.

The unicorn levitated the heap of photos, neatly sorting them into a stack. She flipped through the photos one by one.

At first, it appeared that several of the first photos merely caught animals outside the window, detecting their movement and snapping a photo. Many were very impressive, and could be worth much to a nature photographer, but Twilight callously tossed them aside.

As she flipped through them, she saw in one, a strange shadow emerged from the bottom of her window frame. With every photo it moved further upwards, until it filled the window. As soon as the figure came into full view in the photos, the images began to take a strange turn. Several looked distorted or fuzzy, as if something was interfering with the camera. Many still had visual tears or appeared too dark or too bright to make anything out. Equally many were mostly clear, perhaps a little blurry. But from what Twilight could make out of the figure, she began to wish they had been distorted too.

It was like something from a very strange dream. Clearly some sort of pony, it seemed to have no semblance of a mane or tail. With fur a pale off-white colour, it stood out like a sore hoof in the camera flash. What gender the pony was, Twilight had no idea. Its shape hinted at neither mare nor stallion; too angular and sharp to be female, but too thin to be male.

It appeared to be wearing some sort of jacket, almost like a black suit. And was that a red tie hanging loosely from its neck? Or was it something else?

But what unnerved Twilight the most was its face. Or rather, its lack thereof. In every picture of the strange pony, only a blurry haze could be seen where its face should be.

As she flipped through these disturbing images, she watched the clouds in the sky behind the pony float past, as it remained motionless. Then, a small black lump sprouted from its back.

Twilight began to flip faster through the photos, as the lump grew into an appendage, like a fifth limb. It extended, projecting from its back, snaking through the air and out of the shot.

The photos were moving so fast, the static images came to hideous, animated life as Twilight frantically watched the image of the tendril moving back towards its host, pulling something with it.

Twilight dropped the stack of photos as she came into view, gently led by the tendril up through the window and out of sight

Silence in the library, save for the echo outside of a town slowly waking up.

She slumped to the floor in a state of complete shock. With a gentle glow, she slowly gathered the fallen photographs up from the ground, placing them slowly on a nearby desk.

"What w-w-was that?" she whispered to herself, her voice quivering with terror. "Wh-what was that th-th-th-thing?"

"What was what thing, Twilight?"

She squealed in fright as a voice rang out from behind her. She spun round, her frazzled mane whipping about her face as she turned to see Rarity standing in the doorway.

Twilight breathed a great sigh of relief as every muscle of her aching limbs relaxed "Oh Rarity…phew, you scared me half to death!"

"Sorry, darling." Rarity replied as she dusted her hooves off on the mat. "But I saw you through the window, and then I heard you talking to yourself about something…Good heavens, look at you! You look a complete fright!"

The young unicorn stealthily placed herself between Rarity and the desk where the photos lay in a stack. "Yeah, I…I had a bit of a, er… a strange night." Twilight muttered as she looked her frazzled and mussed self over.

Rarity trotted over to her friend "Oh, I know, I know. I saw you last night, and I thought to myself..."

"Wait, what?"

Rarity saw the confused look on Twilight's face. "Don't you remember, Twilight? You were out walking about late last night."

Her face grew pale as Twilight heard this. Had Rarity seen all this? Had she seen…it?

"I must say, you certainly were acting strange. I was dusting off a drew out the window- I was finishing for the night, y'know- and I see you walking down the street, like you were off to visit somepony! I called down to you, but I guess you didn't hear me, because you just kept going down the street…"

"And… was there anypony, you know…else?" Twilight asked, dreading the answer.

But Rarity shook her head, "No, you were on your own, which certainly seemed odd to me. Of all the ponies in Ponyville, I can't say you were one I expected to see waltzing down the street alone at night! Don't you know how dangerous that could be?"

Twilight one again felt her legs give way beneath her, and she sat down hard on the floor. This was getting ridiculous!

"Although, not long after, I did see this other pony…"

Rarity was amazed at how quickly Twilight moved over to her, standing almost snout to snout.

"What other pony? Did you see somepony else? What did he look like? Was he wearing a black suit?"

Gently pushing Twilight out of her personal space, Rarity cleared her throat and carried on "Ahem, yes, I saw another pony, trotting the same direction as you, not long after you passed my house…wait, pardon? He? A…a black suit?"

Twilight blushed. Had she said too much? "Oh, er…it's nothing…"

The white unicorn sniffed "Well, they certainly weren't wearing a suit, but they were wearing some sort of black coat, but it was too dark to see them clearly… Twilight, darling, are you sure you feel alright? You don't seem yourself today."

She sighed "It's nothing…Like I said, I've…I've had a strange night."

That afternoon, Mr Snapshot got one of the strange requests of his time selling cameras. Twilight Sparkle, that charming young unicorn who worked at the library, came in and asked if he sold any video cameras, less than a day after she had visited last, buying two cameras and a tripod. Of course he did, he told her, and showed her the range of fine camcorders he sold at his shop. That was when she made a strange query. Was there any way she could carry a camcorder with her at all times, and film everything she does?

Now getting suspicious, Snapshot showed her a clever contraption that had just come in from the manufacturers. It incorporated a tiny video camera into a harness worn over the shoulders, with the camera held over the front, filming everything from the pony's point of view.

Twilight immediately bought this specialist camera, depositing a large bag of money on his counter. With that, as quickly as she had entered, the young unicorn exited. Mr Snapshot stood in his shop, watching her go, now deeply confused about what she might be up to. Fillies these days.

Not far away, on the fringe of the Everfree Forest, a young squirrel skittered along the bough of a gigantic chestnut tree. Drat! No chestnuts in this one either. His mother had told him it was the wrong season, but that didn't stop the young animal searching anyway.

But he paused as he felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise. Turning his gaze behind him, he saw the dense, dark trees of Everfree. His mother had warned him to never go in there. It was an unnatural place in Equestria, where nothing worked the same way as the rest of the land.

Deep in amongst those dark, twisted trees, something evil awoke for another busy night.