Chapters An Unfortunate Turn Of Events
I raced through the clouds above Cloudsdale, swerving left and right, down below, other fillies were in a panic. The school had been trampled, the trees stripped of leaves. And Ace was still missing. Little did anyone know, that little Ace was all the way over near Mare-eeba, only twenty metres away from the cliffs. Waiting for her was a two hundred metre drop to an icy, unforgiving sea, littered with rocks sticking through the water, and just visible were the dorsal fins of twenty or so sharks, slicing through the waves like a knife through butter...
It was only dumb luck that my friend, Pencil Case was flying over that area at the time. It had been two days since she had gone missing, and when she was returned safely the whole town threw a big celebration. Unfortunately, Ace had been in a strong hypnotic state, and after being revived was never the same again. Two weeks later every thing was running smoothly again. That was when we found Soda Pop unconscious and bleeding in the broom closet...
It was almost Winter and things had been going wrong all over the place. I got frozen solid in a block of ice, Cloud Chaser was found on the top of the bell tower, and ten other ponies were lost in the everfree forest. Everypony in school had been in some kind of mishap, all except two; Grim dark and Pencil Case. There were only 18 fillies and colts left in the school. The rest were in Mareville hospital with minor injuries. It all seemed rather odd at the time, yet the next day made everything so clear, it seemed silly that nopony suspected anything, and would bring me closer to success than had happened before.
"OW!!", I whispered to myself as I picked myself up off the floor and onto my own four hooves. There was a rustling of fabric and the rhythmic sound of fast moving hooves as the cloaked foal ran off into the darkness. These were soon joined by my own as I cantered in hot pursuit. The foal didn't seem to know where they were going half the time, and Soon i had them in a closed room, alone in the darkness.
I reached out with my magic to rip off their cloak and reveal their identity as another strand of glowing purple magic gently closed and locked the door behind me. I can't remember the next few seconds. I only remember waking, on a stony floor, pain tearing through the side of my head and my right wing, which appeared to be broken. the foal galloped toward the door and began banging on it. Thankfully, the door held. I winced as i stood up, and felt a trickle of warm wet liquid run down my furry brown face. I mustered all of my strength, and as the foal had their back to me, I lifted my hind legs up and BUCKED them into the cloaked pony's foreleg. As I put the down again I noticed a drop of red sliding down the foal's foreleg, and land with a fain drip on the paved stone floor. The pony stopped bashing the door and stiffened. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, their hoof lashed out, as the foal turned toward me, and hit me in the muzzle, and I slammed into the wall in the corner of the small room.
I looked up at the foal, hidden in shadow, as I wiped the trickle of blood oozing from my lip away. There was no escape. I tried to squeeze myself further into the narrow corner. The foal looked down at me and raised a sharp hoof to bring down upon me once more, and as they did so, their cloak fell onto the floor, exposing their true self. Only two words of the thousand in my head managed to escape my lips as I stared in horror and disbelief. "Pencil Case?"
Pencil Case only smiled with a deranged and somewhat proud look on his face. He stepped away from me and kicked the stone wall to his left. A large hole appeared, not big enough for a goat, and too big for a chicken, but the perfect size.... for a foal.
"So, you figured it out, huh? How does it feel? How does it feel to have your best friend stand before you, as you quake with fear? I'd feel 'simply awful' in your place, wouldn't you agree?" All I could do is stand there as my friend, my best friend, revealed himself as a betrayer, a backstabber, a liar. I could feel the tears streaming down my face as the pain in my wing became irrelevant compared to the piercing pain that seemed to wrench my heart out of my chest.
"I would love to continue our game, little foalish filly, but, rules are rules, and now you know who I am, I can't let you live, at least not for long. Any last requests before you become Cerberus food?"
A low growling seemed to echo through the room, and I gulped to think of the fate that would become of me. Death by being fed to Cerberi was an ancient and excruciatingly painful means of torture. And this one seemed hungry...
Tears were streaming down my face.
"HOW COULD YOU?!" I screamed, "How could you do this? We were... best friends...."
I looked up at the power crazed face, and tried and failed to stand up. Them, suddenly, as orange magic came towards me, the colour of the magic began to waver from orange to green, and his coat darkened, his mane slowly became dark green, his wings becoming transparent, and a sickly turquoise colour. He was a changeling....
Suddenly, he began screaming,
"I'm sorry, oh gracious one, please, have mercy, please, I don't wa- AAAAAAAH!!!!!" he screamed as he began glowing until he simply, faded away....
"He was far less than worthy," a familiar voice came from behind me, "but at least he got you down here."
I whirled around to find a black filly, with a dark green mane, pink eyes, and a skull on their flank. Grim Dark...
"GRIM DARK, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, WHERE'S PENCIL?!" I bellowed.
She just smiled manically, as her horn began to glow, as I'd never seen before! She was wreathed in red light for just a moment, that seemed an eternity, and as she emerged, I immediately knew that she was a changeling too.
"Do you have ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT WAS TO GET YOU DOWN HERE?? How many LOOPS I HAD TO JUMP THROUGH??" I ALMOST PASSED OUT KEEPING THAT SPELL ON YOUR FOALISH TEACHER!!" She screamed, " But now you're here, and I WILL HAVE THE POWER OF SPECTRA!!!"
She leaped at me, sinking her fangs deeply into my chest. I shook her off, confused and staggering with pain.
"Power of spectra??" I asked.
"AHAHAHAHA!! As if you don't know! The power is unlike anything in Equestria, it is said it's even more powerful than CELESTIA!!" She explained, then pounced on me and dealt blow after blow. I struggled to remain conscious, when suddenly, the blows stopped. A red light pierced the darkness, and a sharp pain raced through my mind.
And that's when everything went black.
I woke, groggily, in a dark hollow. There were several blobs of some strange substance scattered on the walls here and there. The only light was a dim one coming from some point on the ceiling. And there were changelings everywhere. To my right a changeling was talking with Grim. They were just within earshot, but spoke as if nopony could hear. And then I heard the words that sent chills down my spine.
"Everything is prepared my Queen. The extraction has begun."
Those words rang through my mind as the world grew fuzzy and a tube was attached to my horn.
The extraction has begun....
I struggled to remain conscious as a dull ache swept through my body, my horn being it's origin. A few shouts echoed through the hallway to my left, and words made their way to my dulled hearing as I drowsily turned towards the source of the commotion.
"INTRUDERS............ COMING THIS WAY....... EVERYPONY........ ON THE FLOOR....... TOO STRONG........"
A sharp pain threatened to snap my small body in two. I screamed loudly. A single, shouted word, reached my ears, as two all-too-familiar voices made my ears perk up in alertness.
"SPECTRUM!"
Suddenly, a crowd of changelings, obviously terribly injured, burst into the room, and I snapped out of my drunken stupor in relief as a blue pegasus colt and a grey coated unicorn quickly followed, one brandishing a blood-stained dagger, one swinging a bulky and incredibly strong mechanical hoof.
A movement directed my attention towards Grim who had been hooked up to a panel and several cords had been attached to her horn, each carrying a steady stream of every colour of the rainbow. A scream resounded, and I drowsily came to the realisation that it had belonged to me. My sensed dulled again quickly, and I looked over to the new arrivals. They were galloping over to me while being overwhelmed by more changelings than I had ever seen in my life.
And then the world went black.
I jerked my head over to the three other occupants of the room.
“Wh-What happened?” I asked, eyes open wide and irises constricted in horror.
They all turned their eyes away, ears flattened against their heads. They looked at their hooves, their injuries, the walls, anything other than meeting my gaze.
“Cyborg, what’s going on?” I said sternly, focusing my intense cerulean orbs on the small blue colt.
He sighed, “Grim stole your colours. Sh-She took over. We couldn’t stop her.” He ended with a choke as his breath caught in his throat and a drop of moisture slid down his face. A small spark from the mechanical part of his complexion made him wince in pain.
“What do you mean, ‘stole my colours?’.” I asked as my brow furrowed in complete and utter confusion.
Once again, not a single pair of eyes met mine.
I began to gesture pleadingly with my left foreleg but stopped midway as dread replaced confusion.
It was grey. The whole leg was grey, the sharp hoof, the fur; the whole thing lacked any bright colouration at all. I looked down and a stab of horror ripped into my chest as I found the same grey colour all over my once brown coat.
I pulled a tuft of my mane into my line of sight to find that it too had lost the bright rainbow hues it once contained. Speaking had become a thing of the past as I stared blankly at the two injured colts in front of me. My mouth was hanging open and I could feel the familiar sting of tears at the back of my eyes.
“Spectrum?”
My ears perked up at the sound. The mouths of the two in front of me had not moved. My thoughts flitted to the limbs wrapped around me when I woke up. My head jerked to the side as I found the source of the voice.
Pencil.
I lunged and pinned his legs with my own. My tail swished in rage as he looked up at me with frightened eyes.
“Spectrum, w-what are you doing?” He squeaked.
“He’s the real one, Spec.” a voice came from behind.
I looked to Cyborg and Cocoa, who looked confused and worried.
“How do you know that, CJ?” I asked with my muzzle crinkled in anger. This was, after all, the face that had tried to make Cerberus food out of me.
“Well look at him!” Came the exasperated reply. Confused, I returned my attention to the quaking pony beneath me. This time I noticed the bruises scattered across his skin, the patches where fur was missing, the cuts and scrapes marring the orange coat, and the odd angle of his right hind leg and left wing.
He was broken beyond belief.
I stepped off, and my brow tilted upward in guilt. His expression softened, bringing the collection of bags under his hazel eyes to my awareness.
He gave a weak smile, before collapsing, unconscious, to the hard dirt floor. I looked up at the two other occupants of the room.
“He stayed up the whole time you were out trying to wake you up.” Cyborg stated.
I paced the room as the gears in my mind began turning again;
There had to be a way to get out of here.
We Need To Get Out Of Here
The rhythmic sound of trotting hooves hitting dry dirt filled the air in the small cell. I paced as my brain tried and failed to come up with any sort of plan. I glanced around the room. Cyborg and Cocoa were talking about everything and nothing to get their minds off of their injuries. Pencil was still out cold. I sighed and went back to pacing.
Suddenly, a panel that had been previously non-existent opened and revealed a rather large passageway, in which stood a changeling holding a plate of what appeared to be food and water in the hold of it's glowing turquoise magic.
After placing it on the ground, it kicked the side of the passageway and the panel closed again.
I suddenly became very aware of the grumbling noises my stomach was making, and grabbed the food; a piece of crusty bread.
After ripping it into quarters and sharing the pieces around (saving Pencil's for later), I took a moment to stare at my reflection in the small bowl of water. The only colour came from the cerulean of my eyes, but even they had been significantly greyed over. My eyes filled with tears once more at the random purple splodges marring the grey surface of my face, and the lines of dark red that betrayed cuts I had earned. They spilled over when I caught sight of my horn. It was the same grey as the rest of my coat, and an honourable length, but what caused the salty water to overflow was the long, deep crack that ran from the top to somewhere near the base.
In a panic, I looked around and found a loose pebble on the dusty floor. I focused all of my energy toward the appendage on my forehead to attempt to pick up the small rock.
Nothing.
A twinge of hot white pain shuddered through my head, but otherwise; nothing.
I could feel my pulse accelerating. My ears plastered to my head as I looked downwards. Magic was no longer an option.
I looked up at the other residents of the room. Sometime during my plight CJ and Cyborg had walked over to the approximate area that the moving panel had been at. They were chatting quietly to one another. A nod was exchanged, and Cyborg rammed the right side of his body into the wall. A small crack appeared. My ears perked forward in interest and I walked toward them.
"Yo CJ! What are you doing?" I asked.
"Trying to escape." Came the sharp retort, his nostrils flaring in annoyance.
A dull thud echoed through the small space, followed by a grunt.
I looked back over to Cyborg. His shoulder piece, the one he had been assaulting the wall with, was dented. Badly.
I trotted over and gingerly tapped the damaged area. I felt a jolt of electricity and Cyborg winced.
"Well, that rules that out." I stated, shaking my hoof to get the tingly feeling to go away.
The room had gotten significantly darker during this time, so I stood on my hind legs and peeked out of the small barred window. The nighttime had crept up on us, and I noticed how tired everyone looked.
"We'll figure out a plan in the morning."
I slept for about 4 hours before Pencil began thrashing and crying. He kept pawing the ground next to him. It took a while to realise the place he was searching was the very place I had occupied while unconscious. I walked over, being careful not to wake the others, lay down behind him and snaked my forelegs around his waist. He immediately turned around and wrapped his forelegs around my neck like a vice. The cries turned to whimpers before stopping altogether. He buried his face into my neck and I fell asleep ten minutes later.
I awoke to a warm furry body pressed up against my own. I let out a high pitched scream, making all other occupants of the small room wake with a start. Unfortunately, that put a certain pastel orange face in the line of fire of my flailing hooves. WHACK. Plink. Drip.
Pencil yelped as the hard appendage came into contact with his mouth, and we watched as a shard of enamel fell onto the floor with a small noise. His mouth filled with the taste of copper and there were rivulets of red running from where his lip had split. My mouth formed an "O" as I repeatedly apologised and fussed over his injury. I tried to cast a simple healing charm to hold the wound closed and almost fainted from the splitting pain that racked my entire body. I shook my head and in a second it was gone.
A glance around the room revealed that a changeling had replaced our food supply. We ate in silence, Pencil with a bit of difficulty thanks to the weak bonding enchantment CJ had cast on his lip, not to mention his chipped tooth. We took turns for a bit thinking of a way out while the rest of us tried distracting ourselves from the situation at hand with games and jokes. After about half an hour I noticed the air was getting rather thick and glanced at the window to check for a breeze. My throat constricted in horror at the sight I was greeted with. There was nothing but dirt wall all around us. If we didn't get out soon, we were going to run out of air.
It suddenly felt as if the breaths I was taking were too big. I walked backward in absolute terror, pupils constricted to pinpricks. The others in the room looked at me in confusion, and I managed to stutter out a small "The w-window...". They all simultaneously glanced at the wall. Cocoa squeaked. Cyborg gasped. Pencil just stood there, still as stone.
I got up and started pacing. We had to get out somehow, or we were going to die. The realisation hit me like a brick wall, and I paced faster, racking my brain for ideas. Cy opened a small compartment on his mechanical hoof and pulled out a few bits and pieces, beginning to fiddle and tinker something out of them. Pencil tapped his chin for a minute before beginning to hit his head against the wall repeatedly. CJ just sat there, rolling around every once in a while.
It went on like this for half an hour, but by then the heaviness in the air told us we didn't have long left. I could feel my eyelids getting heavy and struggled to keep them open as my chest moved up and down in short, shallow, uneven breaths. Pencil was sweating profusely and the others weren't in any better condition. Suddenly, CJ broke down crying quietly, repeating over and over how he didn't want to die. Cy went over to comfort him, and Pencil collapsed on the ground, mumbling something about being tired. His eyelids drooped to half-mast, and the uneven rise and fall of his chest was barely visible. In a fit of frustration, I put all of my meagre strength into bucking the wall as hard as my air-deprived body could.
Immediately, a passage opened next to where I had hit.
I took in great, heaping gulps of oxygen, and went back in to find Pencil in a small coughing fit, but otherwise fine, and CJ slowly unfurling his small body, his tear stained face breaking into a grin. Cyborg, on the other hand, remained unmoving, crumpled in the corner next to the hunched over form of Cocoa. The strained breaths he was taking were inaudible and fading, and his eyes were closed. I looked pleadingly at Pencil with blurred vision. He grabbed Cocoa and they whispered a little bit. I caught bits and pieces of their conversation.
"You really think..... pull..... correctly?"
"I think we can try....... we don't succeed..... die."
"....... worth the risk...."
"Agreed?"
"Mhm."
They positioned themselves so they were over the dying form of Cyborg and faced each other. With a small nod they did something I had only ever read about. They touched their horns together with a small tap. They began to glow, bright orange intermingling with purple in the center, and their eyes began shining white, irises fading as the intensity brightened, and a flash of colour filled the room, a bolt of orange and purple linking Cy and the two horned colts. It was over just like that, the room darkening to a normal brightness in an instant. The two magical fillies got to their hooves shakily, and I immediately noticed their horns had lengthened slightly. I was about to comment when the crumpled ball of metal and blue fur shifted a bit. Dark brown and synthetic blue eyes opened and blinked owlishly a few times. The colt was immediately smothered in a four-way hug.
Once we were sure he was OK, we set off, wings, horns, and hooves at the ready, to find the center of the chaos that had befallen everyone.
Grim Dark.
My ears perked as a sliding sound was heard to my right. I turned my head quickly to find that CJ had skidded to a halt, and was standing still as stone, ears at attention and scanning the room. For what, I couldn't tell. The hoofsteps on my left and behind me also slowed to a gradual stop, my head snapping towards the other colts. Their irises constricted, and they began slowly moving forward. The slow walk became a trot, which became a canter before finally transitioning into a full gallop. This information barely processed in my mind, before I became aware of pained cries coming from down the pathway. I recognised them almost instantly. I charged down the hall at full speed, spreading my wings every now and then to glide, as much as I could with one of them being broken. All I could think of was getting to the source of the noise.
Getting to Domino.
Domina "Domino" Iridis was one of my closest friends. She moved to a different town, but we wrote letters to each other all the time. Still do. She is a pegasus who wears glasses, and has a shiny pastel green coat, to match her slightly muddy green eyes. Her mane is dark brown tipped with all the colours of the rainbow. And she was in trouble.
I tried to ignore the searing pain in my horn, and flapped my tattered wings as fast as I could. I could see the silhouettes of the others as the tunnel got progressively less dim. A sharp scream ran out, and I rammed my sharp hooves into the ground, before tumbling over with the momentum of the landing. I scrambled to my hooves, snapping my head from left to right, scanning the room for Domino. The sight I was greeted with made my breath catch in my throat.
Grim was sitting on a throne of thorns, as the bright red beam of light coming from her horn faded. She was a full grown mare, with horn and wings rivalling those of Celestia. She looked at me, her face appeared smug, but there was a look of pure and utter loathing in her magenta irises.
I folded my wings and swallowed thickly. There were at least 30 changelings in the room. We were going to die. Alone, here, in the dark damp tunnels underneath Trothampton. I was terrified.
I briefly wondered what all these tunnels were doing under the school, before turning my attention back to the smirking face of the filly-turned-mare.
To sum up the situation quickly, I had no magic, no wings, was weakened tremendously and was about a fifth of her size.
Fantastic.
Doing my best impression of someone who wasn't completely petrified, I attempted to smirk, though it came out as more of a grimace. "You look positively dreadful in that getup Grim, what were you thinking? 'Giant' is so last millennium."
This earned a snarl, as she countered "Greys don't suit you dear, surely you realise how dreary you look. At least I have a sense of colour coordination."
I refrained from mentioning how much the magenta of her eyes clashed with her moss green mane.
"Witty banter aside, are you actually gonna do anything, or are you scared of a poor, weak, defenceless filly?" I snarked. She seemed taken aback, but only for a fraction of a second before regaining her composure. Her thin lips curled upwards in a sick grin as she fluttered her wings, beats growing stronger with each passing second until the air was filled with the droning of large insect wings flapping incessantly.
Oh poop.
A sharp cry ran out, but I barely noticed in my preoccupation. She flew upward in a smooth arc, and it would have been a beautiful display of aerodynamics if it hadn't been signalling my imminent death. Reaching the peak of the curve, she made a sharp twist of a wing and was suddenly hurtling towards me at breakneck speeds. I steeled myself for the blow, praying to anyone who would listen, hoping at least my friends would make it out of the labyrinth alive.
That was the last thought to go through my head before I was shattered into the cold embrace of death.
(3rd person POV)
Grim sat back on her haunches, looking down at the quickly fading body of the filly at her feet. Her nose wrinkled slightly at the growing pool of red seeping from the alicorn's wounds, but the disgust was quickly overpowered by her triumph.
Until she was practically split in two with pain.
Screaming shrilly, she fell to the ground as searing hot pain spread from her chest. The area began to glow brightly as the pain worsened, until she was foaming at the mouth from sheer agony. Just at that moment, a pastel orange colt came skidding around the corner, one ear missing and hind legs mangled. His eyes widened as he took in the scene before him, fat tears streaming down his face at the sight of his best friend dead on the floor.
His vision was considerably blurred from the force of his crying, so much so that he wouldn't know an orb of white light if it smacked him in the face. Which, incidentally, is exactly what happened. His vision cleared just enough for him to see Grim Dark wobble on her hooves, before collapsing on the cold stone floor, black, ink like liquid spilling from a large cavity in her chest, and her horn.
He barked out a short cry of victory, before becoming acutely aware of a crushing pain spreading from his horn and setting his body on fire.
"That's unfortunate." He whispered breathily, and proceeded to crumple to the ground, out like a light, to join the other bodies lying motionless on the floor.
Imagine, a quiet, peaceful morning at school. the teacher walks up to the front of the class and announces a new filly will be joining the class. it was all downhill from there. a tall filly walks up next to the teacher. her mane is flowing, dark green like the everfree forest. her coat as black as the midnight hour, her horn glowed red as she brings in her bag, her wings twitched as she trotted to her seat, and the skull on her flank stared menacingly and caused a shiver to run through everyone except the teacher, who was doing an excellent job of keeping a blank expression. it was almost a little too blank, a little too expressionless... an orange colt with a red mane and a pencil and paper proclaiming his talent to be drawing snickered, which caused me to realise i was concentrating on the teachers face so hard that my screwed up face looked a little silly. i shook my head, unfortunately causing some of my multi-coloured mane to get into my view. i wiped it away, my golden hooves glinting in the somewhat dull sunlight coming in through the window from the suddenly overcast sky. that's strange, I thought, it was lovely and sunny this morning. "Spectrum, are you going to answer the question?" called the teacher, again causing me to snap back into focus. "can you repeat the question miss?"...
my horn glowed purple as i picked up my pencil and wrote out the sums we had been set, my head in my hooves. the orange colt next to me was making his horn glow fluorescent orange (in contrast to the pastel orange colour of his coat) but instead of sums he was drawing cartoon figures all over the front cover of his book. "P.C.! shouldn't you be working?" i whispered to him. "How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that? My name is Pencil Case, not personal computer!! and i finished ages ago." he replied in a somewhat teasing tone. All of a sudden, the new filly, Grim Dark, shot up her hoof and waved it around. "Yes, miss Dark?" asked the teacher. "i have to go to the little fillies' room!" she replied in a slightly over-exaggerated desperate tone. the teacher pointed to the door and then pointed to a filly named Ace. "go with miss Spades. she knows the way.". a while later, whilst doing a quiz on anatomy, Grim returned, without Ace Spades. "where's Ace?" asked the teacher. "she left while i was in the bathroom" said Grim.
"HELP!! HELP!!" A pastel blue colt cried, "GET ME DOWN!!" the fillies below did not move, or even notice. They heard nothing. It was as though he was making no sound at all, which is closer to the truth than you would think. The colt was barely more than a centimetre long, and hanging by his wings to a 5 metre flagpole, he was in a situation reeking of jeopardy. The poor pegasus was not found for three weeks, and when he was, it was a bird, not a pony, who alerted the others of his presence. When he was returned to his normal size, he spoke of a flash of green and black, a blinding red light and purple snakes eyes, coupled with a fierce cackle and the next thing he knew he was on the flagpole. The teacher decided a memory spell would work, and wiped the terrifying scenario from his mind. He was fine after that, but to this day, he is terrified of the colour purple.
Through The Bathroom Wall
I looked up at the pony, hidden in shadow, as i wiped the trickle of blood oozing from my lip away. there was no escape. i tried to squeeze myself further into the narrow corner. the pony looked down at me and raised a sharp hoof to bring down upon me once more, and as they did so, their cloak fell onto the floor, exposing their true self. Only two words of the thousand in my head managed to escape my lips as i stared in horror and disbelief. "Pencil Case?"
1 hour earlier
"Come on, Spectrum, we're gonna be late!" called Pencil Case from the front of the stairs. We were having a special magic class in the school basement and i was quickly reading the 20 new spells we had learned, to be sure i wouldn't forget.
"Have you noticed anything strange going on around here?" i asked. An array of emotions played across his face. confusion, anger, and intense concentration. by that time he had completely stopped in his tracks.
The special magic lesson was as boring as the rest of them. at the halfway point in time, i asked to use the loo. Suddenly, Pencil did too. we both left the classroom for the toilet. As I entered, the fur on the back of my neck began tingling. I looked around just in time to see a black, cloaked shape lunge out at me. I ducked at the last second, and they went straight over my head, and disappeared through the wall. I stepped forward and touched it with my hoof. I was immediately torn off the tiled floor and whisked through the wall.
Back To The Land Of The Living
The blackness was overwhelming.
It embraced my small body with an unbearable cold that echoed throughout my very bones. It ricocheted through my brain, screamed with no sound.
A voice.
It was faint, but so painfully familiar. My entire being was encompassed by an overwhelming desire to strive toward that voice. That that voice carried security, and a sense of home.
A light.
It was small, and yet blinding. It chased the darkness away, and the voice continued, growing ever more desperate, and as the voice got louder, the light grew. The voice became anguished, and I made out a fuzzy orange blur in my field of vision. The pale pink of a mouth became evident, and I realised that this was the voice that had saved my from the cold blackness of unconsciousness. The screams became coherent, and a drop of wetness fell on my face.
Two words, repeated over and over again became clear.
"SPECTRUM, PLEASE!"
Something snapped at those two words.
The world ceased being fuzzy, outlines became clear, and the face in front of me broke into the biggest smile I had ever seen.
I became aware of the limbs wrapped around my torso, and a dull throb in my head. A few tawny brown locks came into my field of vision, and I swiped them away. A choking noise came from the throat of the colt wrapped around me, and he buried his face in the fur of my chest. As the obscuring face left my view I became aware of a blue cyborg type colt and a younger grey colt huddled in the corner. Both were coated in cuts, bruises, blood and dirt.
"How long was I out for?" I asked, desperate to break the silence that had made itself known in the room.
"A-A week" came the shaky answer from the silvery grey one. "Th-They've taken over T-Trothampton." the blue colt choked out. He motioned over to a small window to the right. I tried to see what he was motioning to, but the orange and red colt would not allow any movement on my behalf. I shrugged him off with a little more force than intended, and immediately went over to the barred window. I was greeted with a mass of green slime, dead bodies and the shells of broken homes.
And there were changelings everywhere.
