Winter Nights

"What now?" Firefly thought as she looked at the dog, which she killed not too long ago. Now the lifeless corpse was hanging limply with paws in front of her, blood dripping on the floor -which in this case was the vehicle's door- and with a hole in its head... She didn't know how long she was here. Looking out the window, she noticed, that the group of beasts was lying comfortably on the ground - watching her.

"Just… Can’t you just go away!?" she said loudly with frustration, then groaning put her hand to her face and rubbed it a little.

Their ears twitched at the sound of her voice. One of them yawned, widely opening its jaws, showing its fangs and a long tongue.

"I need to get out of here, but how?" She looked over herself, then the cabin and searched it a little. Unfortunately she found nothing useful… “I need a distraction.”

She waited, looking at the horizon... it was sunset. A beautiful orange glow painted the clear sky like in some kind of art piece of some famous artists. Time passed as she tried to come up with something, which hasn't involved using her gun or her being torn apart by them. As if listening to her request a loud, stunning and ear-piercing bird noiserang outside. She had to cover her ears to ease the pain, which it gave to her. The dogs huddled their ears and started to run away with their tails between their legs. Then she heard powerful flaps of wings and something big slammed on top of the truck, violently shaking it.

Firefly froze in fear. Her muscles tensed up and felt an unpleasant cold in her stomach. She knew all too well to who or rather to what this sound belonged. "Fury." she thought, as the truck shook again and Hellhound’s dead body has been brutally pulled out. She heard a loud thud, which was followed by snaps, and crunches of flesh.

"This is my chance." she thought, and slowly began climbing up the seats. She picked her head over the edge of truck doors and saw a giant pair of grey, bat wings, which were spread out across street. Said wings belonged to a body size of a humvee, and it was similar to a... lizard? Lizard with sharp, bird claws, long tail ended with a straight, sword-like blade, and head of some kind predatory bird with a long, slightly curved at the end, beak. Its whole body was covered by thick, grey fur. As quiet as she could Firefly slipped out of the cabin, below her on the ground was her sniper rifle - it lies right behind the Fury.

"Just my luck." climbing down she crouched, and started sneaking for her SVD. "Slowly... don't make any noise." The snow was beaten from previous adventure so it didn’t crunched under her. Besides the beast was too busy feeding itself on a corpse of the dead dog to notice Firefly. She was close, her gun was on reach of her hand… "Easy now." redheaded girl began carefully reaching out her hand to grab it by the barrel, but Fury's tail pinned it to the ground.

Firefly for a moment pressed tighter her lips and resisted herself from making irritated noise. She pulled back her hand, and began to think... Looking around, her eyes stopped on a brick, which just so conveniently happened to lie in the snow, then on the trash can nearby. Picking up the item she moved behind one of the cars. Making sure she was close enough to her target she threw the brick in the trash can.

The rumble it made brought Fury's attention. Lifting itself up from the corps it began snarling and screeching in its direction. The girl took the opportunity and leaned out, grabbed the rifle, then pulled it to herself and hide behind the car just in time to avoid being spotted by the beast.

She didn't dared to look and just sat there, holding her breath, clenching her SVD in her hands close to her chest as if it was the most precious thing in the world. Monster snarled in her direction, but did nothing else, after few moments once more she heard sounds of eating. Slowly exhaling through her nose she leaned out from her cover.

As expected the Fury was feasting again, Firefly slowly started backing away occasionally looking behind her shoulder, but not letting her eyes off of the creature for more than a second or two. When sharpshooter girl made some distance between herself and bird-thing, she turned around and began to limp away. It was almost night, and she knew that she had to find a shelter.

"I can't stay outside alone and injured during the night..." she thought as she turned into small alley between two fawn yellow buildings "...might as well shoot myself."

The green eyed woman took the map from her pocket, and looked it over as well as her surrounding for landmarks or name of the street - trying to find where was the nearest "safe house". Thanks to the last few rays of sun and a small blue board with written name of the street placed on the wall of the building, she quickly located where she was and found a shelter marked on the map with a green circle - it wasn't far away. Firefly turned into another street, and picked up her pace.

A few minutes later the sun was gone completely, the scenery around turned into shades of black and dark grey. Redhead sniper has found herself in front of an old bank. Throwing the SVD over her shoulder and pulling out her handgun she stuck to the wall near the entrance, then looked inside through the window... The room was dark, but she still could see the individual elements of the environment - mostly desks, chairs, computers and other office furnitures. Without much thought she slowly opened the door and stepped inside.

A crack of opening doors echoed through the building much louder than she would liked to. It actually made her flinch a little, but nonetheless she slowly, step after step, entered and like a programmed robot quickly checked the corners to the left and right, but expect for a long dead plant she found nothing. Moving slowly she went further, while scanning with her gun her surrounding, her ironsight scanned the desks and the area behind them.

Now when she was further inside she spotted a few pairs of opened doors, but a crack coming somewhere to her right, distracted her and made to quickly turn in its direction. She accidently knocked off the desk an empty teacup, but her lightning reflex allowed to catch it halfway down the way, then put it back and slowly continued searching.

Again she heard a quiet noise of something falling on the ground coming from behind of the simple wooden door at the end of the corridor. She felt her heart beat quickening as well as breath so she tried to get a hold of it. While finally approaching the small door she felt something off in the air, but couldn’t put her finger on what exactly it is.

This time a muffled squeak reached her ears. Something was there, but she had no idea what. Slowly she limped to the doors and put her left hand on the handle and with the other held the pistol. Aiming through the ironsight she flung opened them with a hard bang when it hit the wall. It was a small closed from, which jumped out a giant rat and speed off somewhere.

“Fuck!” she yelled in surprise and almost pulled the trigger. She put her hand, with which she opened the door, to her mouths and muttered quietly “Shit… just fuckin’ rat…” but then something launched her inside the small cabin and in the process she let go of her gun.

While she was focused on sneaking to the doors, she failed to notice a ghoul sneaking up on her. But luckily to her the rat which ran from the closed ran into him, which made him stumble and fell on her before it could bit into her neck. The monster was a 90 kilogram humanoid being resembling a male dressed in a badly torn, bloodied suit. His eyes were entirely black, skin pale as a snow with horrible bluish lines all over its body, which actually were his small veins. He had no nose, his jaw was moved forward, which gave him almost caricatural appearance, with dozens of needle-like teeth. He also smelled as if he was dead for a very long time. The rotten stench, which she felt from so close was just disgusting.

Firefly wanted to swallow some saliva, but her mouths became dry and almost failed to resist herself from puking.

He was much heavier than her and he surprised her, so all she managed to do was to spin around to face him before the monster pinned her to the ground with his massive body. Somehow she managed to pull up her knee to her chest, which made her a little easier to keep him away, but not for long. He tried to grab and dug his long, unnaturally curved into small hooks nails in her, but she grabbed both of his hands and tried to push him away.

Monster wheezed and gurgled in frustration all the while shattering with his teeth in a furious attempt of biting her. The both trashed from side to side for few moments, but the redhead wasn’t able to push him away. However, what she was able to do was to roll on the side. Using the knee, which earlier separated them she pushed herself away and hit the back of her head at something. For a moment dark blimps appeared before her eyes, but her trained body hasn't waited for her to recover and acted for her.

Like a machine, she automatically pulled out her knife, then half got up and launched herself on top of the mindless monster, which also wanted to get up. When her vision recovered she was on top of him and her knife was halfway down the way his head. With a crunch it dug into top of his skull, which made him only look at her with a weird expression before going limp.

Panting heavily she looked at the exit from cabin and saw how dozen more monsters dressed mostly in an office wear, seemingly slowly approached her. Some of them were males, some were females, but the one who brought her attention was maybe six year old boy dressed in shorts and black t-shirt, at the front. The sight of his black eyes, bloodied, deformed face made her freeze and before she recovered the whole group was way too close to the gun for her to go out and grab it and too close to her to ran away. So, quickly thinking, she shut the door and went blind for a moment because of the almost complete darkness. When her eyes adjusted, the herd of monsters was already scratching and pounding at the doors making inarticulate noises and moans.

She stood there pulling the handle to keep the door closed and looked around the claustrophobically small and dark room. There was a lot of things in here, but the question was: if any of it could be useful in this situation?

On the shelves and in the corner she saw mostly detergents, brushes, buckets, rags and other useless items. What’s worse the dead body began to emit all of the stinking fluids on the floor. She gagged a few times and threw up to the side...

“God... dammit.” she murmured through gritted teeth and coughed a few times “God fucking dammit! Why it always has to be me?!” she half yelled in frustration and knocked on the door with her forehead a few times, then tried to breath through her mouths. "Just… fuck... I've hope Reaper is okay..." she said quietly to herself.

She could hear a firecrackers-like explosions outside and then, after a moment from behind doors, and... shouting? Twilight was woken up by this and i made her feel confused. She wanted to open the door, but remembered what happened when she did it yesterday. She backed off, and started searching the room for a weapon... Besides the glass she used earlier there wasn't anything else. However her eyes stopped on a broken chair.

"I can still make a weapon..." she walked up to it, and raised her forelegs then stomped on it a few times, breaking it into pieces. She took the leg from it with her magic and examined it. Even though the time and weather seemed to be harsh, she noticed, that the wood still seemed to be solid enough. Magic was a good weapon, but she knew she couldn’t use it forever and knew, that whatever was behind this doors could be immune to it.

There was a really long and unnerving moment of silence, and then the desk was slightly moved by opening door. The unicorn walked to them and quickly tried to close them by pushing the desk back. She felt more pressure from other side, but eventually was able to close them. Then it stopped for a moment only to hear a muffled yelling.

"Hej! Ktoś tam jest?! Nie chcę cie skrzywdzić!" she hasn't replied. The voice was definitely male and didn't sound threateningly, but at the same time it didn't sound too friendly either.

"What is this language? I never heard it before... " she wondered.

"Słyszysz mnie!? Jestem przyjazny i chcę Ci pomóc... Proszę, przynajmniej odpowiedz!" this time it-he sounded more… desperate.

She put flat her ears and her eyes drifted randomly around the room as if trying to find an answer for something. She looked out the window and tried to teleport herself outside, but as soon as her horn light up it gave her a rather bad, uncomfortable feeling. She felt how world seemed to spun around and felt how her legs were getting weak. She cased immediately too weak to use anything above basic magic.

She rubbed her forehead and looked back at the iron entrance "Considering what happened so far whoever was behind the door could be dangerous and-” her train of thoughts was interrupted by three knocks “...what?"

Now of all things, that was unexpected for her... She tilted slightly her head in confusion, thinking, that maybe she imagined that.

"Why that... thing was knocking on the door? Is it trying to be friendly? What if this is a trap? I have so many questions... Maybe he could help?" Twilight didn't know what to do. She needed answers... But what if the thing behind this door was dangerous? "I fought with Nightmare Moon and Discord for Celestia's sake! I-I can handle whatever there is... right?"

It-he knocked again, but this time lavender unicorn made up her mind, and decided to open the door. "I need answers." she muttered. Taking deep breath she pulled desk out of the door and rising her improvised club with her magic the door opened...

Standing there was a huge bipedal creature, with dark brown mane… Hair, small beard, and black beanie on top of his head. He had bright blue eyes, wore mostly white clothing, and what looked like some kind of armor. On it's back was large bag, a sword. No; machete, and something she didn't really know how to describe.

Twilight also noticed that the being had injured one of his limbs, which was covered in bandages soaked with fresh blood, and put in what looked like makeshift sling... And on the right side of his face had fresh claw marks similar to hers. There was still some blood left on his cheek and beard. The other... hand -she remembered, that this is what minotaurs have- was close to... some kind of device of unknown propose to her, which was hidden in what looked like some kind of sheath on his hip above an empty a knife sheath. His overall appearance looked rather intimidating.

She looked up at his face, which had an expression of mixed disbelief and exhaustion. Still, she tried to as quietly and less noticeable swallow whatever wetness was left in her muzzle and brought closer to herself the club.

They were examining each other for a while, but eventually it was the creature who was brave enough to speak first. "Um... Cześć?" he said with a deep, and -as expected- tired voice. Twilight thought it was quite nice, in a way gentle, but didn't know what he said.

"I-I'm sorry... I don't understand." She said softly somehow managing to stop quivering of her voice.

The creature was surprised - at least that’s what she deduced from his facial expressions. He stared at her for a moment, looking at her with his weirdly calming, and tired gaze of older person. She wasn’t able to say how old exactly he was, but judging by his face she concluded, that he was rather old. After a moment the male quickly shook off his head, and responded.

"I uh... said hello." He said little awkwardly with a strange accent "I um... My English is a little rusty." Now it was Twilight turn to stare at him in silence. She wondered how it was possible for him to know her language, but snapped out when creature asked a question "Are you going to hurt me with this?" he pointed with his injured limb at the leg from the chair, which she was holding in the air with her magic.

"No, unless you’ll attack me." she answered with little more confidence in her voice. "What are you?" she blurted out not really thinking.

The creature relaxed when she replied, clearly satisfied with the answer. “I think we should introduce each other first, don’t you think?” he replied at first but then he thought for a moment on his own "Um... I think the word was ‘human’..." he looked at her, than around the room and again at her "Can I come in?" Twilight stepped aside for the 'human' walk in. He took off his backpack, walked up to couch and sat down on it.

"Um... My name is Twilight Sparkle, do you have a name?" She asked again.

"Yes..."

She waited for a moment but he didn't say anything else instead began searching for something in his backpack… "Are you going to tell me?" she asked.

"No..." She put flat her ears. "But you can call me... Żniwiarz." she looked at him, and tried to repeat.

Twilight tried to repeat, but failed in doing it right "Zi- Ziniwyias?"

He chuckled and she scratched her leg slightly in embarrassment "My language is hard, don't worry about it." he said with a smirk then looked at dictionary, which lied on the ground. He picked it up and start flipping through pages... "It means ‘Reaper’." he said.

"What happened to the monster?"

'Reaper' brushed a tip of his nose with his thumb, then looked at her tiredly, maybe even sleepy "It's dead." he said without any specific emotions. He looked at his hip with the... device attached to it then at the entrance "Cholera..." he muttered and walked out the door. After a moment he came back with a long knife holstered below the device "I forgot my... knife." He said as if afraid of her reaction and sat back.

Librarian seemed to be disturbed by this "Uh...um t-that explains your wounds." she said, nervously glancing at his weapons. He noticed that and tried to calm her down.

"Relax... I'm not going to hurt you." he paused, and leaned deeper into the couch. Closing his eyes he thought for a few moments "...I never met something like you before, and I already saw too many... strange things." he paused again "You are obviously not from here. Though you are quite beaten up you still are... uh... too... innocent looking?” He gazed at her half opening his eyes. “And your reaction when I told you about monster... You never killed or saw death before, which is impossible here.” He leaned forward resting his arms on his knees he looked at her with this calm, but questioning gaze and almost unnoticeably raised corners of his mouth “How long you were here?" he finally asked.

Twilight somehow was unable to look away as she processed what he had told her. His eyes were calming and hypnotizing… She felt how the anxiety disappears, and is replaced with unnatural peace. "He concluded all of that simply by observing my appearance, and reactions..." She realized, that the human waited for her answer "I uh..." she finally managed to look elsewhere, which in that case was a broken window "...few hours at most... Where am I?"

"Warsaw, Poland." he replied calmly and scratched his uninjured cheek.

His answer confused her even more, which was clearly visible on her face. Like storm through her head went by many thoughts, many chaotic thoughts and every single one of them told her, that she must be really far away from Equestria. She opened and closed her mouth trying to finally decide what to ask next, but eventually she gave up. Probably there was no questions, to which the answer would not confuse her.

"We need to go..." finally said the human, when it became clear, that she won’t be able to ask more questions.

"What? Why?" She asked looking at him with slightly tilted head to the side.

"On the way here I lost, probably the only friend that I have left. We need to find her before the night." he said passing her slightly woobly.

Twilight wasn't sure what to think about his physical shape. It was clear he is not in the best condition. "And I should go with you, because?"

He stopped at the doorway and said "Because... you can go with me and live, or you can stay here and be on your own, which is not a good since you have no idea how to survive here... make your choice." then walked away.

Twilight just stood there - thinking. As much as she didn't want to admit that... he was right. She didn't know anything about this place, and if there were more monsters - he was the person who could at least protect her to some degree. Besides... deep inside she felt really lonely and didn't want to be alone here. Hearing opening door she realized that “Reaper” was going to leave her.

"Wait!" she yelled, and rushed out behind him, but stopped, when she saw a body lying in pool of blood in the middle of the room. The wolf like creature from previous night was lying there dead with holes in its body, one in the arm, two in a chest, one in a throat and one in the head, there was also a knife wound between its ribs... The unicorn just stood there frozen in place staring at the body until Reaper spoke up.

"Twilight..." she slowly looked at him "...we need to go, nights outside are dangerous... and my only friend is there." trembling she walked up to him, he was holding the device in his hand.

"H-how did you do that?" she asked quietly.

"With this..." he raised his weapon "...it's a handgun. Dangerous if you don't know how to use it." then slowly pushing the door he looked around. "Clear... come." he said and walked out in a small, grey, dark staircase with Twilight close behind. He turned his head to her "Stay quiet." then they slowly made their way down stairs - human leading the way. They stopped, again, at the entrance doors. Reaper looked outside on the street, but haven't seen anything and that was what made him worry.

"Is something wrong?" Twilight whispered, he nodded.

"Before I've found you, I've been chased by a group of dogs and... they don't give up easily unless there is something stronger than them." he put his gun under his injured arm and untied his knife with his good hand "Take it." he said handing it to Twilight. She wanted to say something, but he cut her off adding "Self defence." Unicorn heisted, but took the weapon with her telekinesis and strapped it to her right front hoof "Follow me, and stay close." With that they walked out side...