You draw another arrow, but pause for a moment.

The first arrow you fired did no damage; it just made the shadow angry. Even a shot to the face has only seemed to stun it. What good would firing several more do but waste time?

A violent streak takes hold of you. You wrap the blanket back around you and lower the hood to half cover your eyes. After drawing and stringing another arrow with your mouth, you slowly progress toward the edge of the doorway.

You lift your head until you can see the edge of the shadow’s eyes, then close your own, aim slightly higher, and fire.

The following sound is so incredibly loud and terrifying you fall backwards! Inspecting the situation reveals the giant with its head lowered and one hoof covering its face, stomping with its hindlegs Chances are you probably missed your mark, but you must have hit something!

Quickly now! While it’s recoiling!

Without much direction, you remove your blanket and cover your head up with it before looking at the shadow again. Nothing happens, but then again the weave is thick enough that you can’t see through it. Evidently, you have to make eye contact with the giant for it to blind you. You add that to the knowledge that it doesn’t have to be consciously aware of you to use the power; it’s automatic.

You then whip the blanket out of the doorway, to which the giant immediately lifts and steps on it. You quickly try to tug at the blanket, but it doesn’t budge. Waiting a few seconds, the giant lifts its hoof again and you retrieve the blanket unharmed. The blanket might act as a physical barrier if the giant’s body is somehow harmful to touch, but using it as a shield seems impossible with out further direction.

You draw your multitool and inspect it. Small and large knife, bunch of screwdrivers, can and bottle opener, corkscrew, scissors, a few different files of varying coarseness, tiny ruler, reamer, magnifying glass, two kinds of saws, wire stripper, pliers, chisel, tweezers, toothpick you’ve never used as you question its sterility, some… thing with a hole in it for sewing, and a few other things you don’t rightly know the use for, the least of which being some kind of hook. Probably should have picked up the manual from your house while you were in town.

Oh hey! A ball-point pin! Forgot it had one of these!

You return to the doorway that leads into the boxed canyon. The shadow is still there and it doesn’t look like it’s going to give up and go away anytime soon. Being that it’s staring at the doorway, there’s absolutely no way to sneak past. Stupid giant stallion and his stupid… muscular body… Suddenly the shadows on its body seem to almost ripple with intense force. You place a hoof to your face and feel it getting warm. You steal a glance from inside the doorway at the shadow’s face and catch its vortex-like eyes. Instantly your vision darkens to an almost complete black before you pull your head back inside and gasp in fear, waiting for your vision to return.

Nope nope nope nope nope. What were you thinking?! Not gonna happen. Ever. Never ever ever.

————–

This is a puzzle-type situation. Eventually the shadow will give up and go away, but quite a bit of time will pass before then. Players can either continue to try and figure out how to proceed faster (or any number of other things), or vote to wait it out.

Here’s your inventory again.

You edge close to the doorway and look outside to try and spy any sign of your friends. Unfortunately the blizzard is much too thick and obscures any detail you might be looking for, like hoofprints in the snow. If you’d had the Binoculars you might be able to see something definitive, but if you recall right, Twist has them.

Other than that, everything outside appears as it did before. Ignoring the large shadow staring daggers at you, that is. But you’re careful not to meet its gaze again.

You backtrack along what is most certainly, and without a doubt, a dark tunnel. Because there are no other paths leading off of it. And it’s poorly lit.

You climb the stairs at the end of the tunnel and come back out at the armory. Since you’re already here, you take his opportunity to grab 2 more Arrows, bringing your total back up to 20. From there you head back into the grand hall with the large table and the metal chairs. You look around but the only exit from here other than the armory, is back outside where you first entered from. And where this all began.

Well…Exit found.

From here you can even see the still-open gate from where you first used the key. Looking into the brightness outside, where the sun isn’t obscured by the snowfall, you check the time on your nifty Multitool to find only an hour has passed. It’s currently 9 AM.

You take stock in your current situation, to try and clear your mind. You aren’t necessarily trapped, just separated from your friends. Though it’s dark, there doesn’t appear to be any clear danger where you’re standing.

You still have your Cloak-Style Blanket, which appears undamaged. After firing two Arrows, you still have 18 left plus the Bow. You have your Food and Water supply along with your Multitool and the Rope. You’ve Lost your Clawed Gauntlet in the fight; if not permanently than at least for the moment.

Now that you’ve calmed down, you can’t help but look down at your chest. You could have sworn you saw something being pulled out while you were pinned against the wall. Then seeping back in once you were rescued, but there’s no visible marking. On the other hoof, you now have a very unsightly scorch mark on your right shoulder. But with any luck that’ll heal over time.

The Giant Shadow has stopped striking the doorway, but it’s still waiting just outside.

Once you manage to shake the notion of a shotgun wedding, you turn around and run as fast as your little pony legs can carry you! Looking back you see exactly what you expected to see; even your fastest can’t outpace the grand stride of the giant’s booming hooffalls.

Having no idea where to turn with it gaining, you make for the awning and pass through back into the dark tunnel. Corridor. Whatever!

You travel partway into the darkness before turning around and hearing pounding on the stone walls. But oddly enough, that’s all you hear. No crashing of stone, no cave in; just a dull pounding.

Curiosity gets the better of you and you approach the opening back out into the… courtyard? Are we going to call the massive space a courtyard now? Focus!

The giant has its knees bent and is standing under the awning kicking at the doorway you’re on the other side of. But for some reason, its attempts are futile. No matter how many times, or how hard it strikes, it seems incapable of causing any structural damage. Not even a chip!

Looking back out into the courtyard in between swings, you notice that the giant doesn’t leave any hoofprints in the snow either. You cautiously cover your hoof with your blanket and stretch out to touch the shadow, or see if it can touch you.

It certainly can touch you, and the force is much more powerful than you thought. After you pick yourself up off the floor, you note these discoveries in your head. For the moment, though, you’re unable to regroup with your friends, or even find out if they’re alright!

Your compassion takes over, even through the pain you still feel, and you worry about the electrical shadow as well as Princess, Amy, and Twist (though in your mind you miscounted somewhere when you thought three).

You draw your bow string back and let fly an arrow toward the giant. You really need practice; you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Fortunately, the giant is bigger than a barn and you strike it in the hoof. It pulls its leg back in pain, before seeing where the shot came from.

You don’t have much time to react, the giant shadow is now headed toward you.

You lose the next second or so and stumble awkwardly out into the snow. You become aware of the rhythmic boom of the Giant’s hooffalls, only they’re a little faster, and much louder. Looking up you find that it’s much closer and headed straight for you!

Slipping a few times, you struggle to run as fast as you can toward the hopeful safety of the awning and beyond. But when you look back, the Giant doesn’t seem to be coming toward you anymore. It’s headed for the building your friends are still in. If they come out, that shadow could crush them; its massive size making it impossible to outrun. Alternately, if they stay inside, surely that electrical monster would destroy them.

You still have your bow, 19 arrows, and a sizable lead on the Giant from this position. No matter what decision you make, somepony’s life is going to be put in danger.

You scream in shock! This does little to reassure your allies, but you couldn’t help yourself.

Yelling out at the shadow to stop, that it might hurt somepony, does little to slow its approach. It either doesn’t understand, or you’re just mirroring its intention.

Fight or flight instincts kick in something fierce and you rush ahead, gauntlet raised, shouting out an old and tired meme. You nearly tumble forward when your weapon is wretched from your grasp and attached harmlessly to the shadow’s chest. Your vision flashes again and before you can recover, everything becomes unbearably loud and you feel a horrible shocking pain followed by a powerful blow across your head. Before you can even move you feel yourself lifted off the ground and slammed into a wall. Something presses strongly against your throat and you force your eyes open. Everything is blurry, but you can see the monster’s electrical eyes through your own tears. The shadow has you pinned against the wall with one hoof and the electricity surging through you is so painful it’s paralyzing. You’re rapidly losing consciousness… and something else. Something feels loose in your chest, and you can almost feel it leaking through your skin.

Just when you think you can’t hold on anymore, you’re jerked violently to the right and feel yourself drop to the ground gasping for air. The noise has subsided into a ringing and the electrical pain into a strong tingling feeling on your right side. Through blurred eyes, you could swear you saw something seep back into your chest. Somepony helps you to your feet and pushes you away from the noise and the tingling.

You lose the next few seconds. The next thing you know, Princess is holding your face up to hers with her forehooves and screaming at you to run. That it’s after you, not them.

You’re still in a lot of pain, your breathing is labored, and the edges of your vision are still blurry.

You contemplate taking a very Minecraftian approach and digging to safety. But unfortunately, the real world doesn’t function with Minecraft rules. The stone you’re standing on might as well be impenetrable, and the frozen ground outside would take too long to dig through as well. Nevermind the Giant roaming around out there.

You put your gauntlet away and draw your bow and an arrow. Stringing the arrow by biting down on it with your mouth and pulling the string against the handle with one hoof is difficult, and hard to hold steady. At least you can get a decent bead this way and release by unclenching your teeth.

The short bursts of black lightning become more and more frequent until finally you catch the edge of what appears to be the edge of the silhouette of a pony.

You carefully take aim, but before you can fire you feel a painful burning on your right shoulder and cry out in pain; one of the stray arcs must have hit you! The arrow releases and strikes against the ceiling before falling to the ground, broken in half.

The shadow, formerly looking down, raises its head and you catch a glimpse of its face. If it has eyes, you can’t see them. White electricity frantically jumps from the shadow’s eye sockets, the only thing that isn’t completely black. Its mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Instead, the black electrical field surrounding it intensifies dramatically as lightning arcs in every direction and the shadow continues slowly forward.

You place the bow around your neck and rest it on your back again. Holding your shoulder does little to ease the pain, but your instincts won’t allow you to let go. As you search for something to do, your vision flashes, blinding you for a moment. In that brief half-second, the shadow has leaped at least a meter forward! It continues to shamble slowly, but one or two more jumps and it’ll be on top of you!

You cry out your command, possibly misspeaking in the process, and quickly make your way back to the entrance. Being that you hadn’t gone far, it wasn’t hard to remember how to get there.

Unfortunately, if anything the noise has become louder! Not sure exactly what to do now, you turn around and look down the curved hallway. You can hear the constant hum and occasional buzzing of electricity now matched by a flicker of light from deeper down the hallway.

You were about to make a split-second decision when an arc of black lightning shoots from out of sight and dances across the wall, no less than two meters away from you, and dissipates when it reaches the floor.

Glancing back, your friends are wide-eyed and panicking. Your keen perception picks up no trace of recognition from Princess or Amy; they don’t know anything more about a shadow shooting lightning than you do.

You raise your clawed gauntlet and listen once more. The others take this as a cue to draw and ready their weapons as well.

You can hear it, louder than before. It sounds like the hum of a circuit breaker being strained, occasionally followed by a buzz, like electricity arcing. You can’t decide if it’s further ahead or behind. It seems to be coming from the other side of the wall. If the map can be trusted, that’s the curved hallway that may or may not really curve the length of the building. In retrospect, you never checked.

Just as you’re about to make a decision, you notice something. It’s getting louder, and it’s location is slowly shifting.

It’s moving.

You “go straight” and walk comically into the wall in front of you. You continue to walk in place against the wall to look sort of robotic.

No one’s laughing. It might be serious time again. Whatever was making that buzzing might be dangerous. You could either go left, back, or maybe try listening again.

You ask if the others can hear the buzzing as well, most of them can. Princess says she can’t hear anything; she might have trouble hearing high pitched noises.

You shhh everypony and try to fixate on the sound again, but can’t seem to locate it. Every time you think you might hear it, somepony shifts or asks if anypony else can hear it.

Now you can’t even tell if you’re hearing it again, or if it’s just in your imagination.