Sweat, Flesh, Blood and Bones [OLD]

Chapters

Prologue. To Pull The Trigger
1. Where the rocks pour
2. To put a name on a face
3. The sign on her flank
4. We will lurk in every shadow
5. Shenanigans

Prologue. To Pull The Trigger

Prologue. To pull the trigger.

A heavy shape fell on the ground, quaking and gurgling in vain. Next to it, a thing was crawling in the mud, its face covered with a blood which was not its own. Its breath was husky and loud. Mist shrouded what might have been his mouth.

Thunder rumbled.

The pouring rain was beating up its naked back, freezing it to death. Its wrinkled left hand was holding tightly a long and rusted dagger.

Its target… its reward was not far now. A good old feeling swamped its mind. It remembered this instinct, tasted this impression and licked off its lips… It was the thrill of the hunt.

The strange being was ready to strike. His yellowish teeth shined in the dark.

Lightning was coming back and forth and the sludgy shape rose from the dirt. Brownish silt trickled down its neck. The… thing was bipedal, tall and utterly scary for unwise witnesses. Nearly hidden by a long black mass of hair, its two dark green eyes reflected the light of a fire camp fifty feet from there. With his other hand, it kept its weapon from casting any reflection. The time to act had come.

It hunkered down and plodded toward its goal. There between few crooked bushes, two patched tents were set up. The fire was kept away from the rain with an ingenious system of canvas. Even so, the humidity was constantly assaulting its flames, making their warmth disappear instantly.

The stalking foe hid behind a dead tree. Two creatures of its kind were standing in front of the nearest tent. They were talking harshly. Unfortunately, the rain, added to the rolling thunder kept the shirker from understanding anything.

It grumbled. Did it have to act? Did it have to wait? It had no idea, but for sure time was running out. It stretched its muscles. And then started the final countdown. It prepared to leap onto its preys.

Its green pupils narrowed as something caught its attention... this was unexpected.

A third creature had showed up. Its right hand was carelessly strangling a younger one, a child struggling in vain. This pitiful play amused its merciless spectators. Each one of them laughed raucously.

There was no time left. The hunter had to make a move… Now!

It drew out again its sharpened knife and winded like a rodent behind the tents.

The first of the three targets was in its death zone. How could this go wrong? They were expecting nothing in this god-forsaken place. The crooked black haired shadow had a goal, and because the opportunity had showed up, this hunt would end with few new marks on its tally.

None of these three campers, or whatever they were, was also expecting a branch to crack under somebody’s boot, behind their back.

“Fuck!” the stealth form snapped, it was one jump far from its first prey.

The three antagonists turned over and stared into a pair of eyes standing in the shadows. Unfortunately, they struck first… the questions could come later. Bullets flew through the air. They pierced the fabric of the tents, carved the surrounding trees and revealed with the brightness of the triggered gunpowder the face of the creature…

It was a flat face showing a little muzzle and whose small ears were surrounded by this black long hair of it. Its teeth were squalid, evidence of a long-standing self-negligence.

It was, unfortunately indeed, a man.

The hunter’s lungs let out a long hoarse cry when he launched himself toward his first opponent. This one fell on the ground, its throat sliced in half. The victim’s blood would soon mix with the rain and the mud.

The second cringed, holding the guts slipping out of its stabbed belly, mumbling in pain.

The unleashed predator turned back and faced his last opponent. Tall and amazingly strong, this blond haired survivor had already released the youngster and was now pointing his gun toward his companions’ murderer.

A flash lit up the place. The sound of a gunshot echoed between the dead trunks and then the noise of a hard fall on the ground was heard.

Crawling in the dirt, now covered with his own blood and displaying a deep and disgusting gap in his shoulder, the quivering hunter was suffering from miserable hiccups. Worst, he had lost his knife, which had bounced away, disappearing in the shadows.

The hunter, defeated, was now lying on the ground. His opponent, victoriously laughing stuck his boot on his spine and turned him over. He stopped giggling for a mere second when his stare met two green eyes glaring daggers at him. A powerful kick in the wound followed making the agonizing body gasp at the satisfaction of its persecutor.

He started rampaging the deadly-wounded corpse, stomping the one who dared attack him and his now-dead friends.

But even if screams came out of the fainting creature’s blooded mouth, no “pity”, “please” or “mercy” raised up. This resistance unnerved the torturer. His hand reached the black hair of his victim and grabbing them with strength as he lifted up his head. His victim’s face was smeared with silt. And coughing, his mouth was spitting out blood and liquefied dirt.

The trembling body tried to get up but ended to smash again on the muddy ground. Laughter welcomed this failed and disappointing act.

The hunter, still struggling to breath air instead of peat was given a moment of rest. His antagonist had stopped looking down to him and had gone to pick up a chopping knife. He took time choosing his tool, ruffling his blood hair and beard.

For the broken human, lying pitifuly between the tents, death beckoned. The dying man could almost feel a cold breath on his neck and shoulders.

Walking back to the bruised body, delighted in tormenting his victim, the blood bandit spoke in a grave, demented and frightening voice. No doubt he was a male.

“I know what you want. It’s not me or the teenager, but the box!”

The tears stopped rolling on the half-buried face. He frowned, crackling the mud, blood and mucus coagulated on it. Two bloodshed and murderous green eyes rose and stared into those of their tormentor which were blue as a sky they had not seen for eons.

“Man never changes and what he desires is power, power, power… only power,” the standing tormentor deadpanned.

Holding the chopping knife, he drew a large and heavy-looking case from one of the tent, its lock was welded. He made fun of his silent audience… this unarmed and inoffensive so-called hunter which was now struggling desperately to survive few more seconds.

“But it ain’t yours. And I don’t want to know that you and your group of pricks … those… virgin have it.”

He laughed, expecting no answer from his interlocutor, still fighting to not drown in the mud.

“You know, there is a military camp at Geneva, they have food, water… clean water you know, not this junk you and your friends drink every day. And of course weapons… And this box… I haven’t opened it yet, but I think I know what’s inside. And it’s mine now!”

A bolt of lightning struck a closed tree. Sparks flew in the air.

“Unfortunately, you’re alone right now. And it’s alone in the dark, surrounded by the shit that suits you so well that you’ll die. You’ve got Boris’ condolence.”

The bandit pressed the muzzle of his pistol on the speechless young man’s forehead, holding him straight with the edge of the chopping knife on his neck.

Instead of a shot, a squeak echoed. The pressure of the gun fainted. Opening again his eyes, the human wreck saw a fork sinking deep in his executioner’s right leg. Between him and a tent the teen was on his knees, receiving reckless hits from the butt of the man’s gun.

The child face was bruised and dark brown clumps of hair were now stuck to the grip of the firearm.

“You little shitty bastard! What you got was not enough! You want to die now?!”

Hope sparked in the hunter’s mind, watching silently the molestation from his painful position.

It was an opportunity, his last chance to fight. Tightening all of his limbs and using his only arm left, the turned-prey hunter rose again. The molester would have not expected such will from a bag of bruises and bones. The struggle was harsh and inglorious.

The hunter rushed forward to his enemy’s throat. Like a heavily wounded lion struggling to survive, he bit deep in the skin, the flesh and the bones of its rival’s neck, tearing off tufts of his blond beard. The hunter broke a tooth and blood flooded his mouth and his face, blurring his vision. He kept struggling against his opponent’s desperate movements and screams.

Putting his right arm around the molester’s neck, he blocked himself and the still shaking corpse in this deadly pose. Blood was shed. With a snap he stole his contender’s life, a man’s throat stuck between his teeth.

Three minutes passed by until the survivor released his armlock. The sky was clearing as the storm was pushed away by the morning’s wind. “A blessing”, he thought.

His breath was hesitant. He became aware of his wounds, his damaged ribs and of his skin burnt by the acid rains.

Rolling on his back, he brought something out of his pocket, an old and corroded plastic switch. Copper wires were still connected to it. He was switching it on and off, creating a typical clicking sound.

It amused him. A faint scowl of satisfaction appeared on his bruised face.

Blood loss was achieving him. His temple was beating, preventing him from thinking clearly.

He thought that if the pain or the blood loss were not enough to deal the final blow, infections and diseases would get rid of him. He started praying. For three years, there has been nothing to rely on. Everyone had to survive on its own. Groups formed and collapsed as the true human’s nature revealed itself, this unending quest for power, weapons and positions.

Three years of disorder had the foundations of our society first undermined and then swept off Earth’s surface one by one. Chaos set up.

A voice called him. Was it Death, this old friend?

“[size=9]Verdugo?![/size] Verdugo? VERDUGO!”

Someone was shaking him, trying to keep him awake… alive. Torchlights were aimlessly pointing around in the clearing.

“Fu! We’re losing him,” the voice shouted, calling for someone out of eyesight.

The one talking was a young adult, skinny as someone who had starved for months. His brown hair and beard gave him the look of a without shelter, which was true for everyone at the moment. His blue eyes, hidden behind small glasses, were tearful. He had a scar on his chin.

“Bloody hell, do you see his shoulder!” A thinner male voice spoke.

The so-called Verdugo felt himself slipping away. His vision blurred as eternal rest started invading his limbs. He felt himself falling for a mere second and then… a punch in his terrifying wound woke him up. He screamed out of pain.

A blond haired young man was now squeezing him. At his right the first one was now looking at him with an empty stare. Dark grey ring was circling his eyes. Lots of sleepless nights had indeed left their marks. His beard was nearly tickling his friend’s face.

“Sorry man! Talk please! Say something motherf’cking throat grinder!”

“Shut up Kreps, you’re annoying…”

“Oh man! You scared the shit out of us so badly!” His blond friend stuttered.

“The box, I got it back.”

The last one pushed Kreps, now anger was flooding his eyes.

“You nearly killed yourself for that f’cking box! You stupid cunt!” He slapped Verdugo.

“You’re so dumb Ray, you know what’s inside. We can’t leave such b…”

A tear dropped on Ray’s cheek, disappearing through his badly cut brown beard. He put off his cracked glasses and swept them off. He was shaking and sobbing. He had got back his friend.

The thinner voice, Kreps’s one, started shouting few feet away from their position. From there, his look was the one of a small and skinny punk, his hair was so long and dirty they had pasted up in natural muddy dread-locks. The blond aspect of his hair was in fact now long forgotten.

“This kid is kicking up my balls… literally! He doesn’t want to give up the box.”

“Kreps, tell it’s radioactive. It will calm him down.” Ray replied cynically.

Indeed, once he heard the forbidden word the urchin instantly threw away the metal case. Kreps dumped a flow of insults as the mallet fell on his left foot. He was still having this weird way of pronouncing the “r” and “w”, typical for a German.

“Don’t hit the child, he could still be useful,” Ray ordered, wiping a tear from his eyelid.

“Don’t even touch him… I don’t know what they did to him, but don’t touch… him,” Verdugo whispered.

He pointed hesitantly at the throat-less body next to him, blood was still spurting from the wound. And to support the wounded’s claims, the child tried to bit Kreps’s hand when he approached. Verdugo should have been a really bad example.

On his side, Ray tried to wash and bandage his friend. Wiping off the blood and mud from Verdugo’s face, Ray revealed a washed-out but still tanned skin where these two well-known green eyes were crying tears of salt and blood.

“Eh! Don’t die! What will we do without yah?”

“Everything. Murderers are common these days.” Verdugo sarcastically responded.

A clicking sound rang out from Kreps’ wrist. Few tools were stitched to his sleeves and a small barometer was riveted to his watch. His eyes were nearly glowing from his anxiousness.

“The storm will come back, and with it, the acid rains. We must hurry!” He hissed, mist enshrouded his mouth.

After having the camp scavenged, the group crept out of the forest. A ravaged road was waiting for them. A derelict of a former Mercedes was parked on the roadside. The kid which had not talked yet was following them.

The front door opened. A young girl rooted herself out of the hulk. Her black hair was covering her face, her arms and legs were bandaged under a heavy black leather coat, too large for her thin shape.

She was carrying a gun.

“What happened down there?” She asked after her hazel eyes looked down on Verdugo, nearly unconscious. She gulped back a gag. She was undoubtedly worried.

“Verd’ four hundred four on us.” Kreps said, smiling.

Ray, the current leader of the group gazed at the German.

“No more nerd joke from now on”. He ordered. “Take the steering-wheel. Maria an’ I must secure Verdugo’s state before this crank’d and curs’d walkin’ dead pass’ out.”

Ray had this notorious habit to start speaking fast, making his spelling incomprehensible at some point, once he stressed.

“I’m not dead yet you know.” Verdugo pointed out with his weakening voice.

“You will be if we do nothin’ for ya!”

The group dragged up Verdugo on the quarter-deck. The muted kid jumped into the vehicle and watched Ray and the girl cutting through the nasty wound of their friend. The pain made Verdugo screamed. The young teen covered his ears and closed his eyes.

Verdugo fainted when Maria’s hesitant hand ripped off a rotting piece of flesh. She had never been good with scissors.

“Sissy!” She fulminated.

π ϖ Ϙ Ω Ϙ ϖ π

When Verdugo waked up, he found his wound badly patched and oozing pus. He felt nauseous, his skin was burning and his eyes were still blurred. Acid downpours were not something to make fun of.

“Eh! You’re not dead!” Maria shouted with irony.

“Thanks nurse Obvious!” He hissed slowly.

He felt like a stampede had shattered his body and mind, like after an alcoholic black-out, when hangover is so rooted in your head and guts you only want to throw up. But it had been two years since he had last tasted an ounce of vodka.

Maria was stressed out. She had no antiseptic left, meaning that her friend would die within days if they could not find some in the wreckages. With her fingers she was tangling her black, smelly and rough locks of hairs.

But this kind of worry was not up to the agenda for the moment. A monstrous bolt of lightning struck down a tree, smashing it in half and kindling flames over it. Verdugo’s stare wandered in the car. The silence kid was stoic. He said nothing, just staring outside with his light blue eyes, wide opened. What was attracted his attention was Kreps and Ray in the front, shouting and taunting each other.

Now his eyes had focused, Verdugo could see the massive hullaballoo outside. Rain, lightning, wind and chaos were surrounding the car. Where the fuck Kreps had gone? Everyone felt like they had been transported into a hurricane.

Gusts of wind were punching the truck from every side. Bad day, this was a real bad day. Darkness enshrouded the vehicle while Kreps was struggling to maintain it on its four wheels.

“Did the sun already set? How long did I sleep?” Verdugo asked in a low and weak voice.

“You won’t believe it,” Ray said when Kreps switched on the headlights. “It’s noon… NOON.”

Another tree fell down on the road. Streaks of lightning smashed it into pieces.

Kreps snapped. The wind had struck with such force it had lifted up the car. Without time to think, he just screamed out his powerlessness and braked aimlessly. He crashed the vehicle on the verge of the road.

The impact happened so fast that no one reacted in time.

Maria was the first to wake up, she looked around her. The rain was biting her skin. Kreps who never fastened his seatbelt had been catapulted through the windscreen. He was unconscious thirty feet away from the truck. She lifted her hand to her forehand, in her hand was melt black hairs and blood.

“Oh fuck me!”

“Whenever you want…” a voice rose from the car.

Ray was a lucky bastard, enough at least to have been greeted of a functional airbag. Unfortunately, his glasses had been crushed by the impact and shatters were spread on his face.

“I would prefer having sex with our good old undertaker Verdugo rather than with you, Mister handkerchief.”

“You so mean… Go see how Kreps is doing! A German dying in a German car crash would be patriotically… ironic.”

Maria gave him a finger. She headed to the motionless Kreps’s body. He had two cracked ribs and maybe a commotion. It could have been worse. But now she had two badly hurt people to care about. And in this world it meant death for everyone. Kreps’s pretty face was mumbling.

The storm kept messing around. Ray hardly inspected the car. Verdugo was still laying on its backseat. Like Kreps he was blabbering, but in his case fever was finding its way rather than pain. Bleeding, he did not seem to be wounded… More than he already was at least.

“Eh! Verdugo, Are you okay?” Ray risked himself.

“The child… this muted god-knows-who child stepped on my shoulder!”

Ray hissed, picturing how painful it should have been.

“Don’t worry you’re already a mess!” Ray teased him back.

“Go fuck yourself!” Verdugo added. “Where is he?”

Ray frowned, clueless.

“Who?”

“The child dumbass!”

“I dunno, I broke my glasses.”

Both of them sighed. This teen would give them unnecessary problems.

Maria called, pressing everyone to hurry. She was easy to get stressed. Ray opened the trunk of the car. He took out a tarp and walked toward the only girl of the group. He kindly covered her and Kreps, they were shivering in the cold acid rain.“Where the hell was that kid?” He thought.

Without his glasses he could not see anything. Relying on movements, which were hidden by the pouring rain, it was a nearly impossible task to fulfill.

But his ears caught a muffled sound, like two pieces of metal smiting together. Startled, Ray moved toward the source of the noise. Thunders rumbled once more and intensified as seconds passed.

It was fucking noon! And it seemed like a moonless midnight, with a personal tornado as a gentle godsend. But he did not care in the end. For three years, the earth had been messed up… Since the great uproar, everything had been upside-down. The “uproar”… what an uncanny, unfitting and petty name for incomprehensible events that leaded to the so-called apocalypse.

In fact, Ray remembered. It had been all due to a massive solar storm which had destroyed within a week each consumer or military electronics in the world… leaving everyone left stranded on a black-out Earth. Everybody tried to cope alone, while every mean of communication and transport had been pull out of service. This had leaded to chaos which rapidly had turned into a global civil war for survival and for the ownership of the last scrap of working gadgets. Some nuclear bombs had been dropped, but it had been uncommon.

Mankind succeeded in finding weapons and sowing conflicts and death in each corner of the Earth. The “Great Uproar” turned out to be the last “war” for everyone.

“Okay, back to the kid”, he thought, snapping out of it. The urchin was squatting on the box with a crowbar in his hands. Trying to… to open it.

“You!” Ray shouted, an angry grin replacing his emotion-empty face. “Don’t f’cking dare touch that shit!”

The tearful teen’s eyes stopped on Ray’s angry face. The kid’s weight was enough to blow up the lock. He fell on the grass and dropped the crowbar. They had not catch a glimpse on what was inside yet that green and blue sparks crackled and electricity tensed the ambient air.

“You’ve screwed us all!”

The blowing sound of thunder woke Kreps up, seeing the strange light he swore and grumbled from the pain. Verdugo escaped from the car. He could barely walk.

“Tsss... Don’t come close to it! Our good and kind leader can’t die from irradiation,” he sniggered, shouting to cover the dim noise of rain.

Ray answered back with an exasperated smile. He grabbed the kid and retreated to a safer area. The blue and green light was too intense; impossible to look at the box.

“At least we don’t have the trigger,” Verdugo reassured.

“Yeah that would be annoy…”

A gigantic bolt of lightning smashed the box and everyone felt an unbearable heat.

Everything went white.

π ϖ Ϙ Ω Ϙ ϖ π

Several heavy knocks echoed on the wooden door.

“Twilight… Twilight!”

Lightning was slashing through the sky. The rumbling thunder was shaking the houses’ and cottages’ walls of the small city. The wind struck the windows and ripped out the trees from their leaves.

“TWILIGHT!”

“What Rainbow!?” A voice answered from behind the door. “It has to be important. I was studying with Princess Luna on how to perform lucid dreaming.”

“TWI!!”

The purple alicorn grumbled and opened the door. Unlocking it would be a better description as an alien force pushed it in. A torrent of water crashed onto her face and flooded her hall.

“Okay, I got it… Come in.”

Rainbow Dash urged herself in Golden Oak Library. She closed the door with the help of Twilight’s magic. Rainbow was clearly anxious. She always had this face when she was tensed, visibly wanting to cringe in a corner, hoping to be forgotten.

“What… Rainbow?”

“I need your help! I can’t…”

“Okay, slow down… You’ve just asked me to…” Twilight arched her eyebrows.

“Yes, help me pleaaase!”

This was getting weird. First, like Applejack she was reluctant to ask anypony’s help. Second, she came to the egg-head seeking for help. Rainbow really had to be hopeless. Twilight Sparkle pinched herself.

“I must have messed up some teleporting spell and ended up to another dimension.”

“No, no! I need you!” Rainbow spelled as she understood Twilight’s disbelief, trying to laugh to ease the situation. “You’re the one mastering magic, and this tempest ain’t natural. I can’t put an end to it. It keeps reappearing! It turns me crazy!”

Twilight sighed.

“Here we go…”

Rainbow Dash huddled up.

“Okay Rainbow, I can consider that some storms are magic! But I am not a pegasus. This isn’t my job. I don’t even know how to calm down rain. Face it, sometimes you just have to wait. Cloudsdale may have forgotten to send you the information.”

“You don’t understand. Cloudsdale wanted me to clear the sky today. If I can’t fulfil my duty… I will… I will be forever rejected by the Wonderbolts. You’re an alicorn, you’re almighty! You must do something.”

Almighty? This was awkward. Twilight kicked herself, she should have recorded this. Her eye rose up to the ceiling. “Could she herself be this disappointing when she was not suppressing her own anxiousness? ”She thought. She came up with the idea it was a good topic for a letter to Princess Celestia. She snapped out of her thinking when Rainbow started waking her like a bartender would do with a shaker.

“Rainbow, stop shaking her like a Dragon’s tail! You’ll squeeze her brain out!” Spike remarked while walking down the stairs, yawning.

Spasms plagued Rainbow’s bottom lip. A tearful cyan pony nearly put her front knee to the ground, she begged her friend. Twilight put her hoof on her face.

“Okay, I’ll try!”

Rainbow jumped in the air, a smile on her face.

“Oh thanks you! Thanks, thanks!”

A dozen of knocks echoed on the entrance door.

“Again? For Pete’s sake! Who can it be this time?”

Four mares surged into the hall. The rest of the Mane Six showed up as wet as if they were getting out of a pool.

“Good Celestia! You surely have no manners.” Rarity said, buried under Applejack. “And you, would you please get your hoof away from my mane Fluttershy.”

“Oh my… sorry.”

Once everypony was back on her hooves, they gave Twilight a scared look. She was fulminating; she had been disturbed from her studies. Princess Luna which inhabited her dreams this night had been sent back to her bed in Canterlot in the most informal way.

Rarity gazed at Applejack whose hooves were muddy. She huffed and went outside to wash them off.

Each pony started talking at the same time.

“Needhelpattheboutiquethefieldsaredrowningtheriversbursttheirbanksandthreatentheanimalsandthemarshmallowsdon’tliketobewet!!!”

“Stoooop!” Twilight shouted as her mane turned into flames and her eyes went from her natural colour to blood red.

Everypony gave a step back. Their faces were marked by fear. It took few seconds to Twilight to calm down.

“Okay, I guess that you all have some deal with the storm?”

Rhetorical question of course.

“The wind broke through my windows! My Carousel Boutique is absolutely devastated!” Rarity burst into tears, an art she mastered eons ago.

“The dam ain’t protecting my fields… they are flooded!” Applejack emphasised.

“Mr. Bear asked me if you could…” Fluttershy tried… her voice unable to rise over the unreachable one decibel limit.

“The basement of Sugarcube corner where I store my dear cupcakes is under water!” Pinkie added. “They are excitedly, unthrilledly unhappy!”

Pinkie’s mane uncurled as if Rarity had straitened them. Staring back and forth at Rainbow Dash and her four other friends, Twilight sighed.

“Alright! I’ll do something.”

She stepped outside. Rain instantly slapped her in the muzzle.

“At least I’ll try…”

Coming back inside, she went upstairs. After having the windows opened, she forced the barrier of water and stood alone on the balcony. Everypony was looking at her.

Her eyes went as white as thousand suns and arcs of electricity surrounded her horn. She was muttering something but the sound of pouring rain made it incomprehensible.

Light enshrouded Twilight. She started levitating.

“Okay let it go!”

Lightning struck her horn. Flung through the air, she knocked down her friends as a bowling ball would have done with pins.

“Ow! I didn’t expect that!” Twilight complained, rubbing her forehead.

“What went wrong Sugarcube?” Applejack asked, helping Fluttershy to get back on her hooves.

“I need more power I think. ‘One does not command a storm so easily’.”

“What?” Rainbow Dash enquired about.

“Star Swirl the Bearded tried to master storm magic while he was still living, but he didn’t succeed.

He wasn’t a pegasus.”

Twilight gave a sarcastic stare to Rainbow who looked down. Using her magic again, she brought the Elements of Harmony out of nothing. It was a small trick Celestia had given her.

“More power! Put them on, you’ll help me.”

“Isn’t that a bit… dangerous,” Fluttershy hunched under Twilight’s bed.

“I don’t know. It’s the first time we’ll use them this way… And I wonder if we’re allowed to. I wouldn’t like to mess with mighty beings’ schemes.”

“Ain’t nobody got time for that! Let’s do it.” Rainbow proclaimed. She wanted to make the tempest stop once and for all.

Everypony put their respective Element on and stood on the balcony… Except for Rarity and Fluttershy… Was it the deluge or the frightening thunder? They had their reasons.

Once again, Twilight eyes glowed. Colourful strands of light slowly hooped the levitating group, wrapping each pony in a warm and peaceful embrace. Rarity gasped as the levitating spell brought her outside. Each strip of colour merged above Twilight’s head, forming an unbearably glowing white ball of pure energy.

A hiss came from the sphere, it vibrated and blew up. No shockwave came from it, only a white flash which blinded each of the Element bearers.

When everypony had recovered their eyesight, they could see an absolutely amazing spectacle.

“Is it me or everything is stuck in motion?” Rarity reckoned.

Indeed, every rain drop had stopped… dropping, stuck into the air like if time had been frozen. Twilight swept the motionless downpour with her hoof. She printed her movement in the water, leaving void in the passing. At least ten bolts of lightning were crossing up in the sky.

Everypony in the town went outside. From her balcony, Twilight could see Lyra, Bon-Bon, the mayor. Even animals got out of their nests, burrows or hideouts.

The Mane Six were dazed.

Twilight moved into her bathroom, her friends in her hoofsteps. She turned on the tap. Water ran out.

“I haven’t stopped time… it’s just the storm.”

Everypony heard laughs. Outside Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Spike, quickly joined by Pinkie, were digging in the unmoving rain, hollowing out tunnels like miners in a mountain.

Suddenly, a humming noise intensified, going from inaudible to unbearable. The air was vibrating, blurring like if static was placed on top of reality. Colours seemed to be washed-out. The earth started rumbling.

Suddenly a sole bolt of lightning showed up. It was gigantic. It could have been a god’s deed. For each witnesses it seemed like somepony had drawn out a monstrous sword and sliced it through the air. The white beam collided with the “Dragon’s pit”, the mountain where a red dragon had taken a nap three years ago, until Fluttershy kicked it away.

The impact was apocalyptic. The lightning exploded on the walls of the mountains, shattering the peak in thousands of parts. Bits and pieces flew through the air, crashing all over the valley. A huge rock had been flung into the middle of the city hall square. It sufficed to spread utter panic all over Ponyville.

From her position, the Mane Six minus Pinkie, who was using her pinkie sense to dodge the falling rocks, saw a coming shockwave. A hard slap and few messed up manes later; dust had invaded each street of the city…

Everypony stared at Twilight.

“Eh… Eh… I might have over-done it.”

Rarity raised an eyebrow at Twilight’s bad poker face.

“At… at least it’s not raining anymore.”

Twilight was right; through the dust she could see the sun at the zenith of its arc. The stormy clouds had been swept away by the blast wave.

In the distance, one could hear the sound of one hundred crashing rocks.

1. Where the rocks pour

Chapter 1. Where the rocks pour.

When the blast shattered the Dragon’s den peak, hundreds of boulders, debris of all aspects and volutes of dirt scattered over Ponyville’s and Canterlot’s valleys; covering the region of thick and chafing greyish clouds. The atmosphere blackened.

The muddy fallouts concealed the sun for hours and the concerned ponies panicked as darkness was casted upon the Realm of the Two Sisters. Terrorized, some of them shouted that Nightmare Moon had returned.

In no time, Cloudsdale came to Canterlot’s rescue. But even with the common effort of everypony, it took a long time to chase the smoke away. The ambiance was prone to spread terror, deceit and thoughts of ill-omen into the minds of the surrounding inhabitants.

And this was why that, in this exceptional situation, nopony witnessed some tiny and strange shaped shadows fall across the blackish sky.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Falling along, five featherless bodies were shaking their limbs in vain. Powerless, they screamed; the ground was approaching at an insane speed.

Having the time and a mind dedicated to reflection, they would have seen on their left horizon a strange chain of sharped mountains, bordered by a dense forest of dark green leaves, location where they were desperately heading. Long and impressively large rivers crossed this green sea.

They would have also seen hung onto a steep mountain a strange and magnificent castle of gold and silver.

However, staying alive was the unique idea agitating their minds at the moment.

Tearing down the air, they saw themselves closing to a lake dwelling in the middle of the strange forest. The number of feet separating them from the impact was lessening each second. The unfortunate and still conscious sky-divers held their breath.

They dipped into water. It felt like crashing into concrete, smashing… in the literal way.

Waves formed onto the lake as the five falling ‘birds’ sunk into at an astonishing speed. Seconds later, a wrecked four wheeled cage of metal crashed on the shores few meters away, bounced and finished its reckless race on the bordering beach.

Giving off fumes, the vehicle broke down and fell apart in thousands of pieces.

The waves faded away and the place recovered its former silent state.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

In the hours following the biggest, and certainly the coolest as said by a certain rainbow coloured Pegasus, explosion Equestria had ever seen, the two Princesses Luna and Celestia went to Ponyville to hear the account of the oldest sister’s most faithful student.

Dazed, they listened to the whole story.

“So you’re telling me,” initiated Princess Celestia, massaging her temple to make the report easier to chew on. “That you cast an explosive spell on the tallest mountain of Equestria in order to scatter away a magical storm.”

Twilight’s lips drew a strange shaped smile, swinging between a poorly executed poker face and an anxious rictus.

“Basically… no… I mean… yes, but everypo…”

Celestia and Luna covered their eyes with their hooves, disbelieving. Luna cut her off.

“Do thou understand how aberrant thy deed hath been?” She said with a mighty anger glaring in her eyes. “What if falling pieces of the peak had broken into the midst of random cottages? It could have killed ponies! This could have been pudh!”

Luna became more and more cryptic as her speech slept toward a very old equestrian dialect. She started grunting, spasms running within her neck’s fur.

“But, I tried that spell Celestia learned me month ago about cloud chasing.”

“It was meant to be a kind of fun spell we can use during parties to shape the clouds… not to make them go away. That’s a pegasus’s job…” Celestia pointed out with a stern voice after having pushed aside her sister. “And you used the Elements!”

“I ran out of power… And they were so intrusive and oppressing. Don’t punish me please…” Twilight squeaked, mentioning her friends.

She leaned toward her teacher, mumbling in fear and shame. Celestia and Luna let out a loud breath. The Princess of the Sun raised her head and start talking with a compassionate and friendly voice.

“You can’t solve everything with pure magic and power,” She turned and faced Twilight’s friends. “And you shall learn that forcing out advantages from your friend is not a worthy of and respectable behaviour.”

“We’re sorry.” Everypony yielded.

“Now go out and help everypony clear the chaos you’ve wreaked upon us.” Luna added after she calmed herself. “You will write a letter tonight to my sister… all of you. And Fluttershy…”

The yellow pegasus dunked her head in her shoulders when she heard her name.

“Lots of debris struck the surrounding forests. You should ask Zecora to help you searching for hurt or wounded animals.”

Fluttershy nodded, thanked the princess and went out with all of her friends.

“Huge explosion on second thought,” Luna remarked, a small smile printed on her lips.

“Maybe too huge… do you remember thousand years ago during our confrontation? We tore apart some fabric of time and space.”

“Yes, now you told it We remember. That was utterly amusing,” She giggled before Celestia sent her a clear message about the seriousness of the situation. Her stare glared daggers.

“And this is how we… I… had to fight this Shoggoth or whatever the name legends gave to it,” The princess of the Sun shivered.

“Tekeli-li!” Luna howled, startling Celestia who jumped on the nearest table as if she had seen a mouse.

“Stop… Stop It!” She yelled, her white and silky fur bristled all over her body. “We said to never talk of this again!”

Luna was still laughing when they came out of the Golden Oak Library. She stopped and arched an eyebrow. A huge boulder was standing in the middle of the street. Earth ponies were digging it out with pickaxes, making it easier to move.

“It’s nearly time to set the sun and raise the moon Lulu.”

“Don’t call me that way, it’s unnerving.”

“Everything is a fair game… Lulu,” Celestia stuck out her tongue, winking.

In the sky, the emissaries and forces of Cloudsdale were clearing the last remnants of the smoky clouds.

The moon had risen on Equestria and the stars were tingling above the tired lands. Ponies were going to sleep.

Luna was standing on her balcony. It was time for her duty. She stretched her legs and leaned on her couch. Her horn started glowing a bright cyan, throwing small sparkles all over her deep blue mane. Her brows slowly closed and she felt slipping away.

When she opened her eyes again, Luna was floating over her physical body. She had taken an invisible and ghostly shape. On this plan of existence, Luna’s view was shaded and blackened as was the environment. She looked at her hooves. Pure white light was exuding of her body whose contours seemed unclear.

In this sea of darkness where the remnant colours seemed to be distorted, she could see islands of pure blue light. Each was picturing a pony or any living being experiencing a peaceful dream. The light turned bloody when nightmares and fears were overcoming an unfortunate dreamer.

It had been this way for eons, and she did not expect this fact to change.

Levitating, she elevated herself over the lands. She reached the upper parts of the atmosphere. Millions of lights were glowing in the grim dark. The silent of space was overwhelming. She liked it. The common reality was a noisy, deceitful and disgraceful place to stride across. Here, in this deaf place she was whole, she was a true goddess.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Earlier…

Heads surfaced, breathing in loudly, coughing and swearing. Five strange forms swam aimlessly and clumsily to the beach where the car was dwelling, torn apart. Crawling in the sand, all the survivors felt the wet sand gluing to their hands, skin and clothes. Some spat and vomited the water filling their lungs.

The five had survived thanks to an ungodly luck. If the lake had not been here, they would have ended as pulp-like puddles on the ground.

The sun was low in the sky and dusk’s light was reverberating on dark and smoggy clouds miles away from here. The sky was a melting pot of shades of blue, deep purple and pink.

“Maria?” the hesitant voice of Ray asked. “How long it has been since we saw a nearly-clear sky last and… the sun?”

“Years…” She replied with a smile as she gulped out an ounce of water.

“Three hundred and eighty nine days.” Kreps specified and deadpanned: “At least we don’t have to see a burning solar storm.”

“Thanks egg-head,” Ray giggled as he passed away from exhaust, water was running from his dark brown hair.

Spread out on the shore, everyone was taking great delight in sinking their hands into the fine sand.

Maria tilted her head on her left. Not everyone was enjoying the situation… Verdugo was reanimating the kid, using his type of “kind” heart massage that only he had the secret. The child could have spat out his intestines that would have been unsurprising. Unlucky was a suited word in the end. It was the first time Maria paid attention to the young boy. He was very small and had suffered from malnutrition. His black hairs were badly cut and his face was bruised. He had been molested for weeks as old and new marks were placed on the top of each other.

Salty water came instead of the bloody organs. Trembling, the kid opened his eyes and looked at his saviour with a wandering stare.

On his own, Verdugo was also shaking. It was due to the pain running in the wound plaguing his shoulder. It was flooding blood again and everyone could see that how many times the injured man tried, he could not move his right arm. His limb was pitifully dangling, dragging along the sand when he was on his knees.

Three times, he palpated it with his working left hand, each time he frowned. And before Maria, Ray or Kreps asked him about it, he shouted in disbelief.

“It isn’t working. I can’t feel it beyond the wound.”

However he could still barely move his fingers. He kicked away angrily a scrap of metal which crashed in the lake’s water, drowning fast.

“Verd’, night is coming. Come here that I heal you up a bit.” Ray proposed as he got up, worries dwelling in his eyes. He cared about his friend.

Objecting, Verdugo surrendered when Ray, the leader of this group of stooges casted a stern and caring glance at the stinking and ugly hollow in his shoulder.

“Maria will be sad when she’ll bury your rotting corpse tomorrow morning.”

Verdugo acted as he had heard nothing.

The wound was naughty, but Ray tried his best to fix it without throwing up. Now the bandage was holding Verdugo’s arm tight to his pectoral, keeping it from bleeding out.

“It’s the least I can do, but we need to urge, we have no antiseptic for you.”

“I’m going to hunt something to eat. I’m starving,” Verdugo stated as a response, emotionless. “Take a look to the map with Kreps, I think it was on the back seat when the storm struck us.”

Ray’s mouth was hanging low. He tried to contest his wounded friend’s will to go hunt some wild animals, but Verdugo was as stubborn as a mule. And before he disappeared behind the bushes which marked a clear distinction between the dark forest and the beach, Verdugo called the only woman of the group.

“Maria, find the f’cking box and keep the kid from touching it… ever again,” Verdugo paused, pointing her with his finger. “Then give it to Kreps, it’s his own after all.”

He leaped silently in the forest after Maria had given him a long and rusty knife. She sighed, offended.

“He’s stupid,” Maria looked at the sky, searching for a sign which could have agreed with her.

“Insanely mad,” Kreps supposed, occupied to draw in the sand and curled up to avoid any pain easen the pain coming from his thorax.

“Nah… He’s doing his job. That’s what I ask him to. We must rely on each one’s skills remember,” Ray cut them off while he was trying to extract the shard of glass from his face, remains of his loved glasses. He glared at the forest’s edge. “And he will never change.”

Yes, he never changed and would never. Was he already a bloody killer before? They were all clueless. Only Maria could have known, she was the first to have crossed Verdugo’s blood smeared path. And the only one to have looked in the metal cylinder he was always carrying with him, and survived the aftermaths. As every random human, no one liked to be spied on. And Verdugo was an extremely spiteful person. What was inside the cylinder was as secret as what was lying inside Kreps’s metal box. However Maria had always stayed quite silent about it. She was afraid and also appreciative of him.

Maria always pictured Verdugo as a big brother while Ray saw him as a friend or an employee… It was depending of the time. Kreps on his own considered him as a colleague and a rival.

On the other hand, Verdugo had always been distant with everyone. He was always hanging away from them… but also from everyone. This applied to every situation, during the occasional peaceful meeting on the roads, during the trading with random voyagers or even during the deadly fights for survival, when he was not sinking a sharped edge in someone’s flesh. The exception was maybe Maria.

Ray and Kreps snapped out of their thinking.

“If I caught you stalking on me, I’ll make you eat your own balls,” The woman stated, staring evilly at her friends. “And this isn’t a joke. You eyeball, you’ll never see them all.”

Hiding behind the car wreck, she put off her clothes and dived into the lake. In apnea she examined the bottom of the huge loch where they fell into. She surfaced, breathed in and peaked again.

Kreps and Ray, afraid of their little fury, scavenged the remains of the car, avoiding casting a glance to the shore. Maria had always been modest; even more she seemed to fear people looking at her naked. She was a woman after all, usual target in the wasteland.

There was nothing much left around the car, speaking of functional things. They found one torchlight, wet matches, a lighter, a net, few meters of rope, two maps – one of Europe and another of the world – wet as well, and of course a large, heavy and indented metal box.

They struggled extracting it out of the car’s trunk.

Ray searched in his pockets, only to find wet dirt and few coins… He threw them in the lake. The key to the lock was missing. They sighed. During fifty minutes they tried opening it by force with an improvised crowbar, a rock and even Kreps’s head.

Nothing got done with it in the end.

“Hey, take that!”

Maria, now drying her long dark hair, threw them the key she had pull out of her jacket, hanging on the car, two meters away from her two male mates. Their tired and murderous stares fixed her. She laughed.

She had wrapped herself in a fabric, hiding her sickly thin body nearly entirely. Her skin was tanned, but time and a lack of sunlight had washed out her original tint.

In the box was tidied up half a dozen of weapons, knives and guns. Add to this armoury an old rifle, a shotgun, a long sword, two ice-picks and at least sixty or seventy cartridges of all sorts. Any witness would have a good insight of the group’s fire power. Wandering and stalking in the cities and abandoned military areas had always been rewarding, but also awfully dangerous. More than one scar was the reminder of such truth.

It would have been an even more impressive equipment if not all the weapons had been rusty and eaten up by time and climate. Moreover, most of the cartridges did not match with the present weapons.

The last part of the scavenging was to extract the useful components of the car, its battery, wires, lamps, oil and everything on what they could rely on in the future.

The sun had set at the horizon when Maria lit a fire. The warm was welcomed as everyone was shivering in the night’s coldness.

“Where are we?” Maria asked, looking at the map lying in front of everyone. It was written in German.

“Before today’s… incident, we were thirty kilometres away from Vienna,” Kreps showed with his finger pointing a position to the South-East of the city’s name. “We derived a bit from the chosen path because of the smashed roads. Remember we’ve passed the Alps ten days ago thanks to the Spring and,” he turned toward Ray. “You wanted us to go to…”

“Berlin,” Ray responded.

Kreps’s eyes brightened up.

Again, Maria would have liked to know why but a rustle in their back cut off their discussion. With his poorly sharped and broken knife drawn out, Verdugo was carrying a big animal. Blood from the flank of the thing was running on his grey rags.

The animal seemed like a big rodent, a very large rat with a small tail.

“What the hell is that?” Maria asked along with Kreps. Utter disgust could be read on their face.

Troubled stares welcomed him and his catch.

“It’s a coypu,” Verdugo replied with a raised brow. “A kind of beaver if you want to know the details,” He insisted. “There is lots of life around here, bears and stuff.”

“Is it… eatable?” Ray pouted.

“Will see.”

Annoyed, Verdugo fixed Kreps who was holding the map.

“Are you sure we’re still in Austria? I thought it was around Vienna that a chemical bombing has been performed by Russia or whatever... years ago.”

“I guess, I don’t know what the storm did but we got catapulted…” Kreps noticed blasé.

“We ain’t dead, that’s the first miracle,” Verdugo looked askance at Maria. “And the box? What about it?”

Maria’s jaw dropped. She raised her hand in a desperate and useless attempt to explain herself. No sound came out of her mouth. An amused smile cleared her face.

Verdugo, on his own tried to join the palms of his hands in a praying gesture, only to see his right arm was still not working. It added a straw to his current overloaded burden.

“What I’m gonna do with you all...” He whispered.

Ray, felling a conflict forthcoming eased the tension, pretending it would be easier to search for the dangerous box in the morning.

They grilled the dead animal and eat it up in silence. They first threw up. The taste was revolting, a mix between mud, fat and bitterness. It was like biting through sludge.

They ended up with a remaining hunger, assiduously clinging to their guts, and with an awful bellyache.

Later after the unsavoury meal, Maria came to see Verdugo’s state. He was lying in the frame of the car, complaining on the last available seat. Whatever the position he took, the pain was driving him insane.

Seeing Maria getting into the wreck he turned over the opposite side. He was still angry at her.

“Oh come on, stop rolling your dumb eyes.”

“You know if it wasn’t you I might have ripped off your neck.”

“I know, but I’m your sister after all.”

“You’re just my foster sister, “He emphasised on ‘foster’. “Remember that I didn’t sign for this. And I don’t want them to know,” He pointed Kreps’s and Ray’s sleeping forms near the fire. “I took care of your pretty ass since I raided that bandit camp three years ago.”

“I was fourteen years old, I was a burden, but you still kept me. And Ray and Kreps ain’t blind… C’mon admit it, you like me!” She teased him up.

“I like you because you’re the only one here that I can have a good fight with. Ray is too preoccupied in getting in touch with his parents again to endanger the cohesion of the group and Kreps… well he’s the egghead. He has his own strange plans. And I don’t hit the one who can repair my knife.”

“Eh you’re so stupid that I want to believe you do it on purpose!” She giggled. “You would like to do a Baraka.”

“It’s been a long time indeed. But I think my right arm won’t let me perform such… unfeminine sport,” He replied ironically.

Maria gave him back his spooky smile. This contest they had invented was indeed pretty dangerous, deadly sometimes.

“I’ll beat you again as I did over the ten last games, filthy barbaric!”

“Will see that. Tomorrow we head to the North-West. We gonna see if Vienna is still standing there.”

They paused, a long silent settled between them. Verdugo finally faced Maria, plunging his stare in the nut-brown eyes of the girl.

“Did you ever go there?” Maria asked genuinely.

“Nah! But it is said it is… was a beautiful place. An’ you?”

“No… Before the uproar I never went out of Spain…” She remained silent for several seconds. “Oh wait, I got something for you!”

She dropped a heavy case on Verdugo’s knees. She had hidden it behind her jacket the whole time.

“Where… you shitty liar!”

“It landed in a bush not far from the beach. Kreps saw it when he went pissing earlier.”

“Take this thing away from me…” Verdugo protested in disgust. “… And us, that’s a dangerous shit.”

“Yeah, yeah… You sure that’s radioactive?”

“I already said it’s Kreps’s box, I’m only the keeper. And he is the engineer, he should have kept it.”

After being casted away, Maria left Verdugo to his unsteady sleep. Before coming back to her warm couch near of the fire, she dropped the case in the water. ‘It is said that liquid can reduce radioactivity, right?’, she thought.

Sleepiness took over the camp as the moon was at his height.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Luna was wandering around in her night sky. Looping and free as she never felt before, she moved carelessly over Equestria and the lands beyond. Sometimes, when a bright sphere was turning red, she was slowly closing and with a kind touch of her hoof spread peace in its heart.

She liked this dawdling carefree spirit state. She could hear the stars twinkling above her head.

And each time she went here every night, it was always feeling like her first time. It was an unending and everlasting discovery.

She moved to the Bad Lands. She giggled when she sent a tiny spider in Chrysalis’s dream, only living creature the Hive Queen was scared of, ‘oh the irony’ everypony would say if they knew the truth. But Luna always kept this secret like a Pinkie Pie’s promise to herself.

She went to Warclaw, the griffon capital across the see. There she gave her most devoted salute to the Griffon Imperator which was dreaming of his youth.

She floated to the North where, as she found out that Shining Armour and Princess Cadance were having the same hot and sweaty dream, she linked their thoughts and dream for the night.

She also guided this old dragon in the Deep South which was desperately searching for the best position to fall into slumber.

She started coming back to her balcony, as the sun would rise within the hour. But she found herself attracted by a certain region of a certain forest. There, sleeping near of a lake, five spheres were shining along. These beings of light were absolutely different from what she had ever seen and experienced before.

In fact, each species has its own orb’s shape. Ponies’ was perfectly spherical when Griffons’ was a bit oval. And these five throbbing shapes looked like broken shards. Luna could not definitely call these… orbs.

Her curiosity being aroused, Princess Luna took a deep breath and put her hooves on the first shard, she bring it closer to her horn until they touched. A small bolt of lightning joined them both, and Luna sunk into the dream.

The place was a bright, magnificent and delightful meadow of yellow wheat. The wind was slowly brushing through the field, printing evanescent shapes on the tops of the crop. The breeze was carrying smells of fresh out of the oven bread and croissants as a dash of sugar and honey filled Luna’s mouth and lungs.

She longley breath in.

It was beyond describable. It was similar to standing into the greatest bakery a world would ever possess. She was into heaven or at least she thought that she had found what Alicorns’ Paradise could look like, feel like, taste like and of course smell like.

Resting in a recess of the field, surrounded by the warm cereals, Luna was savouring the moment when she heard laughter. Brought by the wind, the giggles flooded Luna’s mind as she sought for its source. On the top of the recess was toddling a strange, small creature.

Standing on two limbs, it was chasing a butterfly. Its hooves which in reality ended with hands similar to those of a dragon were devoid of claws. The cute creature was trying ineffectively to grasp the tiny blue and red insect.

The creature’s mane was composed of a long dark coiffure contrasting with the golden colour of the field. She had absolutely no fur. Her bare skin was pale. The wind was blowing, making her hairs fluttering.

Her cries and giggles echoed in Luna’s mind. The little, armless and lovely creature was running away.

“Child, wait!” Luna asked, raising a hoof toward what it looked like to be the dreamer.

Unfortunately no answer came from the running being as it started fading beyond the top of the hill. Luna launched herself in what appeared to be the dreamer’s tow. She ran for few minutes as if the hill was far higher than it seemed to be.

The child was on her knees, holding a teddy bear. But Luna could not have cared less about it; she was stricken by an unfair spectacle.

An ocean of burning buildings of every shape stood before her. The smoke was raising high in the sky. The smell of baking was suddenly chased away by the one of roasting and rotting flesh of livings. Her ears were flooded by thousands of screams.

Luna could not keep herself from crying.

“I always wanted a pony,” the child genuinely said, picking up Luna’s attention. “But mommy and daddy…” She hesitated. “…aren’t here anymore to gift me one.”

She grabbed Luna’s fur with her small and chubby hands and stared in her tearful eyes. Her look was earth-shattering. The child’s brown eyes were amazingly moving.

“Miss, do you know where are my daddy and mommy?”

The dream ended abruptly.

Even in this ghostly plan, Luna caught herself crying, her? Having tears rolling on her cheeks in this dimension where she was an absolute god? It was unthinkable. Even deeply-moved, her curiosity was still excited. And what she saw was quite amusing. One of the lasting spheres was flickering back and forth from blue to red.

It was titillating. She repeated the same procedure, came closer to the strangely shaped dream and dived into it.

It was pitch black. Luna was without a doubt walking on something but she could not see the ground or the ceiling. In fact she first thought she was blinded.

There was nothing but blackness… and her. The princess could see herself distinctly but once it was not her, she was blind. Her horseshoes echoed as if she was walking on a marbled surface.

She hit her head against an invisible wall. Lifting her up, she groped for what she crashed into. Luna felt the wall at the end of her hoof. She gave a little bang.

She jumped back as she saw a white wave spreading upon what she just knocked, embracing the structure then fading away. For a second, Luna saw a corner appear few feet away from her.

She got an idea.

Jumping high in the air, she fell heavily on the ground. This time, bigger white waves sprawled on a far longer distance. She saw two buildings standing in front of her.

She started running, thundering her silver horseshoes onto the ground, flooding this strange dream of her white shockwaves. A hollowed and silent city started shaping and blooming under her hooves as she headed to a monstrously large square. In its centre stood a gigantic fountain. Unfortunately, no water was filling its pond.

Silence came back as Luna stopped stomping the ground, but the edge of the buildings did not fade with this sudden stop. The white contours of the constructions remained. A deafened black and white city was circling the Princess. She was reluctant to say if she was feeling at ease or not.

There was absolutely no sound…

A… a jingling? A jingling reverberated throughout the city.

”[size=9]When the blazing sun is gone,[/size]

When he nothing shines upon…”

Luna turned around. Far away from her, deep inside the shadows of a skimpy street, a floating and bouncing jawbone loaded of sharped teeth was closing in. The jingling intensified. Another bouncing jaw appeared, creeping out of the next street. Another came up, and a new one showed up, again and again until Luna found herself surrounded by these monstrous breeds of a mind she did not know or imagine to exist.

Stress filled up Luna’s mind, the fear crawled within her skin, climbing back up her limbs and her fur and gaining her chest. Luna felt like a sharpened and cold talon had tightened her beating heart and with its claws was trying to squeeze it out. Shivers ran through Luna’s mane.

She felt a void of love, of this good feeling of happiness inside of her mind. Everything had been replaced by utter panic. Her terror was so high it made her unable to move an inch. More than just feeling her heart tightened, this… was like having a hand crushing her inner being, and trying to rip off her soul out of her thorax. Never again she wanted to feel that way. It was unbearable.

“Make it stop! Please!!” She implored.

The jaws stopped, circling Luna and the fountain. Ready to strike and aiming at the throat, they were all drooling… waiting for her to move.

A strong hand grasped Luna’s neck. She was forced to turn back.

A muscled entity was staring at her, trying to understand something out of Luna’s range. He looked like and differed also from the first dreamer. He was not that tall. Well he was way taller than a random pony but Luna was clearly overcoming him in height, thanks to her horn. But the strength the creature was delivering outmatched everything Luna had faced before. Worse, she was unable to fight back when her opponent was only using one arm.

He was strangling her, his grasp was too powerful. Luna’s glance ran over his head, a skinny and plate head with a small black mane on its top, two dark green eyes and a mouth loaded of dental plaque. His skin was tanned and covered of scars. His chest was muscled, but the starvation made him look like a skeleton. What captivated the princess was that monstrous hollow at the level of his right shoulder. The wound was disgusting to watch, but no blood was flooding out.

“You’re hurt?” the princess hissed in pain.

Luna tried to ease the situation, losing any sense of manners. Sweat of stress rolled on her face.

Her interlocutor was not amused. He released his suffocating grasp and forced Luna to bend, pushing her onto her knees. His stare was frightening.

He started talking.

“My… my… my. What do we got here? I really am becoming insane,” The surprised creature laughed swiftly, ruffling the mane on his head.

Drawing out a long knife he jabbed her with its point. She shrieked.

“What a funny shape you’ve got here.”

Luna was bemused. He was a… lucid dreamer. That was unexpected… dangerously unexpected. Few ponies were actually able to perform such experience, and Luna always avoided those dreams. In fact, the orbs of each dreamer had to turn a slightly green when they was starting a “lucid dive”. The looping changes of colour of the creature’s shard had deceived her.

“My beloved subject, we shall let thou at thy dream as our duty forbids us to intervene within those who awaken in the sleepy Limbos.”

The creature laughed. It was a frank laugh, something he had not performed since… for a long period.

“I really am mad. First time my own dreams tell me that kind of crap.”

“We are the Princess of the Night, keeper of the dreaming realm. Thou violent creature hast an impolite behaviour. Shall We punish thy deeds tonight, bringing nightmares to thou?”

At her last words the creature frowned. Luna started regretting her sayings when the monster’s face distorted in a strange grin.

She tried to break the link between her and the conscious dreamer. Gob-smacked, she witnessed her powerlessness to escape from this ethereal place. The creature looked at the pond, anger could be read on his face. He sighed.

“Here are two options that are yours to choose. To wake up from a dream, you know that either you have to kill the dreamer,” he smiled again. “Or, you have to wait until the dreamer has finished his business down here.”

The creature waved at the steady jaws waiting to leap on Luna and him. They replied with a cacophony of laughter and clinking.

“So, here are the so-called choices. On the first hand you decide to kill me in the most horrendous way you could imagine…This is your…” He sniggered. “so-called punishment... Time to see if my own dreams are interesting.”

He drew out a bloodied and broken knife then placed it in Luna’s trembling hoof. Her stare was swapping between the suicidal monster and the bladed weapon.

“… or you wait until I wake up while you’ll be devoured by my over excited sprawling imagination, with me as a spectator.”

He snapped his finger, which made Luna focus.

“The choice is yours,” He said with dryness. His grin was skanky. “You have the choice, you rebellious dream of mine.”

Luna was aware that the dreamer thought she was a dream. Sometimes, the lucid dreamer was fighting to keep themselves awake within here. This kind of situation was rare but absolutely dangerous for watchers like Luna.

Now she was quivering, unable to understand the reasoning behind the monster’s saying, behind the choices she was given. She stared at her mind tormentor, she was going to ask for mercy, but the outcome came to be different as he became aware of the princess’s next sentence.

“Wrong answer!” He sadistically said.

Kicking the knife away from Luna’s hoof, the creature drew out of the blackness a sword and aimed toward Luna’s neck. The blow was fast and clear. The floating jaws leaped on the two shapes facing them.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Luna escaped her sleeping state and howled with a deep and hissing breath. She started groping nervously around her neck, her shoulders and her chest. They were nothing, no blood, no flesh dawdling around, nothing.

Sweat streamed on her body as she regained her senses. She was still on her balcony, shaking. Celestia was standing in front of her, worries casted in her eyes. Her breath was heavy and loud.

Three guards were circling the princess in a security perimeter.

The moon had set and the sun had already swapped with its place high in the horizon, Celestia had taken initiatives.

“Lulu, you’ve worried us all. We couldn’t wake you up! What happened?”

Still feeling around her skin she started talking with a trembling and blabbering voice.

“Deep in the Everfree, they were five dreamers, I’ve explored two of their dreams,” She hissed, her eyes insanely wide opened. “The first one was disturbing, sad. But the last one…” She started crying. “The dreamer… he trapped me inside. It was scary. I never felt that way before…”

Luna leaped into Celestia’s hooves, searching for reassuring warmth while bursting into tears. She had forgotten about her etiquette. Only fear was bathing her mind. This already new situation shocked the three guards. Powerless in front of this pathetic play, Celestia asked for privacy. The witnesses drew back out of Luna’s room.

“Then it… that unknown creature… it… he talked to me and asked me two things I couldn’t do,” She squeezed her head between her hooves. “And he… he had that tremendous sword. He slashed me!”

The last word came as a screech, Luna was grinding her teeth. She stared into Celestia’s eyes, grieved and astray.

“I… I died down there… for the first time in my life.”

Luna cringed in her sister’s hooves. Celestia tried to give her a sisterly hug. But her sister never really stopped shaking. This play was earth-shattering, pitiful and unnerving.

The Princess of the Day called back her guards.

“Contact the Element Bearers! They have to find these five sparks in the night. Tell them to go in the Everfree Forest. Make sure they bring them back here,” She paused. “Nopony will ever harm my sister again nor will endanger my little ponies’ security. I want to know how they are. Bring them back here… peacefully.”

Celestia was visibly infuriated. The look of her crying sister was clearly an unbearable spectacle to watch. What did Twilight’s explosive experience have brought to this world? She looked toward the Everfree Forest far away in the horizon.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Maria yawned, stretching her body. She looked around and saw she was the first to wake up. She had made a strange dream. But as usual she could not remember it clearly and soon this memory would fade away.

She laid on her back for basically twenty minutes straight, waiting for the sun to rise from behind the mountains standing high in the East. And then it showed up.

The sun was biting her skin. Two days of full sunshine was too hard to bear for somebody who had not seen it for more than a year. But on the other side, it was relieving. It reminded her of her old country, bathed by the warmth and the sunshine. A place once beautiful and where living was cheerful and carefree.

She decided to take a peak in the lake’s clear waters. Refreshing was the only word which popped in her mind.

She surfaced. Something was afoot in fact. She now remembered that at the east of their position, they should not be mountains. They had already passed the Alps she kept saying, it was weird. She had to ask Kreps, but tickling the sleeping geek was like playing with amorphous goo… basically useless. A roaring plane could carpet bomb his ass that it would not even make him move a hair or arch a brow.

Once she went out of the water, she instantly wrapped herself in the same fabric than the last evening. She dried herself as fast as possible.

She looked at her back and put on her clothes. She jumped onto the top of the wrecked car, making his inhabitant grumbling in his sleep and cast a glare around her. She expected the sun to warm her up.

It was a magnificent beach positioned in a vast clearing of the surrounding forest. From her location Maria could see fishes swimming around the shore. She cursed the world for not having a line.

Speaking of the forest, it seemed inscrutable. The thick foliage of thousands of trees was hiding the sun from the lower part of the place. Maria was not claustrophobic, but thinking about wandering into that place was not giving her the best feeling.

She gasped.

Something had grabbed her leg and had thrown her on the sand. She screamed like a scared bird as she fell onto the ground.

“And bang you’re dead!” Verdugo scorned.

“Fuck off man; you’ve beat the shit out of me!”

“Yeah, it’s fun.”

“Your death will be long and painful!”

“And would you be so kind to tell me how?” He deadpanned.

She thought with a finger on her lips. An idea came up.

“If I kick up your ass during the next Baraka you’ll tell me what you were doing before the Uproar.”

“My little dear,” He sighed. “You can know about Ray, Kreps, this child,” he pointed the so-called kid, still sleeping on his handmade couch of sand. “But you know that I don’t want to talk about something which does not matter anymore.”

“Chicken?” She imitated the animal.

Verdugo was slung to the quick. He did not like to have his honour flouted that way.

“Okay, this is on!”

When Ray opened his eyes, he witnessed two furious noisy acquaintances fighting over a matter way ahead of his preoccupations. He rubbed his eyes before taking one of the last remnants of the beaver. He liked so much a cold rotten and sickly tasting meat as breakfast. But the hunger was driving him insane. He chew air, masticating the thick and dried saliva between his cheeks.

He called out loud the two demons to stop their fight right away. They groused before bending to his demand and joined him around the cold feast.

“I had a weird dream,” Ray said. “I saw you Verd’. You were wearing a ballerina outfit.”

Maria spat the chewed beaver out of her mouth, laughing out loud.

“Ah… ah… ah. I hoped I gave you a boner. ” The concerned party replied with a fake laugh and irony.

Maria raised her voice.

“I dreamed about a girl, me… I don’t remember, but I saw a blue and black unicorn in my dream. I felt like crazy. Unicorn? That’s silly…” Maria guffawed when she remembered some random parts of her dream.

“You’re becoming too soft woman! Bad habits are coming back,” Verdugo teased her, his voice seemed hesitant. “One step further and we’ll have to build you a kitchen to remain in.”

“Nah… just a moment of distraction. And you Verd’, did you dream?”

He stood up, pretending to examine his badly bandaged and oozing wound.

“Yeah I dreamt but that’s none of your business.”

Ray and Maria fixed each other with a worried look. Ray gave her a shrug. She applied the palm of her hand onto her forehead.

Ray often asked himself if this man who had helped, saved and defended him and his group so many times was nothing but a grieved hollowed body that did appear in the following of the apocalypse to keep them alive, like a guardian angel…

Few minutes later, the muted kid and Kreps had woken up and were voraciously, but with a pinch of disgust, eating the last drops of the beaver. But in fact, nothing could undermine the hunger of the group at the moment.

Maria was trying to catch fish bare-handed, task nearly impossible though while Verdugo was walking into circles at the opposite side of the beach.

Ray was surprised and worried about the kid. He did not talk, never told his name and seemed to be reluctant to have anybody moving closer to him. He was like a scared animal… a frightened pet which was always keeping a safe distance with its “masters” but was forced to follow them in order to survive another day in this world.

He was young, very young; maybe ten… twelve years old.

One of his incisors was missing, a milk tooth probably and he had numerous scars running on his face. He had black hairs and his skin was scarily ghoulish. Strange, he had amazingly light blue eyes that pierced from side to side whoever stared into.

His clothes were torn apart. With a hint of compassion, Ray tried to find a way to give him decent clothing. But he found himself also wearing remainders of such items. How long had it been since he last saw himself in a mirror?

He looked toward the lake. The temptation to look at his reflection was teasing, but he did not want to see how ugly and wrecked he was. When he was gazing at Kreps or Verdugo, what he was seeing was two walking bag of bones whose faces were covered of unclean beard and scars, with shadows under their eyes.

Reaching his chin, Ray touched a rough mass of filthy hair and a small bald mark, his neck scar. He sighed.

Maria was his sunshine, always radiant even if she was skinny as hell and that she had developed no breast at all… thanks starvation. But she was always smiling and joking around in the group. Maybe she was the only thing keeping him and everyone sane from the madness of the post-uproar world.

He would have not been able to keep up without her around. Did he love her? He did not know. But what he was sure of was that he would defend her at all cost… because ‘light must not die’, he thought.

Verdugo came up with a clever invention. He had cut two long and resistant stick of wood. And with an intertwining of ropes, he made of the heavy metallic trunk where every weapon was resting something barely transportable. It required two strong pairs of shoulders to be manoeuvred. The case weighted nearly one hundred pounds.

“Okay, who start the tour?” Verdugo asked.

Everybody started whistling.

He, in spite of his injured right shoulder, and Kreps started carrying the heavy case as Maria was leading the tow, the “radioactive” box in her bag. Everyone was carrying a heavy pack on their back and even the soundless child was participating in the exhausting manoeuvre, wearing the wet blanket Maria used to dry herself.

Ray was desperately deciphering the map written in German, which was not a language he was mastering at all.

“Neu… Neusi… Neusiedler See. If this is the lake we’re going along, we’re at twenty… thrity miles from Vienna. If we go straight to its north we’ll find…Neu… Neusiedl am… Oh fuck! Why German names are so unpronounceable!”

Kreps laughed.

“No seriously that’s annoying!”

“You want to swap spaces,” Kreps asked, panting heavily.

Ray got muted and gave himself a minute of reflection. Ray got hold of himself.

“Okay, if we find that f’cking city we could find a road to Vienna. But if we don’t, we have to go to the North West. Should be easy no?”

He said this expecting a global nod from each of his companions. But everybody was focusing on not stepping on a devilish root which could make them fall. The forest was thick and Maria had to cut through with Verdugo’s knife. Weird and stressing sounds were popping intermittently. Branches cracked under everyone boots. And the lack of animals’ cries, howls and presence evidences was another straw on the camel back.

“Remind me to never come here again please,” Maria asked with a trembling voice. “And… Verdugo, don’t you say yesterday that you saw animals?”

“Yes… yesterday…”

A distant howl echoed in the forest, the first and macabre proof that something was still living in this remote place of Europe… But was it really Europe? The trees were slightly different. The sky was different. Everything looked similar, but also deeply changed. Everyone had witnessed that the colours were more vivid, flashy, or smooth, they could not find words to describe this impression. Kreps supposed this was the sunlight’s influence. They had stared to a greyish environment for so long their eyes had forgotten the true meaning of colour.

The sun was high in the sky and the group enjoyed each pause in the few clearings they passed by. It was relieving. One had to enjoy the little things a great mind said someday.

The trekking lasted for hours and the sun was low in the west now when they finally found something.

“Hey look! Here is the city!” Maria shouted as she cleared a way through a vast area where wild grass and wheat was growing chaotically.

On the other side of the field was standing a huge and abandoned construction of stone.

“In a few miles you’ll be able to admire an antic castle of whatever the fuck it could be era,” Kreps ironized, mimicking the voice of a low quality GPS.

It was indeed an old and remote place whose walls had been undermined by the time. No window was still standing intact and the area seemed to have been unvisited for eons.

“Okay,” Ray stopped everyone before they went out of the safe cover the forest was offering them. “Take some weapons out, we could encounter bandits and we have wounded peoples.”

He stared at Verdugo and Kreps who was both wounded and had grumbled all along the way. Ray and Maria had to swap with their position dozens of times during the walk. Kreps had a rib cracked and only Maria’s nimble fingers made him able to surpass the pain. Verdugo’s state was way more worrying. He had fallen several times on the way. The wound was infected and fever had started running through his veins. Within hours he won’t have any strength left to move and it will be the end of the trip for him. And this, Maria could not let it be. She would like to be more useful but she had to fight her friend’s fierceness and proudness.

Ray spoke to the mute boy who was hiding behind a tree.

“Look, I know you won’t talk, you won’t let us come close to you, I don’t even know if you understand us, but please… stay close and don’t make a silly move.”

They all stared at the castle and peered into the meadow waiting in front of them.

2. To put a name on a face

Chapter 2. To put a name to a face

It all started with simple mumbling. Initiating a simple rhythm, the music spread swiftly in the air. The mumbling became a whistle and it evolved into a true song. The lyrics were low-pitched, and the end of each verse nearly hissed. The lines were modulated in speed and tone. To an attentive ear, the singer was awkwardly messing with the modern rhyming poetry and the ancient Latin hexameter, ending with a strange fable.

“Unable to clearly remember

His conscience fades away

Making way for a pregnant hunger

This heavy tension floods his hand

His distorted scars itches

And his body dwells on this land

Coughing scores of ashes

It’s Impossible to turn over

He feels this deep necessity

And all hear the truth, rough

As there’s no harsh enmity

Without eerie difficulty

Will it never be enough?

There standing and distracted

All like sheep gathered

Alike, chased and tracked

Their life slowly withered…

A short pause followed. Then the sweet whistle came back, printing a similar pace to the song. The singer’s voice was thin and maybe, too smooth.

…As there’s no war

Without an ugly hatred

Rises the angry monster

Merciless he has long wander’

The vocalist snapped his fingers to go hand in hand with the lyrics. The unsteady rhymes accelerated. And in the end, it only worked to make the song unbearable to hear.

On this bleak acre…”

“Your voice is pretty ugly you know! And your song is bad.”

Maria’s stare was clearly telling that he should feel bad too. Kreps cursed his friend for being so heartless and of course, tasteless. He knew his singing was unpleasant to other’s ears. But having this harsh reality being pointed out was not something he appreciated.

“You’re all so silent,” Kreps complained. “It’s about to become a real pain in the ass!”

“And it’s the geek who wants us to be cheerful? Where is the world going?” Maria laughed.

She glanced at her two other friends. Ray and Verdugo were carrying the metal case. Pain wrinkled their exhausted faces.

“No… really…” Kreps stuttered, wiping sweat off his forehead. “Look around, no bandits, no cadavers, no wreckages and chemicals, just a good old golden wheat field. It’s warming up!”

Silence welcomed him. The surroundings were way different than the greyish, sorrowful and lugubrious atmosphere they were used to.

“Isn’t it… Guys?”

“Yeah,” Verdugo shrugged only to trigger a wave of pain in his shoulder. His eyes winked, tears about to burst. “Speaking of warming up, it’s your shift.”

He and Ray dropped off the heavy box. The huge trunk banged noisily on the ground, crushing stems under its weight and blowing small wisps of dirt.

They cracked every painful joint of their aching limbs and started stretching their bruised muscles.

“Again?” Kreps infuriated. “Man, I'll end up a hunchback.”

“Like everyone else.” Verdugo replied with a smirk. “And my shoulder needs rest.”

Kreps wanted to protest, claiming asylum for his damaged ribs as Verdugo spat some viscous phlegm on the ground. Its colour was unusual, a pure dark red.

Kreps changed his mind when he looked down at the oozing bandages wrapping Verd’s naked torso. His friend was sweating horribly, trying to hide the pain the best he was able to.

“Okay, give me your spot…” Kreps sighed, rolling his eyes to the sky. ”At least you’re worth my pity.”

Verdugo grumbled, rubbing his wound.

Ray sat down between the tall ears of wheat. Only the top of his nut-haired head surfaced. A sound of creased paper rose. He had the map in his hands. Always struggling with unfolding it, Ray had the despicable habit to tear some holes in the paper, deteriorating the key item each day god was making.

“How far are we from the ruins?” Kreps grunted while he adjusted his grip on the case, searching for a ‘comfortable’ position.

“I thought…” Maria initiated doubtfully, looking at the opposite side of the field “… that we were two or three miles away from the castle. But I was wrong... We have one or two more to go.”

Kreps swore in his native language. Maria giggled. Ray was still fighting with the rebellious piece of paper. And Verdugo was quiet as a grave, as usual.

“Tag! you’re it Motherfucker!” Maria erupted, kicking away a small rock which ricocheted on the metallic case.

The bang tortured everyone’s ears. She laughed. But her smile died quickly when Ray, a cynical grin clearing his face, gave her a wink and pointed what she had just knocked. It was also her turn to carry the case.

“Maria?” Verdugo gritted.

Maria immediately stopped with her goings-on. The stern voice of her foster brother was enough to scare her.

“Yeah?” She said timidly.

“That thing… that castle… it’s pretty big. Are we that far from it? How tall should it be?”

Maria frowned, troubled, and stared back at the castle in the distance. Her eyes narrowed, and then swelled.

“It… Wow… I didn’t… maybe one, two hundred meters high,” she stuttered.

“Never heard of such a… thing in Austria. And you?” Verdugo asked Ray and Kreps, knitting his brow.

They denied en bloc, shrugging their shoulders. They all sighed hoping for a Deus Ex Machina which, they all knew, would never come. A heavy silence set up between everyone. Only the wind was blowing a gentle rustling through the wheat, breaking the eerie silence.

Letting out a loud breath, Ray lay down. He had decided to take a short nap. Worried by the recent events, he was struggling not to burst out those emotions.

Maria was scrutinizing every yard of the surrounding, ready to act in case a threat would show up. In this situation it was her role and she was playing it perfectly. Moving her head from right to left, then checking behind before coming back to what was standing in front of her. Quicker than anyone else, she had been named the “mangoose” by a random survivor in Italy. The surname had stuck to her since, inducing laughter in every person hearing it. Oh god she hated this alias!

On his own, Kreps looked at the young boy, studying him. The kid had remained silent ever since they met and was now well-hidden under the high grass. Kreps, with his logical spirit in action was troubled. He sought for the reason why the urchin was following his friends and him. Moreover, he queried mentally for the excuse to not get rid of him. The child was a worthless mouth to feed with a nearly nought return on investment. But Kreps was a man, and every man, even in the sickest place in the world would not be twisted enough to act in this sense. For the German, those who had done so in the past did not deserve the right to be called ‘human’ ever again.

Kreps sighed. Maybe Verdugo would have done it if his right arm was not at the moment a mess and a painful burden. Kreps knew it would have not been his first time. Verdugo also sported a surname. But this one, Kreps was keeping it to himself, it was ‘Our inner Misericorde’.

“Meh, even Verd’s knife would be useless to make you talk, wouldn’t it?” Kreps deadpanned.

The child buried his eyes behind clumps of grass. Kreps held his face with his hand and slid it off, depressed.

“Where have we put ourselves?” He sighed.

“Wherever your little box sent us,” Ray replied ironically with his eyes covered by his wrist, trying to protect himself from the sunbeams. “I’m convincing myself that in fact, we might be dead.”

As a response, a strong kick struck his ribs. He yapped. Opening his eyes, he stood up painfully. He held his side. Maria stuck out her tongue. Ray was absolutely not amused.

“From my point of view, it seems that you are indeed particularly awake but unfortunately unaware,” she sneered with a posh accent.

“You didn’t have to!” Ray groused.

“It. Is. Always. Tempting.”

Maria caught the soundless teenager grinning behind his hiding position. She returned his smile.

Everyone’s bellies growled. They were all tired, hungry and thirsty. ‘Another day in an apocalyptic world indeed’, they all thought. Surviving was a harsh and depressing experience when people pretended they could get their problems fixed all alone. Surviving was even more dangerous when you were in group. But at least there were advantages coming with such a condition to even the odds. You had people to talk to without expecting them to shoot you first in order to loot your body and carve up some steaks from your skeletal limbs. Sharing the same burden was the best way to describe friendship in the wasteland.

They all got up in silence and resumed walking toward the old remote structure, holding back their physiological needs once again with an effete hope for a better tomorrow.

ϐ ϖ Ϙ ϕ Ϙ ϖ ϐ

Fluttershy was hiking in the forest. Each branch cracking under her hooves made her more afraid than before. Jumping for every eerie sound, she feared being followed. She was in that part of the Everfree Forest where trees had wicked faces carved upon their trunks. She focused on the comforting advices of Pinkie.

“Guffaw at the grossly,” She muttered.

She took a long breath and let out a small, shy and cute laugh, not even a decibel high. She felt much better afterward. Or at least, she tried to convince herself she was. Whatever she did and however she looked as far as possible in the deep shadows of the forest, she never found a single wounded animal.

The falling rocks had cleared and scorched various parts of the surroundings. And if she had not known their unnatural cause, Fluttershy would have run away, thinking that an infuriated creature had carved the ground with its claws. And only Ursa Majors were technically capable of such devastation.

Fortunately, the shockwave which had swept across the valley and the forest had made every little creature run or fly away before the fall of the debris. She was reassured, but deep inside her she had to make sure nopony was left behind her care.

Following Luna’s demand, she had asked for help, getting Zecora in her tow until they separated to cover a larger portion of the Everfree. Now absolutely terrified and alone, she regretted this choice.

She was near the antique Black Castle, the palace Celestia abandoned thousand years ago after the War of the Everlasting Night when she defeated her corrupted sister. Fluttershy shivered as the name of Nightmare Moon surged in her mind. The image of the terrifying mare printed on her retina.

The castle was now destroyed and only the south wing remained nearly intact.

Something cracked behind her back. Fluttershy screamed, startled.

She had instantly ceased moving. Her eyes aimlessly staring around, she sought for the origin of the creeping noise. She panted heavily and looked under her. A small root was broken under her left hind leg.

She jeered swiftly and joked about her shyness. Everypony knew she was afraid of her own shadow.

Something flung her against a tree trunk. Fluttershy had been hit by an unknown threat, right in her flank. Stunned she saw three black forms emerging from the bushes. Three Changelings faced her, sniggering.

“Look what we found here. A fledging which fell from the nest,” The biggest one laughed, kicking Fluttershy down again.

His hooves, displaying sharpened holes and contours, cut Fluttershy’s fur. Tears of blood dripped on it.

“Wait, don’t waste the meat. I’m hungry,” his mate hissed, licking his lips.

A grin growing from ears to ears sprawled on his face.

“You… You don’t eat meat… Changelings don’t eat meat,” Fluttershy mumbled terrified.

The last Changeling pushed over his two friends. Dark green clumps were spreading over his back. He licked his left sharp incisive, his last one. And even smaller than his two ‘friends’ he was exuding authority, he was clearly the chief of the band.

“No we don’t eat meat, but you’re so despicable we could make an exception.”

Fluttershy burst into tears, curled on her stabbed flank.

“Don’t you dare touch her!” a twangy voice shouted.

Fluttershy turned over toward this Celestial providence.

“We saw her first!”

All her hopes broke down. Two Diamond dogs took up position out of the edge of the bushes, closing a circle around the pony whose face was soaked by her own tears.

“And instead of you, we really need meat to survive.”

A long and harsh argument startled every”pony” around Fluttershy. Hiding herself behind her hooves, she shrunk on herself from this unbearable pressure.

Gazing at every creature circling her she made a choice. Closing her eyes, Fluttershy took her courage in her hooves and spoke with a mighty voice, her excruciating stare as a means of pressure upon her opponents.

“You’re going to LEAVE ME ALONE!” She shrieked.

Every”pony” ’s eyes widened as they withdrew from the young pegasus. She sighed in relief while her opponents shivered around her. She stood up and gave a short and sarcastic laugh. Her eyes wide opened, her black pupils were swelled, similar to two black holes mesmerizing those who had the infortune to stare in.

Fluttershy always asked how the “stare” was like. Her animal had told her it felt being watched by a predator. She never understood why. Focusing, Fluttershy glared at her opponents, still backing from her location.

A hot breath ran on her shoulders.

The Diamond Dogs and the Changelings had never been looking into her eyes. They were staring over her head, utterly shaken and terrified.

When Fluttershy turned over, her eyes sunk into two yellow glowing orbs. A harsh grunt blew a sulphured haze onto her muzzle. Colour left her face. Even her eyes were washed-out of their natural colour, whitened by fear. The monster was way bigger than her, displaying large red scales and sword-sized sharp teeth.

Fluttershy, the Changelings and the Diamond dogs ran for their live, screaming, with the creature in their tow.

Two Changelings panicked, stretched their wings and tried to fly up in the sky. A gigantic claw knocked them down and they disappeared behind bushes in a horrific crackling of bones. The wisest of the Changelings, the one with tufts of mane tailgated Fluttershy. Nopony dared looking back; they were already giving ground to the creature.

In the course of an old path, the two Diamond dogs dived into one of their hole and escaped from the monster.

“If we separate he will hunt down only one of us, the other tries to get some help!” Fluttershy panted.

“You’re kidding right, I know well that Pegasi are faster than us and IT knows it well,” The changeling replied, breathless. “I’m no fool! I stay with you.”

The ground shattered right behind them. The monster had tackled the space where they were standing specks ago. Fearful they finally looked back, an orange light welcomed them. They started screaming. The sweat dried on their face.

ϐ ϖ Ϙ ϕ Ϙ ϖ ϐ

Walking along the edge of the forest, the group had decided to shorten the span of time between the pauses. Sitting on dead trunks bordering the fringe, Ray took advantage of the situation by reaping off wheat. He was thinking about making bread. Maria, Kreps and Verdugo were laughing their asses off. Stereotypes had a long life expectancy even in the so-called wastelands. And the one saying British people were poor bakers was one of them.

They heard a long hoarse roaring followed by the sound of a stampede and torn apart wood. They all crouched behind a mound. Not so far away from them, a flow of fire engulfed a large portion of the forest. Two high-pitched screams rose. Lying low, the five stooges watched with wondering looks casted on their face. Something emerged from the black smoke. They get struck… aback.

A red monstrous, cyclopean monster showing off huge wings was devastating the surroundings. It was chasing two preys well hidden by the high wheat. A second breath of fire lit up the place. Everyone winked to the heat. Even a thousand feet away from the flaming stream they were struggling looking at it without having their pupils dried out. The creature changed its path, still in the tow of whoever it was tracking.

“G… Gal… Gala… Gallimimus!” Ray whispered.

“Meat... Meat-eater? Meatosaurus?” Kreps replied, smiling genuinely.

They both get wacked on their foreheads.

“Stop the creepy references,” Maria pressed. “What is it?”

They all looked up again. The animal was indeed an incredibly big winged red lizard. Three times the height of a normal human, it was fifty feet long. Its belly was a bright blue, contrasting with its blood scales. Its teeth, razor-sharped, were digging a spooky hole in the field each time it tried to get its preys. But the most impressive was his wingspan. At a guess, it was nearly sixty yards wide. His whole mass was hiding the sunbeams and gloomy shadows were casted on the wheat field.

Everyone gulped, trying to disappear, digging the ground bare handed. They hope the fairytale creature would not notice them.

“A… A dragon,” Ray whispered with absolute incomprehension, his jaw dangling wide open.

“A wyvern!” Kreps corrected.

Everyone glared at him. Surprised by the look his friends had given to him, Kreps hissed with anger.

“Dragon, four legs and two wings. Wyvern, two legs and two wings. Therefore… it’s a wyvern.”

Kreps’s encyclopedic knowledge of an improbable amount of useless things was beyond any remarks from his friends.

They all scanned the monster. Indeed, it was running on its two massive clawed hind legs, slashing the surrounding with the pseudo-talons on the tips of its two wings of rough skin. It roared, exhaling a flow of bright orange fire which engulfed an acre of grains.

It was still chasing two shapes weaving in the field, too small to surface out of the ears of wheat. Screams were higher than ever before, hitting a new record in voice-induced noise pollution.

“So… What do we do?” Maria squeaked.

“We eat?” Verdugo stated, emotionless.

Everyone let out a loud cry of incomprehension. Their hearts were beating blood up to their temples. They had this strange fear dwelling in their bowels. This feeling something awful was going to happen.

“You’re crazy! Ain’t gonna touch that monster!” Ray stressed.

Drop of sweat ran on his face.

“Who cares about it, we wait until it kills the two…”

“Guys.” Kreps raised his voice.

“…things,” Verdugo continued after blocking Kreps’s mouth with his hand. “We just take the left-overs. Then…”

“MMmmMMMOuh!”

“What?”

The Dragon was approaching.

“Wyvern!” Kreps corrected again, really pissed off.

The wyvern had changed of direction and was now heading toward the humans’ hideout. Two paths were stamped in the grains in front of the wyvern’s jaw. It was moving directly on them.

“Oww shit…” Verdugo simply said, blasé.

ϐ ϖ Ϙ ϕ Ϙ ϖ ϐ

Fluttershy was running as fast as she can. She heard the jawbone slam behind her. She hoped the monster would not grab her tail.

On his own the Changeling was struggling to keep his pace, dying from exhaustion. He started swapping between running and flying low. Panting heavily, he was undoubtedly thirsty.

Fluttershy raised her head. In the corner of her eyes, she saw the border of the forest… It was a small spark of hope. They had made a quarter of the way to the other side of the field when the wyvern breathed his unbearable fire.

The changeling and Fluttershy turned left, going back to where they had come from. They had just deviated a little.

The border was there… really, really there. Fluttershy reached the last remnants of the wheat field and she suddenly stopped, her hooves drifting on the dirt.

Four scared stares fixed her in an expression of terror. The fifth was amused, repressing a kind of laughter. She snapped out of her surprise, jumped out and screamed so loudly the wyvern paused.

“AAAAAH!”

The five humans stared dramatically at the butter coloured pony. She had a light pink mane and was actually shrieking out loud the fear flooding through her veins… they just replied to her screaming with a louder one, in unison.

“AAAAAAAH!”

And finally the Changeling a bit late looked down at five smooth-faced creatures, all lying low, trying to hide from something. Something… The changeling had suddenly forgotten that really important something. The surprise had cleared his mind.

A drop of saliva slid on the Changeling’s head. A growl ensued and everypony, everybody and everyling stared up. Terror pervaded their faces, their minds washed out of every thought but running away.

The wyvern was not patient. Unexpected meetings were the least of its problems.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Hands up or hooves biting the dirt, they all started running recklessly through the thick forest.

“The castle!” A voice shouted over the thundering of every foot and hoof.

One stumbled, only to feel strong arms put him back on track, whatever he was a human or a pony. ‘Sometimes fear is the best of cement’. And it was not Verdugo’s quote, but Ray’s.

Through the trunks they saw a wall. They ran as fast as they could, approaching from the life-saving place. Maria squeaked in surprise when she felt a claw skirting her back.

They dived into a tall arch of stone. Broken in, the gate shaped the entrance of the castle.

Dirt was covering every inch of the place. A long spiral staircase was dwelling in the depths of the dark room, engulfed by spooky shadows. The wyvern tried to force its way inside with violent roars. But, being too huge, the walls of granite were holding it back for the moment. The place shook and stone chunks started falling from the ceiling.

In front of everyone's horrified eyes, the creature finally pierced the arch and rushed towards the seven insects split in front of him.

But somehow, it was already too late. These… ants rushed to the staircase and disappeared in the darkness.

Infuriated for having lost its dinner, the wyvern extracted itself from the wing of the antique castle. Everything crumbled down. It breathed its white-hot flaming rage onto the broken flagstone of the building and growled. Its claws shattered the ground and spread earth-quaking vibrations through it.

Furious, the wyvern continued for a couple of minutes, then abandoned. Howling in rage, it stretched its wings and in one blow leaped in the air. The creature disappeared in the sky, leaving behind it a massive disaster, a rising smog of ashes and dust, and of course seven preys buried under the castle.

ϐ ϖ Ϙ ϕ Ϙ ϖ ϐ

The night had come forth. Luna, Celestia, Prince Blueblood and other nobilities were gathered in the banquet room, attending to the usual weekly noble assemble, a formal denomination for a feast where everypony was, under cover of well-behaved manners eating greedily the best meals of Equestria.

Celestia of course was always happy to come. For her, the desserts and cakes were counterbalancing more than one hundred times the harsh obligation to be in the same place than those boring ponies standing around her.

On her own, Luna was not particularly thrilled about this situation. She had pleaded her sister to let her go to sleep. Last night had been really horrific and for once in eons, she wanted a true night of rest, where she was the dreamer and not a mere watcher. Celestia had gently refused, the weekly gathering was a tradition Luna could not afford to hack through.

Still shaking, the younger sister was hiding her stressful mindset quite well.

“So my dear Aunt, how the affairs in Canterlot and on extension in Equestria are going currently?” the Prince asked, breaking the unsettling silence.

“Oh my nephew, I’m so proud you’ve got an interest in something more compelling than verbally fencing with Sir Fancy Pants,” Celestia answered, levitating a muffin toward her plate, a slight smile on her cheeks.

The concerned unicorn raised his head. His stare unfortunately crossed the Prince’s hateful eyes. Glaring at each other, the other attendants of the feast swore they had seen foils clashing through the air. Both of them were always in a fancy and ancient-vocabulary emphasized verbal conflict.

Luna was surely right when she was picturing them as the most lackadaisical and boring duellists in the world.

“So…” Fancy Pants advanced.

Wiping the piece of fish he had on his lips with a handkerchief, he looked at Luna.

“I’ve heard that you had a nightmare last night? If it is not incorrect from me to ask you such irrelevant questions… I’ve still wondered what breed of nightmare an alicorn could have, and especially what dreams could affect… the princess of the Night.”

Luna gulped a gag. She was not prepared for this request. She stuttered.

“Well, you… thou see. My… Our nightmares are something… which shall remain out of range of mere ponies like you. Thou would not be able to stand one without losing your very sanity.”

Fancy Pant was not satisfied. He covered his mouth with a tissue and started pouting. Prince Blueblood tried to hide his amused smile. He could not restrain himself.

Fleur Dis Lee, standing at the right of her husband put down her silver fork and cleared her throat.

“Celestia, shouldn’t Miss Twilight Sparkle, your most faithful student and the Element Bearers be here, attending this magnificent meal with all of us?”

Luna’s and Celestia’s eyes crossed. Celestia sighed.

“Twilight and her friends are not able to attend this reunion because of the recent events in Ponyville. I have sent them in the Everfree Forest.”

Some ponies gasped. A long silence settled and no fly were in the air to buzz around.

“I wanted them to check something really important.”

Nopony protested, but they all knew that meant nothing but forthcoming problems. Behind their fake smiles, Luna and Celestia were worried about Fluttershy. They had sent her alone in there. The five other bearers had entered the forest a day later.

ϐ ϖ Ϙ ϕ Ϙ ϖ ϐ

Coughs echoed in the cave. The lack of light was oppressing. Surrounded by the dust and dirt, everyone and… everypony were groping the floor, searching for a landmark. A scratch broke the silence. A small flame radiated for ten seconds, illuminating faintly a hand and the man who was holding the match. Ray sneezed involuntary and blew out the flame. He started becoming agitated. A sliding sound followed by another crack disturbed the ambience once again and a new flame came to life.

Kreps, Maria and the boy joined him around the match. They were all ghoulish, panting with difficulty and covered in dust. Worse, Maria was hyperventilating. Ray crawled to her and grabbed her shoulders. He tightened his hands around them after he had handed the box of matches to Kreps, who lit another one.

“Breath in, Breath out… slowly.”

Ray mimicked the manoeuvre, swelling out his chest before letting all the air in go out. This game lasted for few minutes until Maria’s hoarse respiration came back to normal.

Kreps tried to get up only to bang his head against an upper limit. He probed the darkness with his hands and sensed a biased ceiling. It had crumbled down over them. Kreps feared they might have been trapped in this underground place. He shivered. He was not claustrophobic, or at least had thought he was not.

He swore, now he remembered that they had left the case with all the weapons in the field, outside. However, the “radioactive” box was still hanging in Maria’s backpack.

Standing up, a sudden pain whirled inside his ribs. He bowed, overwhelmed by this aching enveloping his chest.

While Ray was caretaking Maria, Kreps caught a small green light in a corner or the large cave, maybe thirteen yards from his position. Careful about not banging his head or his feet on an obstacle, he dragged himself to the location. He inhaled deeply, trying to get over the acute pain.

The spectacle struck him. There was Verdugo, lying on the ground and sweating a river. He moaned in pain. And next to him, two strange creatures were watching him, eyes widened, immobile and afraid of Kreps’s friend. The light, green, was coming back and forth, surging from the… the horn of the second creature. Its body was covered by a thick bug exoskeleton. It was a quadruped and had… two fly-like wings on his back, buzzing intermittently.

Kreps could not find a word to describe this creature whose shape was still something he knew, somehow. When his stare stopped on the second creature he found the name, Ponies.

The second pony had a butter-coloured fur and a full light pink mane. It was a pony, no doubt about it, but there was slight changes compared of what was dwelling in his memories. Its eyes were bigger, its skin and fur were smoother. And finally of course, the colour was something Kreps had never seen before. He arched a brow. The pony had a tattoo over her femur. It was a strange branding, showing three pink butterflies. The colours were pallid as the only light was a sick green glowing.

Deep in the shadows, the human was unnoticeable. The light sprouting from the black creature was too weak to reach him.

“What is… that?” A voice rose.

Kreps, hearing a buzzing voice sought around him to find the origin. There was nothing. When his stare came back on his friend and the two… ponies, he saw the yellow one poking Verdugo’s leg, who growled in return. The pony jumped back afraid, and then… it… she spoke.

“I have absolutely no idea,” the female voice said.

Kreps giggled; he had seen the pony’s muzzle and mouth move. Kreps always had a scientific mind, relying on logic. He was staring down to something he had always believed impossible. He rubbed his eyelids, questioning the reality of the situation.

He had made too much noise. Both ponies’ heads were watching in his direction.

“Who? Who’s there?” The black armoured pony asked.

Kreps hesitated, a first contact was dangerous, but Verdugo needed him. A small pond of blood was running off his shoulder. Kreps took a deep breath and surfaced from the shadows.

The changeling and Fluttershy gasped, stumped. In front of them was standing a tall and ugly shaved creature, covered in dust, blood and rubbish. He was wearing greyish rags like the creature lying on the floor. And both of them reeked atrociously.

“You’re standing on blood.” The creature noted.

Fluttershy and the Changelings were startled. The creature talked! Gasps echoed again when they finally looked down. They were toddling in a thick dark red puddle. The Changeling jumped outside, revolted.

Fluttershy on the other hoof panicked. Standing on her two hind legs she screamed and tried to wipe the blood… over her fur, making things worse than they already were. Panting loudly and erratically, she stumbled and fell on her flank few feet from the healthy creature.

Fluttershy eyes narrowed as the creature’s clawless talons clasped her neck and muzzle.

“Shut up! The wyvern can come back! Shut up ‘r I’ll kill you,” it urged.

Its pupils narrowed. He was scared too. Fluttershy started crying, her sobs held back down her throat. After a couple of seconds, the primate released its grasp on Fluttershy’s neck. Yet, he kept his hand tightened on her muzzle. It was thinking.

“You scream, we’re dead! Understand?” The creature stressed.

Fluttershy nodded. The bipedal creature looked around and its stare glared daggers at the Changeling. The assessment was also applying for him.

The creature freed the pony. It rushed to the one lying on the floor. Maybe it was its friend. The… primate… was sweating, stressed about the whole situation. It put off one of his rags and gave it to Fluttershy, to wipe herself.

“Name’s Kreps.”

“Fluttershy,” She replied, her voice so low even the cave was not able to echo it.

Kreps did not answer; too busy looking at Verdugo’s wound. The green light enshrouding the Changeling’s horn was of a crucial importance.

The changeling was frowning, nopony had asked his name.

Kreps focused on his task. Ripping off the remains covering his friend’s torso, Kreps displayed Verdugo’s wounds to Fluttershy and the bug-like pony’s to see. They held back a gag.

The wound was ignominious. The stink? Unbearable. Was it gangrene spread onto it or some eggs of corpse flies? It might be both. Fluttershy and the Changeling were disgusted.

Kreps was stunned. Not moving, not shaking, he was immobile, eyes widened, pupils narrowed. His breath was short and quick.

He did not even notice Ray, Maria and the young boy gathering around him, looking back and forth between Verdugo, Fluttershy and the Changeling. His friends’ vision was blurred. They had clearly lost their grasp on reality. They were unable to think clearly.

A long silence only paced by the moans of pain of Verdugo settled between everyone. The pony and the changeling withdrew in the shadows.

“I’ve still a bullet left in my gun,” Ray stated, resignation casted on his face.

He was going to cry. Maria gazed at him with hatred, anger and sadness.

“I won’t let you touch him! You’re gonna have to get over my dead body before you dare touch him,” She started crying, shouting in disbelief. “There must be something to do.”

“You said yourself we don’t have nothing left to treat it. He. Is. Dead.”

Ray and Kreps sighed. Verdugo was indeed dying. No matter what they would do, no matter how hard they would try… It was over. Kreps stared in Ray’s eyes, wet with tears. He nodded. Ray drew his gun out and put it in his friend’s hands.

Maria screamed and tried to fight back. Ray held her back and hugged her. She cried, tending her opened hand toward Verdugo. Her sobs were earth-shattering; her complaint, heart-breaking.

Fluttershy and the Changelings had stepped back. They began to understand what was going to happen. They shivered, afraid, not daring to make a move. They were going to witness a murder. Was it absolutely barbaric, or the kindest act they would ever watch, they wondered. Relieving somepony from his deadly envelop, from an unbearable pain, was it really a murder?

Fluttershy wanted to protest but the look on the creatures’ faces was horrific. They had the aspect of bags of bones. They gave her the impression to be walking deads. Fear faded in Fluttershy’s eyes. She only had pity for these five creatures. She imagined what kind of ordeal they had to survive. But it was in vain, her mind was not twisted enough to envision their suffering.

The changeling on the other hand understood. It was survival and starvation… only survival and starvation. He could read it in the creatures’ features. Somehow, he found them less ugly now, this impression replaced by the same pity he had for his own kin and kind.

With a shaking hand, Kreps stood over Verdugo. The lying body opened his eyes, whispering. He was in pain. Did he beg for something? Kreps will never know. He raised the gun, aimed at Verdugo’s forehead and move his finger on the trigger. He breathed in and unable to stare into those glaring eyes, Kreps turned his gaze and prepared himself for the detonation.

A clicking occurred, followed by a loud cracking sound.

Kreps looked at his gun. He had not shot yet.

A huge block of granite fell on the floor few meters away from everyone and everypony.

“Fluttershy?” A voice echoed like through a tunnel. “Fluttershy?”

“I’m here.” the yellow pony responded.

Ray and Maria gasped. They were face to face with a talking animal. The colour was unusual indeed, but they had seen strangest things before. But a talking pony… it was record breaking. They also caught the fact that the pony, apparently called Fluttershy had wings. They wiped their eyes, trying to figure out the catch in this story.

Still standing over his friend, Kreps saw in the dim darkness five pony-like shapes going down. All were of a different colour. Some had a horn, one had wings and the last one, whose fur was purple-tainted, had both of these strange items.

Everyone’s and everypony’s gazes met. A long, unpleasant silent bathed the cave. Ray caught the purple pony counting, her lips were moving.

“Five…” She whispered.

Twilight cleared her throat. She tried to choose her words wisely, trying to be convincing or at least seem friendly.

“Would you be so kind as to follow us to Canterlot’s Castle? There are ponies who want to see…”

Twilight looked down at the “talons” of the nearest creature. It was displaying a strange metallic object formed of a tube. And the hollowed cylinder was pointing at somepony of its kind, lying on the ground.

Then Twilight witnessed all the blood on the floor. Her eyes lay on Fluttershy, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. She saw her friend partially covered in the same fluid. Anger replaced the clumsy kindness in Twilight’s stare.

“What have you done to her?” She grinned.

On the inside, Twilight started panicking, what if they were monsters? Predators? Anger swamped her mind, she took an offensive stance, stomping the ground, lifting up dust with her loud breath. The creature aimed at her with the strange tool. The primate was clearly disoriented, his belly was growling. Twilight caught herself asking mentally in which situation she had stepped. Everypony looked at the three other primates detached from the first two.

Two of them were hugging each other, one was clearly sobbing. Tears twinkled in the shadows. The pitch in its voice meant it was a female. And the last one was… a child. He was isolated from the rest of its herd.

Twilight’s stare came back to the nearest monster, the one carrying the strange gadget. Bemused, the creature panicked when the five rescuing ponies stepped further. It pointed by turn everypony and then finally aimed at Fluttershy.

“Don’t come closer or she dies,” It panted loudly.

Drops of sweat ran on his forehead. Kreps was thinking as fast as he could. He had only one bullet left. If he shot, they would fight back and this would be the end. If he did nothing it was the end too. He bit his bottom lips to the blood.

Twilight saw its canines and incisors. They were predators of course, like hydras or manticores. She would not mind it in another situation. Even if she usually disliked the species which had to eat meat, she always kept in mind Fluttershy’s words, that it was part of nature. But in this situation, Twilight had two gore ideas bouncing in her mind, disturbing her from thinking clearly.

Either these creatures were cannibals and this would explain why one was lying on the ground; or they had fight to know who would eat her friend first. In both cases it was enough to act and depict these primates as sub-sentient. They were just a pack of predating animals.

A pink light beam flew through the air and ejected the gun from Kreps’s hand which slid in the darkness. Taken by surprise, Kreps looked back at the pony. He saw her horn glowing a deep purple light.

A second beam rushed to him. He tried to protect himself with his hand…

Opening his eyes a second after, Kreps checked his own body, searching for a hole somewhere, a vivid pain in his chest or a chunk of metal in his head. There was nothing. He stared, surprised, at his forearm. The purple light had stuck itself on his skin, still glowing.

Twilight was confused, her spell had not worked.

Kreps shook his arm in disbelief. He tried to get rid of the strange substance which acted like sticky goo. He grunted. Kreps continued until his joints started cracking. Lacking of the knowledge to deal with it, hundreds of questions sprung in his mind.

All of a sudden a hand had grabbed his rags. He turned back and found the youngster facing him. The kid jumped and touched Kreps’s arm, the one engulfed in the glowing substance.

The liquid spread of the kid’s hand and he started laughing. Everybody and everypony was silent.

Kreps decided to try to wipe the substance on Verdugo’s trousers, keeping an eye contact with the purple pony.

Kreps stifled. Getting rid of the compound covering his arm was impossible. All he was doing was spreading it like butter. German saw that Maria and Ray had it onto their clothes; the kid had tried to wipe his hands too.

“It doesn’t work,” Twilight noted, surprised.

“What?” Kreps replied sardonically. “That you haven’t killed me?”

“No… You…” – Twilight stepped back, the creature's tone was unsettling –.

Kreps, with rolled-up sleeves moved forward and faced the purple unicorn with stern eyes. She was half his size. He was going to hit her with a punch.

However, his belly growled and ached so hard he bent slightly and his feet failed him. He fell on the ground. His head was dangling and titling intermittently.

“I must be hallucinating…”

Nopony responded.

Suddenly the glowing purple substance started shaping, spreading on Kreps’s whole body. He panicked as a hissing sound popped out of nowhere. He began convulsing in fear. Looking at his friends and Verdugo, he saw the same phenomenon had happened to them. They were all trying to get rid of the substance.

A flash occurred and then… the primates were nowhere to be found.

“Twilight?” Rarity asked, bemused.

Twilight giggled. Not because of the situation was funny, even if Pinkie started laughing genuinely… but because she had witnessed something all brand new for her. Her magic had gone crazy.

“It was supposed to make him go to sleep…”

Meanwhile, the changeling had slid in the opening, flying away of the Mane Six and the five strange creatures.

ϐ ϖ Ϙ ϕ Ϙ ϖ ϐ

A crack exploded in the air, followed by four screams and a grunt. In a smog of dust and dirt they fell on a white tiled floor. Each one bounced painfully or slid somewhere in the new found room. Around them was standing imposing tables which were displayed hundreds meals. Many pairs of eyes stared at them, horrified.

Verdugo crashed himself in the front of the most massive table of the room. Face against the polished granite of the floor, he was leaning on his wounded shoulder. He complained, struggling to not pass away. Something poked him and he found himself turned over. He looked up at the ceiling. Two beings were looking at him. Both were winged unicorns apparently.

Verdugo’s eyes wandered on each face. His vision was desperately troubled. But he stopped on Luna. He scrutinized the blue-coloured creature.

“Hi fella’ how do you do since the last time?”

Luna’s eyes widened, growing to the size of bowling balls. By reflex she groped her neck.

She rushed like a lightning bolt under her buffet and started crying. She was utterly terrified. Celestia and every other pony in the room fixed their gaze on the intruders.

Few gulps of stress echoed.

3. The sign on her flank

Chapter 3. The sign on her flank.

They reeked like rotting flesh. The stench, forcing its way through their muzzles, slipped down their throats like thick and sick mucus. The witnesses gasped and held back the gag reflexes, hiding their faces from the atrocious spectacle displayed before their eyes. The smell was indescribable, unbearable. But their appearance was even more revolting. Disgust and malaise bloomed in the audience’s minds.

Five broken bags of bones had shattered in the room, given to see in a twisted play. Their features were ghoulish, wrinkled, ravaged… devastated. Fear bathed their disoriented eyes. They were abashed.

At the moment, the terror breaking through their souls was so pregnant it spread to the witnesses like a disease. Everypony stepped back in aversion.

The five creatures, all of different ages, genders and statures were crouched on the tiled floor. Dust had not fallen out yet the new environment startled them. Panting, hissing and ready to burst out in panic, they scanned their surroundings aimlessly. Intermittently, spasms plagued their limbs and tips.

Their complaints sprouted macabre thoughts in everypony’s heads.

The stench grew more and more oppressive. Yet, their look was still the most shocking as all became aware of their traits. Skinny like skeleton, the five primates manifested shaved bodies whose faces were circled by hideous manes. Three of them had scrubby beards, on it were stuck together dirt, dust, remains, and dried fluids. Their bloodshot eyes fixed one by one on the neighbouring ponies.

Finally, one of the creatures, the closest to Celestia and her sister, spoke. The words went out inaudible for most of the ponies.

Luna horrified them as she rushed under a table, her cheeks wet with tears. Celestia’s eyes were blurred and clumsy. She was mumbling something and did not even react when the creature grasped her hoof. It gave out under the weight of its wounds and fell into unconsciousness. The assembly held their breath in utter terror.Its hand slid on Celestia’s silky and pearly white fur, leaving a blood mark on its tow. She suppressed her craving to break away with a cry of fear.

Her stare turned back to another couple of creatures of this brand new species. They were regrouped in a corner of the banquet chamber. The first primate was undoubtedly a girl. She was surprisingly young but, paradoxically, awfully withered. An unending hunger had hollowed her features, branded by time and scars. Her narrowed hazel eyes snaked on the surroundings, unable to understand what was going on. She gasped at the sight of the ponies. And it was not in awe, but in horror. Their stares were eerily settled on her, it was unsettling, if not mind-wrecking.

“Don’t look at me,” she hurled, – the room became heavily silent –.

The waving mane of Celestia did not make the situation any better. Strange phenomenons were as scary as the unknown and the room was full of them.

The girl whirled her rags on her shoulders and deepened inside. Circling tightly her knees, her arms shivered. She began wobbling on her feet like a lunatic, biting her thumbs to the blood.

She was skinnier than her relatives and her widening eyes were of the most unpleasant to watch. The sinews of her neck convulsed. She buried her face in her arms. Was she crying?

Celestia moved away her gaze and set it upon the youngest of the five beings. It was still a foal, having no better words to qualify it… him for the moment. His face was a disturbing mix between, surprise, incomprehension and fear. His eyes fixed the noble ponies intermittently, but they always came back to the impressive display of food around them.

Food… the ponies and Celestia swore the fear in the creatures’ eyes was not due to the true existence of talking, multi-coloured ponies, but a consequence of their starvation. Right now, the four awaken creatures were questioning the true reality of the situation, the true pregnancy of this Pavlov’s spectacle harassing their senses.

A bang echoed harshly and everypony instantly gazed toward its origin. One of the primates was taking his due on the tables, spilling around drinks and breaking plates without a pinch of care. Biting with greed in the meals surrounding him, he was drooling hideously. His eyes widened. It was clear he had only one unique idea numbing its mind… eating.

A noble tried to intervene.

“Mister, you’re not allow…”

The animal grabbed a knife and struck it in the table, sinking the edge in the wood without even casting a glance of interest at the pony. His deed sufficed to shut everypony’s mouths.

“Just fall back,” the primate hissed uneasily, ripping off a mouthful of a bread stick. “Just get away.”

Crumbs got stuck in his beard or fell on his torn clothes. His eyes were tearful, clearly enjoying a basic need he had been deprived for far too long. He kept eating.

A cry broke the omerta. This time, Celestia focused on the girl. Some ponies held their breath. She ran over the white majestic alicorn and pushed her aside with a frail strength. A second wave of fear sprawled in the nobles. Celestia had been… pushed by a stinky creature without any sense of manner.

The girl kneeled near her dying friend and sunk her face in his tattered outfits. Her sob were muffled but still impressively moving in everypony’s hearts and ears.

The last primate standing was looking down at his friends. His face was distorted horridly by the lack of emotion casted upon it. He exuded incomprehension. Yet, showing much more restrain than the others, he scanned everypony around him and finally stared at Celestia.

His eyes were filled with cluelessness. He repeatedly swallowed his saliva while his head gave little shakes intermittently. Just looking at him was… earth-shattering.

“Please, tell me. Are we still on Earth?” Ray asked with hesitation.

His hands were trembling as were his stare. Tired, starving and with no frame of reference his eyes were blinking awkwardly. His movements were jolted.

“Earth? No…” Celestia replied with a disclosed surprise. “You’re in Equestria. What’s… Earth?”

“Did the uproar happen here?” he continued, pleading the alicorn without answering to her question.

“Uproar?”

“Safe… Are we safe?” He finally succeeded in asking this question, the question.

His voice was moving, a genuine hope slithering in his tone.

Hearing this word they had banished from their lexicon, Maria and Kreps went surprisingly silent. They raised their head in Ray’s and the alicorn’s direction. Their eyes were glaring supplications, soaked in a hope they hardly believed in.

Celestia stood back, gritting her teeth in awe. Their look was confusing. These creatures, apparently harmless had seen things… horrible things. Deep inside her soul she knew it.

“Y… Yes,” she replied.

The silence petrified the room. Slowly, every creature kept his gaze unsettlingly fixed on the regal sister as if she was a merciful god. A mighty being that had finally arrived to greet them and lead them to heaven.

Never had Twilight or her most devoted ponies looked at her this way. Her heart shattered in thousands of pieces. A cold anger nested in her bowels. She was angry at the one that had them suffer and go through Tartarus.

Ray’s eyelids lost their tension slightly. His mouth slowly dangled. A brief ‘thanks’ erupted from his dried lips. His eyes were shockingly bloodshot. He could not believe it. A part of him refused to accept the truth, convinced that everything was a deep and well-conceived deceit, a kind of hurtful joke. But he was facing undeniable facts.

He turned back to his friends. For once in a lifespan of surviving, Ray caught himself smiling genuinely. And it was not a smirk, nor a fake grin. It was… joy?

“Is… this really… over?” Kreps and Maria queried, tears flooding their eyes.

“It is over,” Ray nodded, giving a small laugh.

A long complain crawled out of their mouths. Their anxiousness, held for far too long, exuded from their skin. And cries crept out of their throat.

Kreps dropped his knife and cringed on the marble, holding his face in his hands. He tried to restrain hiccups and sobs. But he finally burst out, laughing and crying at the same time.

Maria was the most moving. She lost every speck of composure. Still riveted to her bleeding friend, she wet his torn garments with hot tears. Her cry was a hoarse howl to the one who had finally listened to her… that true one who had given them the right to escape their fate, to escape the hell. She had prayed to god each night of each day since the beginning of the uproar, their ordeal. She trembled, sobbing noisily, her eyes lost into the emptiness of space over Verdugo.

Ray circled his arms over Maria’s shoulders and comforted her. He was crying too, silently though. His shivers joined his friend’s little shakes. He tried to calm her down, but seeing this, Maria pushed him away. She refused to be cradled or touched.

Ray understood and looked back at Celestia. Facing the goddess, he leaned, pleading, thankful, nearly shameful.

“Thanks! Thank you… thanks… [size=9]thanks…[/size]”

And he burst out too, crying all the suffering he had kept buried in his mind for so long. He curled up.

This day, their minds broke free, finally relieved from the pain, the fear and the hopelessness. Their howls of pain echoed in the hallways of Canterlot, alerting guards and ponies who was not attending the feast. The gates opened and a flow of ponies entered and lay their eyes upon the phenomenon, curious.

Many hearts dropped heavily in their chest. The spectacle was pitiful and somehow, atrocious to witness. At the hooves of Celestia, the five creatures had frozen in dread and sorrow. They had wet themselves in tears and fluids.

Nopony really knew how to react. Dealing with such traumatized animals was not something they were used to. They wished Fluttershy was here.

“Verdugo, stay! Please, stay with me… please…” sobbed a desperate voice.

Everypony focused. The girl hiccupped… she tried reanimating her friend. Her hands were clumsily running on his chest, spilling blood on her arms, splattering haemoglobin on the immaculate marbled floor. Whatever she did, she kept spreading blood over her until only her face and eyes were the last washed parts of her body. Shaking, her clothes slid upon her scarred skin. Rolling on her back, the rag folded limply on the ground.

Everypony felt something break inside themselves. Queasy, they looked down at a mark they knew so well. They oscillated between Fleur Dis Lee and the female primate. On her back was a fleur-de-lis… But it was not a cutie mark. It was a mark though… but it had been branded, carved in and on her flesh with a white-hot ember. It was cauterized since a long time. Under the sickening symbol was tattooed a number, fourteen.

Fleur Dis Lee covered her mouth. On the verge of throwing up, she trotted outside, stumbled in the threshold of the gate and disappeared in the hallway. Fancy Pants did not even follow her, he was frozen in shock.

Catching her breath the girl looked behind and understood what had created the eerie silent. She gasped and covered her back again. She returned to her sobs and her dying friends.

“Help them.”

Celestia’s voice ripped off the cold frame of this mad play. Eyes derived on her. Her stare was glaring at the guards, pressing them to urge. Her voice was regal, echoing in everypony’s heads.

“Call the nurse and help them, whatever the cost.”

The assembly caught tears springing under Celestia’s saddened eyes. Nopony dared raising a hoof against her statement. The situation was too heart-breaking to think clearly and it was going to be hectic if they did not act quickly.

A click slammed in the silence. Maria lifted her hands to her neck. She touched a strange object. She hesitated and stopped. She groped around. It was an unrefined irritating leather lace… like a leash.

Slowly, she turned on her feet in fits and starts.

Both of her hands tried to rip off the lace. Her two atrociously widened eyes were set upon a unicorn guard. His horn was slightly glowing yellow sparkles. And next to him, the tip of the leash was restrained by a twinkling mist of the same colour. He looked around, everypony’s face was silently pointing out he had maybe made the biggest mistake of his life, thinking it was just a simple animal like a dog… that a leash would be a good initiative.

Her cheeks and neck were contracting randomly. Anger… basic instincts was burning under her skin, gritting her teeth, maddening her eyes. The guard gulped. She leaped.

“Set me free!” she wailed.

Jumping on the pony she aimed for the neck, circling her fingers over it. She howled in awe and rage. A sick crack of bones twisted everypony’s ears. A scream broke out in the room. Their faces went ghoulish.

ϖ Ϩ π ϰ ϡ Ξ ϡ ϰ π Ϩ ϖ

Ray and Kreps were holding each other, trying not to stumble in the hallway as they were surrounded by guards. Their vision was blurred. Tears and exhaust had dealt the final blow. Their bodies were calling for rest. They had given up, nodding at each demand that was asked to them. Their mental health was broken. Everything should now be better than living in the wasteland. Their minds were somehow relieved of an unbearable burden. Not thinking was a kind of freedom at the moment. The guard was leading them through majestic places. They could not care any less, absorbed in their wishful thinking.

They had been conducted to caretaking rooms in Canterlot’s Hospital. Each in their own room they sat, motionless and passive like dummies.

Few hours passed…

“How are they doing?” Celestia asked, sorrowful.

She was looking through a massive and thick plate of glass. On the other side was the creature who had thanked her earlier. Two ponies were by his side, checking him, washing him and trying not to show their disgust.

In front of the door of the room, a couple of nurses was looking at a medical report. It was badly-written on a blank sheet. It had been done in a hurry. A stain of blood had wet the bottom of the page.

“This one will survive. In spite of his current physical state… malnutrition, diseases, parasites, infections, rashes and wounds…”

“Wounds?” Celestia raised her brows.

“Of many types,” the nurse kept going, listing macabrely. “Cuts, burns, twists, bruises, badly sewed gaps, old broken bones which were not well mended together… And it kept going on.”

The nurse stalked the creature through the opening.

“He is more like a walking corpse than anything else,” she stated, neutral.

“Did he…”

“He spoke indeed. They are… humans. His name is Ray, just Ray. He has an obsession on a few words he repeats over and over again… We gave him food, but he won’t be able to feed himself properly for a while. He and his siblings have been starving nearly to death. Lack of vitamins, of proteins, of glucoses, and apparently… of sunlight.”

Celestia’s heart fainted slightly.

“They all have a melanin malfunction.”

The second nurse accompanied her to the next one-way mirror. It was the second male… human. This one was lying down on a stretcher, unconscious. Doctors were in the middle of an gastric lavage. Celestia frowned in front of the unexpected spectacle unfolding before her eyes.

She looked at the nurse, a genuine interrogation on her lips.

“He had eaten too much in the banquet room, snatching everything he found. He drank too. If we don’t do this right now he will die from indigestion. His stomach wasn’t… ready to go back on this kind of diet.”

Celestia had a good insight of his appearance. These humans were bipedal creatures. They had fingers like dragons but were deprived of any talons or claws. Their skin was bare and some spots were sprouting clumps of fur. Their mane and beard were rough unlike ponies. The human was also covered of filth and scars. His ribs, only covered by a thin layer of flesh, were giving him the look of a mummy.

Randomly, his legs were startled by a strong shake. But this reaction to the unfair treatment the doctors were administering him did not last long.

Celestia sighed. She wanted to move on to another topic; or another human in that case.

They walked past an empty room. A scream broke out from the next open door, followed by a harsh yelp. Celestia and the nurse casted a glance inside.

The room was shining. Each speck of it had been cleared of any particle of dirt, there was not an ounce of air that had not been sterilized and everything was white. So white the light coming from the ceiling forced their eyes to blink a few times before being able to stand the brightness of the chamber. It was the medical care bathroom.

After a second look, not everything was as bright as expected. Curled in a corner was the young girl from before… her fingers were awfully twisted. Trying to choke the guard she had not even remarked the armour around his neck and her fingers had long snapped before the armour would. She was also bleeding and a small path was streaming on the ground down to the sink in the middle of the room.

She was hissing like a cat. Unveiling her bad teeth, incisors and canines shocked the ponies and Celestia.

The yapping had not been the girl’s deed, she was not bleeding. A nurse already present in the room had folded her hoof under her chest. It was her blood the strange species girl had on her face and clothes.

Celestia narrowed her eyes. A bite mark was clearly visible on the nurse’s fur. She was crying. The wound was really deep. Another nurse tried to come closer to the little monster. She withdrew quicker than she had moved forward.

“We’ve tried to wash her,” The tearful nurse sobbed.

“Leave me alone,” the princess ordered.

More than a pair of eyes lay on Celestia.

“No we can’t…”

“Leave me alone with… her.”

The nurses left half-heartedly.

The princess of the Sun closed the door behind them and let out a breath. It was a loud sigh coming from the deepest corner of her heart. She was clueless on how to manage such situation. She looked at the girl. She expressed pity for her. She was awfully… ungirly. All features making her a mare, or whatever the name this race had for this usage, had been ripped off. Just staring at her was a difficult experience. Celestia caught the girl crying. She was afraid.

Celestia was indeed intimidating. Bigger, taller and in some sort of way fatter than this poor girlish skeleton, she was impressive.

Celestia held her breath. Their stares had crossed.

She finally decided to sit down, five hoofsteps from the human. Her slender legs folded under her white coat. Celestia thought she would look less frightening this way. Experiencing fear from an all of white coated goddess in an absolutely stainless room, this idea kindled a spark of laughter in her mind.

“My name is Celestia,” She said slowly after a long pause. “What’s yours young filly?”

Her voice and her eyes were steeped in compassion and gentleness. She expected a reaction from the ‘human’ and she got it. The girl slowly raised her head. She was somehow fascinated by the princess mane which strands of hair were fluttering and sparkling in the air.

Celestia saw it. With a snap of her teeth, she cut few straws of her mane and let them float to the scared human with her telekinesis.

The creature waited for the lock to fall on the ground, and the magical glow to disappear. She waited again. And then Celestia blushed in shame. The human had raised her hands, showing they were both broken and crooked. The girl held back tears.

“I’m Maria…”

“Hello Maria, we’re here to help you. Nothing more… Nothing less.”

“Last time somebody told me that shit… he tried to… to…” She wept.

The words died behind her lips. Celestia was shocked, deeply moved. She refused to let a painful silence settle between them and definitely lock away the filly’s voice. She had to keep talking.

“I’m… I’m sorry, but you’re hurt and in pain. We need you to beha… to let us heal you.”

Celestia tried to find an incentive to push Maria to be more committed to this tragic situation.

“You can come with me and eat,” Celestia said, Maria’s eyes sparkled – she drooled slightly –. “…only if you let me watch your wounds and wash you.”

“Wash?”

These four letters struck Celestia so hard she restrained a retching with difficulty. Had the young creature suffered this much? Where was her parents, the care she should have been given? What kind of civilisation had cradled these… humans? The girl had taken a peak in a pond few days ago, Celestia had seen it. But drying slowly in the air after a bath in stagnant water was not something one called washing. Furthermore, she had gone through a huge physical effort which had left here filthy.

Celestia’s horn glowed a bright white and she grabbed few bandages set upon the closest sink.

“Show me your hoov… hands.”

Maria held them up. She bit her lips when Celestia got her fingers straight. The princess was impressed by her resistance to pain. Maria wiped few tears with the back of her forearm. She looked at her tips, wrapped tightly in cleaned gauze. She smirked.

“I would have done better,” she laughed with a melange of sarcasm and relief. “Th… Tha… thank you.”

“You’re welco…”

“What are you?” Maria cut her off, her voice suddenly stern and harsh.

“We are ponies… I’m an alicorn. And you girl?”

“I’m not a... girl. I’m a woman,” Maria replied, vexed.

“Your friends said you were humans.”

“Yeah, there is man and woman. We’re humans and there are men and women,” Maria said in a flash.

For a first time, it was hard to catch. Celestia promised herself to come back on this lexicon later.

“How can you talk?”

“I beg your pardon?” Celestia arched a brow.

“Yeah, from where I come animals don’t talk,” Maria stuttered.

“Well, you’re not on your world anymore I guess.”

Maria sniggered and gave out a shy laugh. She dried a tear rolling on her cheek and wiped the pony’s blood she had on her lips and chin.

“How did you do the glow?”

“The glow?” Celestia giggled. It was her turn to laugh. “You mean my magic?” – Maria gave her a creepy stare – “You… you don’t have magical powers?”

“I don’t even know it could exist in reality. Is… Is this real life?”

Celestia slid toward Maria and gave her little poke on her shoulder.

“It could not be truer.”

Celestia tried to be friendly and intended to make Maria laugh. But her stare was casting shadows. She started hissing again as horrific memories were brought back.

“Don’t touch me ever again.”

Celestia stepped back slowly.

“But I have to wash you…”

“Don’t…”

The white alicorn put her hoof on her chin, rubbing it. An idea popped in her mind.

“I won’t have to!”

Celestia fell back to the opposite side of the room, her horn started glowing. As did Maria’s torn clothes. She gasped and tried to keep them put on. But Celestia’s magic was too strong for her limp skeletal bones. She sobbed and gave in.

“Okay, just… just close your eyes,” Maria surrendered.

“I may hurt you if…”

“Please,” Maria’s eyes were begging her new friend to accept this condition.

Maria had hidden her back since the beginning, dissimulating this horrid symbol carved upon her.

“You saw it?”

“Yes,” Celestia confessed, swallowing her saliva.

Having the correctness not to ask what it was she anticipated Maria’s next plea.

“I will ask everypony to keep it silent about it. I’ve seen you dissimulate it from your friends,” – Maria suddenly lost the tension in her shoulders – “But someday you’ll have to show them… and tell them and to us what it is. It is harmful to keep such burdens and carry them along the way of existence.”

Celestia could not get rid of Fleur-Dis-Lee’s troubled face when she had left the banquet room. She would be a spine in the foot.

“Yeah, someday,” Marias’s voice died in a disappointing silence, evasive.

Celestia closed her eyes. With her magic she slid the rags off Maria’s skin. She grabbed a towel, a flannel and soap. Groping the wall she found the tap. Switching it on, she smiled, hearing the lapping of water. A flow splashed heavily on her head. The warm stream ran over her mane and fur. Maria laughed.

This time Celestia found the good tap. Maria yelled.

“What’s wrong Maria?”

“It’s… nothing. I forgot what clean water… warm water feels like.”

Celestia nodded in silence, her eyes still closed. Using the soap she started rubbing Maria’s back. Even with her magic and through the thick fabric of the flannel she felt the bruises, the gaunt and scars on her skin. She shivered as she ran over Maria’s bones, right beneath the thin wrinkled flesh.

“How old are you?” Celestia said, putting an end to the silence.

“Seventeen,” she replied.

Maria’s belly growled.

“I’m hungry.”

“I am too, to be honest you appeared right in the middle of our diner,” Celestia giggled.

“Do I owe you something for the hospitality?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Celestia stood proud. “Here help is priceless and is better given than sold.”

“Everybody pays but nobody knows the price,” Maria replied, cryptic.

Celestia’s ears twitched. Slight vocabulary differences existed between their idioms. It was small but still interesting to notice.

“I want to see Verdugo,” Maria ordered.

“Who?”

“Verdugo, my friend.”

Celestia guessed she was talking about the deadly wounded man. She had not seen him yet but the nurses and doctors should be focusing on him at the moment.

“Don’t worry, he is in good hooves, but even I won’t be given the right to see him before he has been… fixed.”

Celestia turned off the tap and gave Maria the towel to wrap her in.

“Can I open my eyes now?”

Maria quickly wrapped herself and then replied.

“Yes.”

Celestia opened them. She blinked a several times to get rid of the pain the light was dealing to her retina. She might be the Princess of the Sun, but she still had a corporeal envelop. And therefore, she was bound to its weaknesses.

Maria’s filthiness had been washed away. The water flowing from her legs was black… Celestia’s eyes widened. It was really black! She chuckled.

Maria went through a complete change. Gotten rid of the muck, her skin was smoother and was somehow tanned. Her wet hair had dropped on her shoulders, sprawling over her skin. It was dark brown, as were her eyes. Celestia could not tell if she was beautiful. She was not aware of “human’s standards”. Yet she was able to say Maria had moved at least from the ugly part of the scale to the average one. Meanwhile Celestia had kept her eyes shut Maria had wrapped her arms and legs in tightened bandages and herself in a long white towel.

They stood up. Maria flagged and fell on the ground. She refused Celestia’s hoof.

“Give me something to help me walk. And something to put on.”

To put on? Celestia suddenly remembered every human was wearing clothes, even if it was stinking sweat and blood. A tradition? A social norm? The facts struck the princess, they had no fur. Celestia understood it was for protecting their bare skin from external aggressions.

Celestia ordered the nurse outside to give Maria a cane. They did and so, both the human and the alicorn went out in the hallway of Canterlot horsepital.

Having nothing to wear, Maria, still wrapped in the towel snatched a curtain of red silk from a window, without an ounce of care. She withdrew to the bathroom.

When she left it again, she had exchanged the towel for the fabric. It was much more comfortable and less humiliating. The nurses lifted their hooves to their foreheads. Celestia sighed gently. It was just a curtain after all. It was not as if she had skinned an animal to make a coat of it.

The nurse conducted Maria to the next hallway. Celestia had decided to take care of the other humans. A doctor, a unicorn, came up quickly.

“The wounded creature is now saved.”

“They call themselves humans,” Celestia nodded. “How is his state?”

“From now on, it is… stable.”

The doctor laughed to his own pun. Celestia smirked slightly.

“But seriously, the four creat… humans are safe now. Though the rehabilitation will take time. They went through Tartarus during their journey. I can’t even begin to imagine the horror they have suffered.”

“I can’t either.”

The doctor’s horn glowed a light pink and he drifted a report from his saddlebag to the air.

“The wounded human suffers from blood loss, gangrene and a huge bunch of different problems. He lost his right arm,” He brought up, embarrassed.

Celestia frowned in disgust.

“Lost? He can’t use it,” Celestia passed over quickly.

“No… we amputated it,” – Celestia’s features turned greenish –. “The gangrene would have killed him if we didn't. The wound in his shoulder was due to a projectile, which pierced it from side to side, shattered his scapula, cut the nerves toward his arm and obstructed some crucial veins. But I can’t identify what kind of weapon can deal such destruction.”

“With magic it will be easy to fix it,” Celestia sighed in relief.

The doctor gulped in discomfort.

“In fact, the human resists magic,” he said, trying to get rid of Celestia’s stunned look. “Not that he is immune to it. It’s just that magic becomes random when it is casted directly on him. We have been able to reconstruct the bone, but only time will help now. We can’t accelerate the process without jeopardizing his state.”

Celestia smiled. At least the human was not going to die. She had to inform Maria. She decided to change the topic.

“And the fifth human, the foal.”

“The… the fifth? They were only four of them in my service. I haven’t treated your last one. You didn’t bring him to me.”

Celestia got stuck in motion as she was going to leave. This was an issue, a very big problem. She bit her bottom lips in stress.

ϖ Ϩ π ϰ ϡ Ξ ϡ ϰ π Ϩ ϖ

Luna was sobbing on her balcony. She had finally raised the moon after a long day of intense emotions. The monster was in the castle. That true one who killed her in his dreams. And Celestia had given them a shelter...

Luna was doubtful. The other “humans” might not be bad people, but this one... She could not accept him roaming freely in the hallways of the castle, or even under her delightful night. He was a danger.

She extracted herself from her day-dreaming, beneath her tower she saw Twilight and her friends running toward the gate of Canterlot. Fluttershy was limping, a hoof folded on her flank.

She sighed and guessed the Mane Six wanted to talk to Celestia about the ‘new guests’.

She was tired. Two days she had not slept. She toddled to her couch. Dark rings circled her eyes and she was ready to collapse on her silky bed linen.

The kid was there.

Luna’s eyes widened, scared. The child, the human child was on her bed and… Luna saw her teddy-bear in the creature’s arms. He was petting it. The urchin saw her, stuck out his tongue and tightened the plush toy in his hands.

Luna tilted her head, she was absolutely not amused.

“Drop it! It’s mine!”

The child raised a brow and stand up, creasing the perfectly tided sheets. He was smiling eerily at the Princess.

He moved forward.

“Don’t come closer,” Luna stressed.

The child tends his chubby hands to the Alicorn, trying to reach her.

Luna hissed. The child was now standing between her and the door.

“Help?” Luna complained. “Please, need some help!”

Her call faded in the air, nopony was here to listen to her.

The child started toddling toward Luna. She panicked.

4. We will lurk in every shadow

Chapter 4. We will lurk in every shadow

Stares were riveted on the human girl, stalking each of her moves with a scientific and unnerving interest. Raising the spoon to her lips, Maria was drinking the soup she had been offered earlier. It was a mix of tomato, potato and other different vegetables she had no idea of. It was doughy but tasteful.

She was thankful for the stallion or the mare who cooked it for her. She was starving and this pain aching in her belly had lasted for too long.

The silence was quasi-religious and only her noisy swallows were twitching everypony’s ears. Raising her eyes she saw half a dozen of ponies all standing at a secured range from her, visibly afraid and paradoxically fascinated.

Still dangling over her shoulders, back and legs, her crimson cloth was awfully inconvenient and awkward, she had to readjust it regularly. But, for want of her better alternative, Maria had not left her improvised dress.

She was sitting in a vast chamber whose windows were composed of tainted glass narrating some deeds from the past. She glared at one showing six ponies, all of different colours encaging a strange monster within a purple glow. She recognized the six ponies, those she had met in that cave... She told no one, at least for the moment, and hoped nobody… nopony had seen her wince. At both sides of the windows hung the same long, red and silky curtains as the one she had snatched. They were waving eerily under the blow of an invisible wind.

The darkness was pregnant outside the windows, and sometimes a creepy howl was heard in the distance.

At nightfall, the room had been filled with thousands of candles, giving it the appearance of a gothic cathedral.

She snapped out of her daydreaming. Hoofsteps had echoed behind the massive gate of the banquet room. Sliding on their hinges the doors opened without a grating. Three stallions clad in silver-plated armor entered with Ray and Kreps in their tow. The last one was limping, helping himself with a cane. Silently they sat down next to Maria and were served the same frugal meal.

Kreps’s eyes wandered over the room. Even if the floor had been washed and the other tables moved, he recognized this place as the one where they had miserably fallen after the lavender unicorn had used her strange glowing trick. A small stain in the seal of a tile gave him the hint.

His stare stayed a long time fixed on the tainted glass. Then a gentle smile moved his lips as he fixed the contents of his bowl. He was starving too. Yet, he ate with the utmost difficulty, his throat was aching each time he swallowed and his stomach was in agony.

Ray on his own gave little importance to the goings-on around him, in the darkness produced by the biased flames of the candles he struggled finding the spoon.

“Is there a problem, sir?” one of the pony soldiers asked.

“I… I lost my glasses… I’m really short-sighed,” Ray confessed, ashamed.

The soldier nodded and evidenced the spoon with his hoof. Ray thanked him and started eating greedily once he grasped the utensil.

“You know what happened to Verd’?” Kreps put forward with hesitation, giving a glance at the unsettling stares of the ponies around.

Kreps was trying to talk as low as possible. He quickly found that the room had a perfect echoing structure. He would not be able to hide his words.

“He is in intensive care,” Maria answered without a conviction. “They said nothing if he is going to survive.”

She dealt the final blow to the specks of joy floating in the air and everyone sunk into an abyssal silent, fixing their bowls.

“And the kid?” Ray brought up.

Maria nibbled her bottom lip, Kreps drummed the tablecloth with his fingers and a scream erupted in the air. Everyone jumped out of their chair. Powerful steps stomped the ground outside. The wicks of the candles shook and some flames went blown away. From behind the closed threshold a voice started shouting.

“[size=9]Princess Luna, stop! You’re going to…[/size]” – The door slammed inward – “…hurt you…” finished a purple pony with a horn and flapping wings.

Princess Luna flung herself in the room. Eyes widened and fearful, she drew circles in the middle of the chamber.

On her back was cramped the human child, his hand firmly tightened to Luna’s waving mane. Under his harm, a teddy-bear shook under the swerves of the alicorn. Luna rolled on the floor, finally able to get rid of the parasite on her back.

The kid stumbled on the floor, his hand riveted to the plush toy. His head hit a tile and droplets of blood ran on his face. He did not cry.

In the opening of the door appeared the five friends of the purple pony. They all had a hoof in front of their eyes, ready to swipe it from their forehead to their muzzle in a monumental grouped facehoof that would be remembered for generations.

Still on her flank, panting, Luna fixed the human kid with a dominant stare.

“This is mine!”

The child hissed and Luna jumped on her hooves with a mix of fear and anger in her eyes. She tried to snatch the toy off his hands, but the child’s grunt was enough to make the princess withdraw once again.

Raucous laughter rose from the neighbouring table. With her bloodshot eyes, Luna stared in its direction. The two human males were mocking her. Ponies around also had difficulty to shovel down their cravings to burst out in laughs. The girl on the other hoof was scanning the Princess with hawk-eyes.

Meanwhile, the kid disappeared under a table.

“You?!” Maria said abruptly.

Luna shifted her eyes and the revelation popped in her mind. The girl!

“You were in my dream!” Maria kept going, her voice more stern than before.

She had seen the alicorn when they miserably appeared in that chamber, but she had not paid attention at the moment. Right now, Maria was clearly visualizing the features of the blue coated winged, whatever, pony. She had seen the mighty animal in her dream… before she had even met her.

“It’s Our duty to watch upon the dreams of others!” Luna spoke, trying to get the upper hoof on the creature facing her.

The three humans became suddenly silent.

“You what?” Kreps hissed.

“We enter the dreams of our fellow ponies to chase their nightmares away,” the princess answered with proudness.

“You sneaked… into our minds,” Maria erupted, gritting her teeth and showing her canines to the assembly. “You spied on us?”

The sudden burst of anger dunked everypony’s head in their shoulders. Luna mumbled. Maria was ready to give a final turn to the screw and leap on the alicorn.

With a cry, Ray raised his hand, shutting Maria’s mouth up, making her sit slowly. Her stare kept glaring death threats at the alicorn.

“The question is how can you enter our mind?” Ray queried the Princess.

“Magic,” a purple pony interposed herself between Ray and Luna.

“Twilight…” Luna tried, vexed.

“And a rational explanation rather than the common ‘shut up it’s magic’,” Ray cut the young princess.

Twilight winced, not getting the reference.

“No I’m not kidding,” Twilight stomped the ground. “How do you think I teleported you here?”

The three humans took a pause… a long unsettling pause. Then their eyes commonly set upon Twilight with an expression of disclosed hatred. The pony swallowed.

“You tried to kill us in that cave…” Kreps hissed.

Maria studied her spoon, probing the sharpness of its contours.

“It was a sleep spell, but of course when I try something simple I have to stumble on something that somehow messed with my magic,” Twilight sniggered sarcastically. “And you were the one who attacked Fluttershy.”

Kreps raised a brow. Behind Twilight walked the butter-coated pony he had met earlier.

“Twilight, I repeat that it was okay. They saved…” she tried to convince with a voice nearly inaudible.

“And your friend, confess that you were going to kill him!” Twilight added without an ounce of attention for Fluttershy. “That you wanted to eat him, you cannibals!”

Ray raised a finger, calling for silence. Everypony remarked he was not shocked by these accusations, just strangely troubled.

“First, yes we were going to kill him before you arrived,” the listening ponies gasped and gave a hoofstep back from the table. “But he was going to die anyway. It was… mercy.”

“Mercy? And cannibalism in that story?” Twilight smirked with disgust.

“It was p…”

“Silence!” Fluttershy shouted with enough strength that Twilight jumped out of her horseshoes.

The gentle pony took place between the two parties. She fixed her friend.

“They saved me from a Wyvern,” she spelled slowly – In her back Kreps joined the palm of his hands, praying the god who gifted him somebody who finally knew the lexicon –. “It’s been five hours since I tried to tell you this, but you can be such a mule when you want to!”

Twilight’s eyes swelled, her timid Fluttershy, facing her like this. Twilight’s lips shivered, tears rolled on her cheeks.

“I… I’m sorry,” Fluttershy whispered, seeing her hurt friend. “I…”

“No it’s me who’s sorry. It’s true, I’m a mule…” Twilight gratified her friend with a hug.

Ray, Kreps and Maria frowned, sticking their tongues out with disgust, revolted by such a soppy play. Luna was still standing by Twilight side. She had been silent during the argument and she visibly wanted to come back on the leading edge.

“Let’s get back to the main topic, would thou? Yes, We entered your dream. Yes, We spied on you, but it was out of curiosity,” she threw, trying to lower her aggressiveness.

Luna calmed down and added, “Thou aren’t from this world, are you?”

The Mane Six had gathered around the princess, and the last sentence had every stare glued on the trio, who sat at the only table of the vast chamber. Kreps and Ray shared a stressed look, feeling surrounded and defenseless.

“I…” Ray initiated.

“No, we're not,” Maria slithered in. “I talked with the other princess… Celestia. We come from somewhere else.”

Everyone and everypony turned muted, giving place to an atrociously long silence who petrified every party.

“What's your world like?”

Stares set upon… Applejack. She was curious and as scared as everypony else, but honesty was also her curse.

“How did your world make y'all into wrecks?”

She mentioned their limp limbs, the skin over their bones, their horrid appearance, everything that made the humans monsters in ponies eyes.

“Kreps?” Ray asked. “You’re the best at storytelling when Verd’ is not here. Go ahead.”

The German sighed. He swept the room with his sorry eyes.

“Earth, the blue planet… A magnificent place four billions years old where life birthed in some random oceans and sprawled over the seas, the earth and the air. There, in some region called Africa a species raised itself to the top of the animal kingdom. Its name was humankind.”

Kreps saw the captivated eyes of his audience. He made the suspense last.

“Our race thrives upon the lands, scavenging it, digging it, shaping it to our own and sole will. We built self-propelled vehicles that sent us to our moon,” he said pointing the sky through the picture windows.

Luna’s jaw fell slightly, dangling at Kreps’s words.

“We built engines to go faster than any living creature,” – one of the ponies, a rainbow pegasus standing next to the princess twitched her ears –. “…breaking barriers that we thought forbidden to us. We built machines to free us from any carving. We erected monuments to our own glory, touching the sky with our burning will to compete with deaf and blind gods. We forged our path, imposing our power over everything because we were the only sentient beings on our soil. We master our world with our bare hands.”

He showed to everypony the palm of his right hand and closed it violently, mimicking the power within the palm of monarchs.

“We built our paved roads, our shining cities and our complex machineries without magic… only with the sweat of our forehead, with the pain in our hands and the blood of hundred anonymous generations. Our cities shone in the mountains, reverberate the light in the plains, brighten the sand of our deserts, interconnected with endless streets where our seven billons brothers agitate like insects within their hive…”

Drawing this superior view of his civilisation, Kreps wanted to spread an emotion in the ponies. And he did it well. No mouth was shut, no eyes was neutral. And the frail light of the candles was giving strength to his flawless speech.

“So why are y’all so… rotten?” Applejack sniggered, feeling the lie between this sweet talk.

“Because he’s saying half the truth,” a limp voice erupted from the gate.

Everypony turned around.

Celestia was standing next to an improvised wheelchair. Verdugo was sitting limply in it, wrapped in bandages, with intravenous running through his body. He was pale and shivering due to the blood loss he had suffered and pain was easily readable on his ghoulish face. He had difficulties staying awake.

Maria and her friends stood up and dashed maniacally to their friend.

“You did it!” Ray cried.

“A piece of me only,” Verdugo responded, pointing his… missing arm.

They all glared at Celestia who held back a bad feeling.

“You cut his arm?” Maria spelled slowly with a disclosed anger.

The princess tried to answer. Verdugo raised his left hand.

“Tis just a flesh wound, won’t be a burden to kick your ass during the next game,” he said to her foster sister – He gave an amused look to Kreps, then to everypony. Oh god he wanted to play a game of “Baraka” –. “But let’s go back to your little story, Kreps.”

Verdugo gently asked the stallion pushing his chair to stabilize him in the middle of the gathering. Kreps’s face whitened as Verdugo strated clearing his voice.

“What Kreps didn't have the courage to tell you,” he smiled. “The whole fucking thing. Mankind is not a peaceful race. We are warriors with no natural skin armour to protect us, with no claws to defend us, with no teeth to rip off the meat off our enemy’s neck.”

He lifted his arm over his head, grunting in pain, showing to every eyes staring at him the truth in his demonstration.

“Someday, someone, you can call it Providence, the Almighty, I don’t care… Someone said that man was a yet-to-be god, and swept us over the surface of Earth, destroying with anger and angst the first human’s common work, a tower that reached the sky. It tore apart the prime idiom of our first civilisation to be sure that in the end, we will never be able to take the upper hand on the universe.”

Verdugo stared laughing imperceptibly.

“But Man is particularly spiteful and revanchist. He gathered in many countries and each of them tried to build his own tower, with its own rules and its own languages. But man isn’t just spiteful against the universe, no…

He's a jealous being who looked down at the other's to see what he could steal, copy and use while he would force his own vision down others' throats and minds.”

Verdugo snatched a glass of water off the neighbouring table and drunk it in one mouthful. He breathed loudly.

“Men, because we can’t say ‘Man’ anymore, tried to make sure that everyone else would follow their own will instead of the other's. So they invented the almighty way of war.”

Shivers spread on everypony’s fur.

“Men are freewill-gifted wild animals, wolves which search for power and make choices, terrible choices though,” he shook his head in sorrow. “This is why men created culture and society, trying to encage themselves in a set of rules to make sure the beast and the sickness inside stay well-behaved until the end of times.”

Verdugo distorted his face with a maddening smile, unveiling his rotten yellow teeth. Some ponies held back the gag in their stomach.

“But in fact, men never cease to be violent. Because men encaged themselves, they started getting used to rules and routines. If violence entered the routine nobody will bat an eye, but once the violence or something else come tickling this insanity of repeating the same speech, habits and deeds over and over again… Then everyone loses their minds. And that is exactly what happened. We lost our minds.”

Verdugo sniggered; satisfied with the expression of horror the ponies were giving to him. He was even more amused that his three friends had lowered their stares, looking down at their feet with shame.

“More than three years ago, a trigger was pressed and our world ceased to exist as we knew it. People grabbed their weapons and threw themselves at each others’ throats, trying to do something that rules and unnatural instincts tried to make them forget… survival, simple survival,” he circled his neck with his hand, imitating strangulation. “We ripped each others’ faces, we killed, we raped, we scavenged, we ate, we hated… words can’t suffice, but keep this image in your mind that Kreps tried to hide. We may have the nature bend before ourselves, but we never break the truth lying, hidden, deep within every human’s heart… the truth that in the end we are all monsters, bound by blood.”

His three friends had taken a seat, shaking from these revelations. Verdugo had brought back ‘good old’ memories. He was even more satisfied by the graveyard silence stagnant in the air.

“What is that trigger you’re talking about?” Celestia hazarded herself with an irrepressible fear shaking her hooves.

Verdugo’s smile grew creepier, keeping the suspense aloft. He spelled with delight, pointing at Celestia’s tattoo over her stifle.

“The sun simply decided to wipe off the earth our six thousand years of history and four millions years of evolution; and leaded us to kill each other in a global bloodbath that saw six billions people put… to the sword.”

He laughed.

“You should see the look on your faces,” he spelled with amusement and turned to look at his friends. “What? Truth never killed people, did it?”

Everypony had slid their eyes on Celestia. She was blemish, having difficulty keeping her composure.

“Don’t you freak out Princess, you told me on the way that you raise the sun and other things. Not that I don’t believe that absolute monarchy is a stable regime, but why are you so shaken by a simple sun?”

“I really move the sun at my will, mister,” Celestia despised the disrespectful human.

To her avail, her horn suddenly glowed white and the sun jet from the horizon outside the palace. A second later Luna’s horn glowed a dark blue and the moon took back its rightful place up in the night sky. Verdugo smiled with amusement, Kreps slapped himself and Maria hid her face behind the palm of her hand.

“I think I’m gonna hate this place,” Ray sighed, blasé.

Accompanied with her sister and the Mane-Six, Celestia left the room a knot firmly tied in her stomach, melted in bile of anger and unfathomable sadness.

The five humans stayed in, drinking their mixed food. The kid had kept the plush and was now tearing off its obsidian eyes with his teeth.

“I think you sealed up our fate Verd’…” Maria sighed with despair.

“I made a choice. Don’t wanna blame me for this.”

“You and your choices… You’ll kill all of us someday. You really had to make yourself the villain of the story?”

Verdugo gave a last laugh before catching the soup bowl with his left hand and lift it to his mouth, drinking it with greed. He scanned his friends.

“Apparently they have locked away all of our remaining weapons,” Verdugo stated with an atrocious pragmatism, mentioning they had left they metal case in the meadow before the wyvern’s assault. “And your box, Kreps?”

The German shook his head. Everyone sighed, understanding they were short on their options.

ϧ α ϼ ϖ ϡ ϖ ϼ α ϧ

“We can’t keep them,” Luna struck the table with her hoof. “You heard that Verdugo? They are monsters!”

“I don’t want to look like a human,” Twilight added, sniggering with her comparison. “But I’m with Luna on this idea. They were ready to kill their own ‘friend’. Can you believe that?!”

The small chamber displayed little furniture, a long and oval table covered with a purple leathered cover and a rack where a cowmare hat dangled. The walls were upholstered with red covers and over a sleeping hearth stood crossed a sword and a scroll, carved in the same piece of silver.

Stares fixed both Luna and Twilight. Among them were Celestia, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Leading Hooves, the right arm stallion of Shining Armor who had been dragged there from under his bed sheets.

“Stop jumping over the cart Twilight,” Applejack tried to reason her. “We don’t really know about them, maybe they were joking or lying!”

“They are monsters, you heard them. They confess they were murderers and other stuff that creep me out so much I don’t want to bring it on the top of the agenda.”

“Twilight!” Celestia erupted, using the Canterlot voice.

Twilight dunked her head, terrified by the sudden vocal burst of her beloved teacher.

“Twilight,” Celestia added with a more gentle tone. “Don’t overcommit yourself, your mind blurs and refuses to see other’s points of view when you’re angry. Don’t you remember what I taught you?”

“Yes Princess, I’m sorry,” the concerned lavender alicorn replied, shameful.

“Nopony can be bad to the core Twilight,” Fluttershy tried.

“They are not ponies, remember.”

“They are from an advanced civilisation, if what they said is true. Don’t you understand what does that mean…” Rarity added, sparks in her eyes.

“They said their civilisation has been blown away.”

“They built super-fast machines!!” Rainbow cried, bursting her wings and flying in the air to get muzzle to muzzle with Twilight.

“That may be a lie to trick us,” Twilight sniggered, pushing aside Rainbow’s face.

Everypony sighed, stuck in a dead end.

“They need care and kindness,” Fluttershy advanced shyly. “We can all see they had suffered. Look, even that guy, Verdugo… He got his arm cut and he didn’t seem to care about it. And… that poor girl, ponies whispered about her ‘cutie mark’.”

“He was going to die Fluttershy,” Luna rolled her eyes. “We think that We would trade a hoof for staying alive, who wouldn’t? And for that girl…”

“Cease about it,” Celestia sighed. “I promised Maria we won’t talk about it until she is ready to speak about it by herself.”

Everypony shut up, worried looks plaguing their features.

“Fluttershy is right,” Rarity tagged with her friend, breaking the silence. “How can we be the Elements of Harmony if we can’t give them a chance to prove they are good, or at least not as bad as they look.”

Rarity had glued in her eyes the horrible appearance of the humans. Pigs were the only convenient comparison she had. But the girl had washed herself, and yes, she could give them a chance. Maybe she would learn about their fashion, they were wearing clothes and visibly, the girl had displayed cleverness to keep her modesty safe.

“You could learn innumerable things from them Twilight,” Celestia smiled, having found the right incentives for her faithful student.

And she was right, stars of greed sparked in Twilight’s eyes.

“And if we keep them, I’ll throw them a welcoming party!” Pinkie Pie finally burst after being silent all along, overwhelmed by the cries and screams everypony had been shooting at eachother.

“I won’t let them leave the castle for the moment Pinkie, I think you’ll have to do it with a restrained audience or wait until I am assured they are… safe for my little ponies to see and deal with them,” Celestia cut in her joy. “I must agree with Twilight and my sister on this point. Even if we give them a chance, I still consider them as dangerous. The Royal Guard is examining their possessions right now. This is why I’ve woken you up Leading.”

The stallion snapped out of his sitting nap.

“Yes, sure Princess. They had on them a load of weapons, swords, axes, and…” – Leading Hooves casted a glance at Twilight –. “… Three strange cylinders with the weapon you brought. We still don’t know how it works but we are acting with precautions. And I don’t want to take a side in your disputes, but the edges of their weapons are dirty and used… and not on something inert.”

Nopony dared counter his statement.

Days passed…

ϧ α ϼ ϖ ϡ ϖ ϼ α ϧ

Plunged in the dark, the hive was buzzing under the agitation of thousands of changelings, busy fulfilling the tasks they were given at birth and that they would carry on until the bells of death tolled for them. Thousands of glowing eyes were moving in tidy lines endlessly, a designed objective in their minds. Moving forward, drilling through the mass of his brothers, a changeling was limping toward the deepest stages of the cyclopean construction.

The walls were blackened by sick mucus produced by the builders. Everything was ruled by the dogma of efficiency. Everything had to have a place and was meant to not drift away from it. Those who failed to follow this order successfully were ineluctably thrown away. They became useless for the hive.

He stood firmly in front of a greenish bioluminescent gate. A changeling’s crown was stamped on it, likely burned with an ember. He gulped, felling nauseous as a powerful surge of magic crawled from under the door like the tongue of an undisclosed monster, licking his face, tasting a petrified prey like a predator before his deadly leap.

The gates gritted on its biologic hinges and a rotten air slapped the changeling’s muzzle. He winced; a violent light was creeping out of the chamber too.

He took a long and deep breath and entered.

In the light, the changeling’s feature became more explicit. Small clumps of dark green mane were sprouting out of his back and head, hiding his eyes slightly. Numerous scars were grieving his exoskeleton.

He stepped forward, queasy and jumped swiftly when the huge door slammed in his back. He wiped the sweat of his forehead, running in his blue eyes. His shredded wings whizzed in the hair, throwing a painful aching in his body.

He kneeled in the light, tilting his head in a message of fear and respect.

“My Queen,” he implored with respect.

“Oh, my dear Pathog you can call me by my true name,” Chrysalis replied with a grin of amusement.

“Yes… mother.”

Chrysalis was lying on a construct made of thousands of hatched eggs, all solidified into a throne of horror. The light was blooming from the celling where an opening filled with mirrors was reverberating the light from the surface.

Pathog laid his eyes on the queen, his mother. She never fully recovered from the attack on Equestria. One of her legs was twisted in the wrong way and a scar was slashing over her face. Her wings were also damaged. Yet, they were growing back, slowly, for a year and a half now they had been reshaping into their original form.

“Come to me my son,” she said with gentleness. “It has been so long since I had a discussion with you or your brothers.”

The changeling went stoic.

“Have you heard me? Come here!”

“I, I can’t,” the changeling sobbed. “Vector and Host are dead, I’m sorry.”

One of Chrysalis's hollowed hooves slid off her couch in awe, tiny tears rolled from her eyes, twinkling in the brightening light falling from the hole above her. The despair… She felt it pulling her down like a heavy anchor, down into the murky waters of oblivion. First she had lost a war and a majority of her people… now, she had lost two sons… Only one remained. Without his approval, Chrysalis grabbed Pathog with a disincarnated claw of green sparkling magic and dragged him to her side, hugging him in a mother like reflex, like a toy she could use to keep the sorrow away.

Pathog struggled at first, but as he was unable to fight back this wave of affection and the godly strength of her mother, he gave up.

“I’m so sorry, it all went wrong. We had tracked down that pony from Celestia’s peons. We wanted to mug her for you, to make you proud. But that monster came up and took us down and…”

Chrysalis put her hoof on his lips, forcing a smile from her own.

“Hush now, it’s okay…”

“No, it’s not okay, there were these five smooth-faced, blood-stained, reeking monsters walking on two legs. They flashed out in front of me. But I was not deceived. There are monsters in Equestria now.”

Pathog casted a glance at her sorrowful mother. She was lost in her thoughts, tears still dropping. With gentleness Pathog wiped them off her cheeks and dried them in his mane. Back in the cave he had been shaken by the creatures’ appearance. It was only after his escape he finally understood what happened that day.

He had made his way back to the South, down to the Badlands where the hive had withered over the last centuries. But with the help of the changeling’s he had found while withdrawing, he did not come back with empty hooves.

“Mother, I have something more to tell you.”

Chrysalis looked down at him, tightening her loving embrace, swallowing a gag of sadness.

“Yes my child?”

“We found a metal case in Equestria while I was escorted back here. We haven’t opened it yet. Do you want to be the first to see it? I think it belonged to the creatures I saw.”

Chrysalis nodded, unconvinced but unwilling to hurt her last son’s feelings. Pathog clapped his twisted hooves and two changelings entered pushing the gate inward and carrying an imposing metal case. With the help of her magic, Chrysalis blew up the lock and opened it.

She drew out a long sword splattered with dried blood. The smell was unbearable, thicker than the horrid smell of her own room. The queen’s muzzle winced under the repetitive assaults of this stench. Dropping it, the queen started rumbling in the case. Bemused and curious she spread the contents of the trunk on the floor. She watched clueless on a dozen of strangely shaped objects she knew nothing about.

Everything was rusted and dusty, and horribly stained with nothing but blood. The monsters Pathog had described were apparently warriors with an impressive technologic advance in weaponry. With her magic she lifted up a strange cylinder, approximately four feet long. Circled with a wooden protection, the cylinder displayed another large but smaller twin on what seemed to be its top. At each end was a convex lens. She looked through with curiosity. It was a magnifying glass, and a good one in spite of the cracks tearing the ledges of one. Stuck to it was a strange rectangular and metallic system. She tried to take it off. Facing a small resistance she forced the system with her magic.

The rectangle container dropped on the floor and five brass cones bounced around, rolling randomly in the corners of the room.

There were similar shaped objects in the case. All had different lengths and weights but presented in the end the same blueprint; a brass cylinder which first end showed a tiny recess circled with numbers and letters. The other end differed. The diameter was diminishing rapidly and encaged a metallic tip.

Chrysalis broke it and black particles fell on the ground. The queen titled her head toward the small pyramid of dark specks, trying to smell it.

She sneezed repetitively; a few dark grains had got into her muzzle.

“Are you alright mother?” Pathog asked with angst.

“Yes, yes it’s nothing, just dirt…” she defended herself.

Chrysalis shaped the small heap of particles with her heel, drawing a line from it.

“Bring me some fire,” she ordered. “I think I know what it is.”

Pathog, snatched a candle from Chrysalis’s chamber desk. The queen grabbed it with violence and let it drop on the compound. It instantly took fire and crackled in front of her. A horrid smile chased the sorrow off her face while random sparks of light lit her features.

“How did you…” Pathog hesitated, still stunned by the chemical reaction.

“I’m old my son, I’ve seen a lot in this world mortals would not dare imagine. Griffons and ponies use the powder for fireworks,” – she grabbed another cartridge –. “But it seemed that our intruders have made some deadly weapons from it.”

Pathog swallowed, it had been a long time since he had seen her mother with a smile this wide. It was not joy or sadness… but a grin betraying the birthing shenanigans and deceptions she was assembling in the tortuous twists and turns of her mind.

“Pathog,” Chrysalis ordered as her son came to attention. “Take a note please; I have some letters to send.”

Her smile was contagious. She started laughing maniacally, forgetting about her damaged leg. Pathog followed her fit of madness. He was happier than ever, his mother was back in track. The laughter burst out of her lungs and spread in the corridors of the hive, reaching everylings’ ears.

The insanity of her voice sprawled in their minds and the Hive shook under the hooves of the changelings, more agitated than ever, joining in with the queen’s cry of havoc.

Chrysalis howled, her sharp teeth shining under the pit of light.

“Let’s watch the castle burn!”

5. Shenanigans

Chapter 5. Shenanigans

Birds chirped carelessly In the middle of Canterlot’s maze as the sun rose from beneath the horizon. The sunbeams licked the façades of the castle, casting its warming touch on every surface it could reach. In a remote place of the park, a statue of a unicorn stood high in the middle of a pond. Water jetted out of its mouth and the lapping of the stream was recurring, reminding to the ponies passing by that time was moving slowly, unbearably slowly.

“I’m so fucking bored!” Maria complained loudly, chasing the birds away.

“Shut up,” everybody replied with the same amount of boredom.

Maria, Kreps, Verdugo and Ray were sitting on a bench facing the pond, as steady as the statue. They could see the canopy of the castle from their position, but they could not care less. They sighed once again searching around them anything that could be entertaining. Yet, with nothing but their unanswered question bouncing endlessly in their heads they could experience a slow but settling depression.

“Two weeks!” Maria burst out. “Two damn bloody weeks we’re stuck here, doing nothing but standing with freaking talking ponies hanging around with wide smiles on their faces! Joker faces!”

She took a deep breath.

“Paradise is so annoyinh!” she shouted.

“Shut up…” they repeated, on the brink of punching her in the face.

Maria pouted and kicked a small rock with her foot.

“Can we break something?” Maria asked.

“No,” Ray ordered, hiding his face behind the palms of his hands.

“Can I break something?” she continued.

“Definitely no!”

“Party-poopers!” she growled. “We can’t do anything, and we are always being spied on. Can’t we spice up this place a tiny little bit?”

The bushes behind them rustled. They all shot deadly stares back at the wall of leaves. A pink pony dashed onto the edge of the bench. And bounced on Maria’s knees who gasped under the pony’s weight.

“Somepony said ‘party’?” Pinkie Pie busted into laughter. “I love parties. Do you like parties? Because everypony love minmrglghmrlgl….”

Verdugo had caught Pinkie’s muzzle with only his left hand. This did not stop Pinkie from bouncing around like crazy, unaffected by Verdugo’s attempt to shut her up. In one of her joyful jolts, she carried away the wounded man. Verdugo fell on the ground, flat on his wound. A grunt later, Verdugo started wobbling, grumbling, and cursing. Pinkie Pie laughed.

“Oh, oh! I love riddles!” Pinkie intoned gleefully. “You’re a snake! No, that’s silly. A reed? No that’s crazy, but… I’d say a badger!”

She giggled again under the bewildered looks of the three remaining humans. Kreps was taken aback, Maria wanted to kick the pony in the face and Ray, well, he was still stuck in his facepalming stance. Pinkie Pie finally heard Verdugo’s grunts. She stopped jerking around and focused on the poor human. Verdugo kept a hand over his damaged shoulder, screwing his eyes in an attempt to hold back his tears.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Pinkie blabbered, her mane flattening instantly.

“That’s okay,” the man creeping on the floor retorted. “I’ve endured worse.”

“But not a talking horse!” Maria snickered with a rhyme.

Pinkie and everybody except Verdugo chuckled. Maria stood up and put a foot on Verdugo’s right side. From above he looked like a snail she thought, crawling away from a shoe trying to squeeze him. Verdugo had enough and tried to get up. Resting upon his arm, he trembled. Maria kicked him in the butt and Verdugo’s head dug into the grass in front of him. Maria laughed raucously. Pinkie Pie’s eyeballed her, horrified.

“Hey! That’s not cool!” A mare voice bashed Maria. “That’s even the opposite of being cool!”

Rainbow Dash leaped to Verdugo’s position from behind a cloud. She tried to put him back on his feet. Verdugo was heavy and she struggled helping him to stand on his unsteady feet. She grunted as much as Verdugo in the effort. Then the bulky human pushed her away.

“No. I’m fine. I don’t need help,” Verdugo said, pushing Rainbow aside. “Maria is just slightly annoying when she can’t play the game.”

Pinkie gasped at the last word.

“Which game?” The pink pony asked, bouncing in joy. “I love games.”

Verdugo stood up and looked down at Rainbow Dash.

“Oh,” he interjected, casting an eerie grin at his friends. “It is not a simple game. It is called the ‘Baraka’, an old world coming from an ancient and foreign language.”

“Ancient?” a new voice beckoned from behind the pool. Twilight came to sight, curiosity driving her to slither out of her hideout.

“No, really!” Kreps raged, breaking the silence he had kept for a long moment. “Is everypony here watching us secretly?”

Twilight came in full sight, blushing. She refused to meet the inquisitive stares the humans were shooting at her. Verdugo cleared his throat and continued, facing Pinkie again.

“Baraka means luck, because you need it in this game, a lot. Because for playing it, the two duellists will need music and weapons, a lot of weapons.”

Pinkie Pie’s smile died instantly. Rainbow and Twilight arched a brow, sensing a mean trick coming quickly.

“Celestia told us to not give you back the… stuff you had,” Twilight teased, putting a hoof on Pinkie’s mouth. “We’re not stupid, Verd’, is that it?”

“For you, it will be Verdugo,” He bashed before giving a swift glance at Maria. “Was worth the try I guess.”

He looked back at the pony trio.

“You know you only have a few objects we once had. We lost all our… stuff when your yellow friend brought a dra… wyvern on us all.”

Maria sighed and eyed the sky through spite. She cursed the lack of tact her friend had just shown. Verdugo shrugged back at her.

“Stop blaming Fluttershy,” Rainbow Dash ordered inquisitively. “You should be concerned for her. We know she had been attacked by changelings.”

The last word disturbed Kreps who was going to ask a question about the nature of those… ‘changelings’, but Verdugo cut him off.

“Therefore there will be no game. And for your own knowledge, Miss Dash, Baraka is much more dangerous for those who play it…” Verdugo paused, creating a slight suspense. “…than for those who just watch. It’s like a rodeo, the first one to get hurt or out lose.”

Applejack popped out of a neighbouring corridor, holding her hat in her hooves. She had this smile on her face showing that she had finally heard something that interested her. She had rings under her eyes, showing that the human conversation had been deeply tiring.

“Did someone say rodeo?” Applejack beamed.

The four humans raged. Then their shoulders fell a little, abandoning.

“If anybody…” Maria started.

“Pony!” Rarity’s and Twilight’s voices corrected together as the mannered pony joined the group.

Maria stared blankly at her.

“If anypony could stop spying us! We ain’t monsters or lepers.”

At the moment, they all wanted to stand up and leave. Having a bunch of ponies on their tracks was something they refused to let happen again. The ambiance defiled so rapidly it was poignant. Ray took the next step and yelled.

“If anypony is spying on us right now, you can get out of your hideout and come here. It is not like we’re gonna eat you.”

“But horse mea…” Verdugo added, only to get wacked back on the ground by Maria.

A small bunny showed itself from the opposite of the square, pulling with him a butter yellow pony. Fluttershy cringed on her hooves once everypony and body had stuck their eyes on her. She shivered and covered her eyes like it was of any help.

“We said everypony,” Ray asserted.

Finally, four ponies showed up in pairs. Ray, Maria and the two other humans frowned, they did not know those faces.

Celestia smiled at the muted child toddling inside the chamber of the throne. Only a couple of guards were present, standing still beyond the threshold of the gate. With her magic the princess levitated Luna’s teddy-bear and handed it to the kid. He grasped it greedily and rewarded the princess with a smile comparable to Pinkie Pie’s, like an alien version of it.

“Luna will send me to the sun for this,” Celestia snorted with a small chuckle.

The child ran around the vast room and laughed, surprising Celestia. The child’s genuine happiness was contagious. The child’s steps echoed on the marbled floor and the sound flew into the hallway leading to the room.

Somepony cleared their throat and Celestia raised her eyes. A spokespony had just entered. Respectful, he bent to the princess. He had a several scrolls under his hoof, and in spite of his assertiveness, he seemed ill-at-ease. Celestia had a talent to pierce the masks of her subjects, one thousand years of experience was everything but irrelevant. Whatever the effort the spokespony would have put in staying as expressive as a rock, Celestia would have known. Sometimes, guards swore the princesses could read minds. Celestia arched a brow and the emissary took a deep breath.

“We might have a problem. A big one.”

The pony licked his lips, moistening them as the words he was going to say was making him sweat.

“Somepony invited nearly all nations in the world to a reception in Canterlot. Today…” he finally said.

Celestia slipped off her throne, eyes wide open. She laughed dryly and then snickered, still with a pinch of hesitation.

“You’re kidding me right? Just tell me you’re joking?” she asked, unassured.

“Somepony replicated official invitations with your signature…” The spokespony bit his lower lips. “The guests do think it is official.”

“That’s really bad,” Celestia whispered, biting her tongue.

She fretted, thinking at a fast-pace about the best way to get out of this plight. Another question sparked in her mind, the identity of the prankster. Pinkie? No, even if she was the queen of the tricksters, she knew that such a matter was not laughable. She would not have. Celestia could not come up with a perfect suspect. She was enraged, but shovelled her anger deep inside.

“How much delegations are coming?” Celestia asked with a knot in her heart. “And when?”

“Tonight, and there are at least a hundred expected emissaries,” the spokespony blurted out.

Even he had a hard time believing it.

“This will be a long night,” Celestia grumbled. “Take a note please. We’re going to need some help.”

“What’s your names?” Maria asked, drumming on ground with her foot. “Your mothers never told you that spying was bad, m’kay?”

The four ponies had lowered their head, ashamed and refusing to meet the woman’s eyes. The first pair of ponies was a contrasting couple. Two mares with completely different mane styles and colours.

“Name’s Bon Bon,” the mare with a beige coat and a magnificent curled navy blue and pink mane said. “But it’s Lyra who got me here!”

“Hey?!” her stooge shot back, ruffling her white and turquoise hair.

Maria sighed and turned around to face the second group of spies. She eyed them with an inquisitive gaze. The group was as colourful as the first one. It was also like looking at a clash between two opposite lifestyles. The first mare was as white-coated as Rarity but her mane was ruffled, sharp and made of a blend of blue flashy locks like streaks of lightning bolt slashing the sky. Her eyes were hidden behind two massive purple sunglasses. The second pony was all mannered. Did Rarity have a sister? Her grey fur matched with a well-done dark grey mane. She had a pink bow tie.

Both of them showed a music-related cutie-mark.

“Vinyl Scratch,” the first mare said, wobbling her head to pull back her headphones on her neck. “And she is Octavia, my roommate.”

She saluted the humans, raising her eyes toward the sky as Vinyl was jumping on her hooves, not hiding her excitement.

“Did you say music?” she moved on.

Maria shrugged, she had not seen these ponies before, but they already seemed to be accustomed seeing alien creatures. News were going fast around Canterlot.

“Hey, what did you expect? Verd’ said it all. No weapons, no music,” Maria sniggered.

“Oh, come on!” Vinyl complained. “I’m sure you have some good music from your world… like electro, wubs...”

Every human fixed her with blank eyes.

“You have music instruments?” a deep voice asked.

Everybody and everypony turned on their feet or hooves and looked at Verdugo. He received weird looks.

“You’re interested in music now?” Ray asked with a pinch of irony.

“No,” Verdugo replied instantly. “But between sitting here and going to see something, it’s damn easy to choose.” His friends nodded. “And I don’t want to have that purple uni-thing to drown me with ‘tard questions.”

Twilight sat close to the bench and pouted, vexed. Everybody laughed except Twilight who seemed to shrink on her hooves, covering her ears as the chuckles reminded her some dark times of her past… the kindergarten.

“Oh sugarcube,” AppleJack started, putting her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “We’re sorry.”

“I ain’t,” Maria replied.

“Me too,” Verdugo added.

Everypony glared daggers at them. They were not making the situation easier. Ray interposed, stopping the upcoming strife.

“Well,” he settled. “Don’t we have some instruments to see?”

Octavia nodded and, with everypony and everybody in tow, she went to a shop she knew well. Yet, she could not fight back this eerie impression she was going to regret it.

“Luna!” Celestia cried out.

The Princess of the Sun burst through the doors of her sister’s private chamber. She stopped and looked at the scene. Luna was having her own temper tantrum, turning her furniture upside down, shaking them to squeeze their content out with her magic. Pillows were ripped open, the bed linens had been thrown out of the window and her many toy boxes were sliced in half. When Celestia entered, Luna looked at her and saw the small human behind. Luna’s pupil shrunk to pinpricks when she saw her teddy-bear.

“You,” she whispered with anger. “We meet again.”

The child stuck his tongue out at her and disappeared in the hallway, running. Luna was ready to leap in his tow and chase him down, but Celestia blocked her way.

“We’ve got more decisive things to do Sister,” she claimed.

Luna was not convinced, forcing Celestia to take her time explaining the situation. Luna’s mouth opened wide when she heard that a sword of Damocles was hanging above them.

“Who could do that?” Luna asked, awe stricken.

“I have no idea. But we have to set up the castle before the arrivals in a few hours.”

“Can’t we just all send them back home?”

Celestia sighed. Her horn glowed white and with the same scintillating colour, quotation marks appeared in the air.

“Diplomacy,” Celestia spelled ironically. “Do you speak it?”

Luna grunted.

“We have to set up the castle! Fast!” Celestia hurried, before she started running away to pump some stress into Canterlot’s staff.

“What do we do with the humans?” Luna asked hesitantly before her sister left the throne room.

Celestia stopped, her shoulders falling slightly. She gave a low grumble. Luna had revealed her sister’s ignorance on this issue.

“This is a spine in my heel.” Celestia facehooved in front of her younger sister. “I take care of the castle. You, go and hide the humans.”

Celestia teleported away in a white wisp. Luna’s face went red.

“Why me?”

She cried out her discontentment and looked around, nopony was there to listen to her. She did not even know where the group of primates were, and with the little one on the loose, it was going to be a hell of an afternoon. Luna ran into every room of the castle and found nopony that could help her. Then she headed to the catacombs of the castle, humans liked creepy things, right? They should have been there. Unfortunately, Luna only found old and dusty skulls.

There was only one place she had not checked yet… the outside. The immense, flat or steep outside where the humans were within the sight of everypony. She cursed them for being so reckless. What if the incoming guests saw them? It would be a catastrophe. And the child, Luna was convinced he was looking at her from the depths of a shadow, right behind her, grinning. She was convinced he was mocking her while holding her teddy-bear. Luna was angry, and at the moment, she sought for nothing but an argument with somepony, or somebody.

“Anyone of them would do fine,” she said with a grin and crept out of the catacombs.

The surroundings of the castle, the parks and mazes were empty of human life and even Twilight and her friends were nowhere to be found. Luna was going to burst out. There was only one place she had not ventured in… Canterlot’s city. And oh god she knew she hated that place! She hated it so much for the stares she usually got back from everypony. She was a princess and thus, seeing her among the mortalswas considered as disrespectful for her own person. She never entered a shop and never bought anything. Secretly she thrived to try, at least for a day, to be a casual pony. She desired to hang around this kingdom her sister had run all on her own for centuries. Luna got an idea.

In a pop, Luna changed into her filly’s shape, a light blue coated form that had not even her cutie mark. She felt like she had become one thousand years younger. She was far smaller than what she was used to. Everything seemed gigantic and unreachable. It was an eerie feeling, scary. And to be honest, she was also a bit amused. But she would never confess it. She shook her head and looked at Canterlot’s city. It was time to take a tour inside.

Ponies stepped aside as fast as lizards fleeing a threat. The sight of the four humans accompanying a hoof-full of ponies was surprising, if not unsettling. And nopony dared to cross their path. Octavia headed the procession with Verdugo and Maria at her sides. She was not feeling good. Two large shadows cast on her back raised the fur on her neck. A chill ran beneath her skin.

Only Lyra was really fascinated by the humans, and she did not hide herself from it. It was indeed a fascination, but a different kind from what Twilight had shown since the first contact. Lyra was annoying the thinner of the four creatures, Kreps. Mimicking Pinkie Pie, she was bouncing around the human, holding one of his hands in her hooves. True sadness was scarring Kreps’s face. And it’s with badly-repressed smiles that everypony and everybody were looking at the weird and loud duo.

“Hey!” Kreps shouted. “Get over with that. I don’t want to get a fan club.”

“This is irrelevant,” Lyra answered back. “You’re too extraordinary to let you… just go.”

At the back of the queue, Applejack titled her head toward Rainbow Dash.

“Ah’m thinking that we’ve found Twilight’s twin.”

The two ponies chuckled.

Everypony in Canterlot was aware of the humans staying within the walls of the city. They had been informed by Celestia and Luna. Yet, they had been forbidden to talk about it to strangers and ponies from the outside. The humans were kept in Canterlot as prisoners inside a golden jail.

“Here we are,” Octavia announced.

They all raised their heads and read the writing above the front door, ‘Absolute’s melody’. It was one of the old buildings of Canterlot. The front window was only showing closed navy blue curtains.

“Well,” Maria initiated. “I’d have expected somethin’ fancier, coming from a talking pony.”

“My name is Octavia,” the mare before her retorted. “And it’s a friend’s boutique. I will not complain about it. So won’t you.”

Maria put her hands up, mimicking a scared foal.

“Watch out, we have an angry pony over here.”

Verdugo, Ray and Kreps laughed raucously. Octavia cursed them all and pushed the door inward. All followed. The inside of the store was blanketed with beige velvet. But the most amazing part was the hundreds of music instruments strewn over the place. Ray whistled with Verdugo and Kreps. Only one thing disturbed the group. The room was plunged into a slight darkness. Only shafts lights poured through the curtains.

“Eh, eh you like what you see?” a feminine voice rose from a corner of the boutique.

“Absolute… how many times did I tell you not to stay in the dark?” Octavia reprimanded. “We can’t see anything in this blackness.”

The mare called Absolute chuckled. Octavia opened wide the curtains and sunlight flooded the room instantly. More than one pony blinked, eyes aching. The mare, a unicorn, in the boutique had two black glasses hiding her eyes. She had a brown fur and her mane was black. Next to her, given to see to everyone and everypony, was a walking stick.

“Octavia, you know that’s useless for me, light,” she joked.

“Maybe for you, but you won’t get earnings if you can’t attract clients. I’m not your boss you know. You should start thinking about yourself a little.”

Absolute gave another chuckle as Verdugo walked around noisily, looking at the instruments.

“You bring a minotaur here Octavia?” Absolute growled. “I thought I’ve already told you that they always break my instruments, they are too strong! My work need dexterousness.”

“I don’t think we are minotaurs,” Maria retorted, she looked at Kreps. “Are we?”

“Erm…” Kreps tried to reply.

He was not really good at improvising. Maria looked back at Absolute and found the blind pony standing only an inch from her. The mare slowly raised her hoof and probed Maria’s face, searching for known features.

“You must be the creatures that everypony is talking about,” she guessed.

“Clever girl,” Kreps deadpanned, winking at Verdugo.

Both laughed. Ray scowled at them, asking for silence.

“Don’t worry, just a reference from a movie from our world,” Ray explained to the frowning ponies

Rainbow Dash was the first to grumble.

“Well, shall I show you around?” Absolute asked.

“Of course,” Twilight cut off before any human reply with a stupid sentence or quote.

Luna had tracked down the path left by the humans for nearly an hour. And now, she had found herself facing a dusty and old store. She jumped back when the curtains behind the window burst open, and hid behind a cart passing by before anypony could see her. A few seconds later, she made the decision to peer an eye through the door. She saw twelve ponies, and the four humans she was searching for inside. Thinking quickly, Luna cast a simple invisibility spell on herself and slithered in.

“So, around here you’ll see cellos like the one Octavia owns,” Absolute explained.

“Shush!” Octavia berated. “I don’t want ponies to know that my cello isn’t a unique one-of-a-kind model.”

Luna chuckled, she knew Octavia for being one of the main musicians of the castle. She was always showing off her cello, pretending it was unique. Luna would now have a reason for Octavia to play more for her.

Absolute gave a cute laugh and went on. She showed off her violins, lyres, double basses, saxophones, flutes, pipes, oboes and on and on for what seemed to be eons. As blind as she was, she could not see the bored expressions on everyone’s faces. Yet, no pony or human dared to disturb her. She was nearly in trance and nopony wanted to snap her out of it. Talking about the work she had done with her own hooves was a hobby she could not often do, she had probably only a few clients. To her avail, her instruments were a wonderful work. Luna stayed still in a corner of the room, invisible. Immobile she could not refrain herself from smiling as Maria drew bunny’s ears with her hand behind Absolute’s head.

Footsteps echoed.

Luna saw Verdugo breaking the circle. The human drifted toward an alcove next to him. A curtain hid the content of the chamber, flooded into darkness. Stares shot at him as he had cut Absolute’s speech.

“Hey,” Applejack tried to contest.

Verdugo was stomping correctness with not a pinch of care.

“I just want to know what’s behind,” he growled.

“Can’t you ask before?”

“No.”

Verdugo slid the veil on its rod and went inside. Twilight and Octavia followed. The second room was an empty space where a massive instrument was standing alone in the middle. A translucent Luna infiltrated the room in silence. She stood next to the wall where nopony could catch her. Octavia sighed.

“Oh, the piano…” she said.

Verdugo was awe struck, his mouth opened slightly. Amazed, he transfixed the instrument taking a nearly religious stance. A hoof full of heads stood in the frame of the door and stared at the human. Verdugo raised his only valid hand, trembling. He pull a single not from the ebony piano. The tone was grave and echoed in the chamber. Octavia frowned and looked at her friend Absolute, standing in the threshold of the door.

“I thought you had got rid of that bunch of wood. It’s a griffon’s model, it isn’t useful for us pony.”

Verdugo’s hand slipped on the keyboard of the piano and produced an ear-splitting tuning.

“You said… what?” he erupted.

Surprise got hold of Octavia. She cringed on her hooves at the sight of Verdugo’s bloodshot eyes. If they had the potential, they would have glowed bright red.

“N… nothing,” she muttered.

Verdugo was on the brink to let his anger flow out.

“You said it was useless.”

Octavia ran with sweat.

“… for ponies,” she specified

Verdugo’s rage exploded.

“You don’t know what true music is!”

Octavia wanted to reply, but stopped. Her eyes went watery, and big tears dripped on her cheeks. She dashed out of the piano room, crying, bumped into Absolute and Rainbow Dash and fled outside. Nopony tried to hold her back. Once every pair of eyes came back on Verdugo, they all saw the crippled human boiling red.

“Just… get the fuck out,” Verdugo clamoured. “I need to be alone.”

Twilight murmured they had to find out where Octavia had gone. And they all passed by the entrance door. Luna, still muted felt sweat running on her face, she knew she had to keep track of every human in Canterlot, she had to follow Maria, Ray and Kreps. But, she was not sure about leaving Verdugo alone her. He was dangerous after all. She took a short minute to make up her mind and choose to Twilight, keeping her invisibility up.

Only Verdugo and the blind instrument maker stayed in the boutique. Verdugo faced the piano again and tried to play one-handed. His right hand stumbled and played a wrong tone. With rage spread on his face, Verdugo banged the keyboard with his hand. Then he let himself fall on the ground, laying. It has been too long since he had touched a piano for the last time. He gave a swift sob, then grunted.

Absolute could not see but Verdugo was constricting the stump replacing his left arm so much that drops of blood dripped over his bandages. Pain numbed his body. The human shivered.

“Something’s wrong,” Absolute asked, hesitant.

“Phantom limb,” Verdugo replied between two sobs. “It hurts.”

Absolute moved closer. She groped around the wound and understood Verdugo’s plight. The blind mare felt dizzy. Half an hour passed before she broke the ice.

“I’m… I’m so sorry,” she said.

“You shouldn’t. You’ve done nothing for breaking me.”

“What are… were you?”

Verdugo sobbed, then took a deep breath.

“I was a professional pianist. You know before… No you don’t know… My world has been destroyed, and with him a lot of stuffs were lost or broken apart. When I saw it,” he continued, mentioning the piano. “I… it was the first time in years I’ve seen one, one that did work.”

He grunted again, holding the shoulder of his amputated limb.

“Funny thing is that fate must hate me… I find a working piano but I had to lose my arm just before… Fucking fair trade.”

“Don’t think about it, you can’t fight to get back what is already lost… you have to get over with it. I could have stay in the dark, depressing because I lost my eyesight. But I moved on.”

Absolute smiled at the human. Verdugo ruffled her mane gently.

“I’m not over with my period of mourning. I’ve lost so much. And I’ve made a choice a while ago. I can’t back anymore and I will carry on. But I see so much memories surfacing along the path… Sometimes I just let the doubts drowning me. I just can’t kick them away. I try to, for my friends, but… It’s so difficult sometimes.”

Absolute nodded.

“Could you leave me alone here for a moment,” Verdugo asked. “I just need some time.”

Verdugo wiped off tears from his face and saw Absolute acquiescing. She left him in the alcove and went through a secondary door that should go to the backyard of the store. Verdugo faced the piano in silence. Outside, the night was slowly setting and the interior was getting darker as minutes passed.

“I never thought you would be that sentimental,” a voice whispered at his ears.

Verdugo jumped with surprise. Twilight was right next to him. He had not heard her enter.

“You were spying on me?” verdugo asked.

“No, I mean… Yes,” she lowered her eyes, shameful. “But you know. You, Kreps, Maria, Ray and that child all came from a world I cannot imagine. You’re an object of curiosity for me. I must understand your group, what you went through, how you can adapt to Equestria. And of course, how you can threaten it.”

Verdugo smiled.

“Thanks for your outspokenness, your highness. I…”

“I understand that you have chosen, maybe sworn an oath to protect your friends, whatever the cost. And I understand that you want to retrieve your weapons. It’s dear to you.”

Twilight dropped a key on the floor.

“Near of the garrison, there is the armoury. And right next to it there is a room. Here we locked the weapons we’ve taken from you. To get to it easily, just use one of the garrison backdoor. The guards are doing their shifts you won’t annoy anypony like this.”

Verdugo’s face brightened. Strangely he hugged the young alicorn for rather a long time.

“Awkward,” Twilight added.

“I must go, thanks.”

Verdugo jumped on his feet and was nearly out of the store when Twilight called him.

“We also found your metal box, the exact way you described it.”

Verdugo left the place running, leaving Twilight with a grin on her lips and a green light in her eyes.

“Okay,” Vinyl said. “We should split to find Octavia.”

“Well,” Maria countered. “Ponies and Humans form two different groups first.”

“Y’all not gonna give up and walk back ta your rooms?” Applejack asked, suspicious.

“No,” Maria laughed. “But I’ve had enough walking with… y’all for today.”

Rarity huffed.

“So be it,” the fashion pony declared.

They separated and went down opposite ways. But thereafter, everypony found out that they had all to split again. Canterlot was huge after all. And therefore, Twilight walked down her own street, all alone.

“Oh goddesses, why do I always have to face a jerk that can’t hold back his tongue,” she berated. “I…”

Luna popped in front of Twilight so abruptly that she shrieked in terror.

“Twilight! It’s just me, Luna.”

Panting, Twilight got a grip on herself.

“Don’t do that… ever again, understood?”

“Sorry,” Luna giggled. “But I have bad news.”

Luna explained the sudden trick Canterlot had fallen to, the impromptu invitations, the hundreds of guests coming over and the probable mess if the humans were to be discovered.

“But tonight… it’s like in one hour!” Twilight shouted, her eyes shot open.

Her head reeled, she had to rethink her whole schedule.

“I guess you don’t know who planned this?”

Luna shook her head and took a deep breath.

“We don’t know.” she hesitated. “I’ve chosen to give back the weapons to the humans. They might be useful if somepony decided to attack.”

Twilight did not reply instantly. She gave a strange look at the Princess, she sighed thereafter.

“I guess you’re right. Does Celestia know?”

“Not yet, I have to tell her. But acknowledge that for the moment I’m too busy to take care of it, if you see my sister, tell her that what the humans will do tonight is on your behalf. You must make sure that they are kept in security.”

Twilight hesitated.

“Don’t fret,” Luna reassured. “Go now. Celestia needs you.”

Twilight dashed in the next alley, only her duty in mind. Luna smiled and gave a laugh. She swivelled soon on her hooves and a green flash revealed a tall and slender black pony-shaped creature. Her algae-like mane crawled on her face and her white smile changed into a wide grin. Next to her appeared a young blue coated filly with no cutie mark. The young pony was glued to the ground with slimy rivets and her mouth was gagged.

“Too bad that you won’t participate to the party tonight, princess,” the taller changeling queen that had called herself Luna snickered.

Celestia had to thank her subjects, the whole castle had been reshaped so fast it was a new record. The hallways shone with golden, ruby and silver draperies. The banquet room was overwhelmed with food and the air smelt of lavender. Celestia was proud of her little ponies. She swore internally she would reward them greatly. Yet, she had to greet every diplomat that had come inside Canterlot at the moment. It was boring.

“Welcome to Canterlot, Lady Andraste,” Celestia announced, shaking the talon of the Griffin Empire’s Emissary.

“Thank thee Princess, I’m thrilled to hear the reason why thou hast invited so many individuals from abroad Equestria. Your letter was quite surprising,” the griffon chuckled and passed by the princess.

Celestia’s ears twitched. She felt stress getting a grasp on her.

“Welcome to Canterlot, Sir Baramond,” Celestia announced, shaking the hoof of the Saddle Arabia’s horse representative.

The diplomat smiled.

“Thank you, Princess Celestia. How do you do since that last time two years ago?”

“Quite well,” she answered.

“Your letter was really funny, I can’t wait for your presentation,” Baramond said before joining the crowd queuing for the buffet.

“I…” Celestia tried.

The princess laughed dryly. Would she get any tips about the content of the letters? Where was Luna and Twilight? Celestia felt her hooves trembling in their majestic golden horseshoes. And then she saw the opportunity. A Condor from the Andine Federation and a bear from Sibearia were bargaining over their letters. The princess drifted toward the duo.

“Everything is okay my lords,” she asked.

“Oh Princess,” the massive bear said, surprised. “Your venue occurred at the right time. My friend and I are trying to understand the item you sent to both of us. But we are clueless.”

Celestia asked to see them, pretending she did not remember which items she had send to them. The Condor had received a long cable of copper protected by a sheath of an unknown matter. The bear had been given a small bulb made of glass containing a strangely shaped wire of metal. Building on her thousand years old art of masquerade, Celestia smiled and gave them nothing to chew on.

“Oh, you will see sooner or later,” Celestia said mystically.

Both diplomats shrugged with a smile.

It was bad, everybody was present and the Princess was alone to manage the banquet, and the stares and hoofshakes she was given betrayed that all the guests were impatient about her announcement, whatever it should be.

She had to hurry…

The assembly went silent so quickly it spooked Celestia. She raised her head searching for the evidence of an incident between two attendees. But her ears caught something instead. A whistle… no, it was a song, and the singer was singing loudly.

“Mon petit oiseau a pris sa volée,

Mon petit oiseau a pris sa volée,

A pris sa… à la volette,

A pris sa volée,”

Everybody had frozen,watching a massive gate carved in the wall opposed to Celestia’s location. It gave on the hallway leading to the garrison.

“Il s’est appuyé sur un oranger,

Il s’est appuyé sur un oranger,

Sur un o… à la volette,

Sur un oranger…”

And then the gate slid on its hinges and what Celestia feared happened. Turning his back to the crowd, Verdugo entered the banquet room, dragging a heavy metal case with his only arm left. He was sweating heavily and had taken off his shirt, unveiling all his ugly scars and marks, as well as his stump.

After a few meters inside the room, he stopped to catch his breath. But it went short-lived as he heard a mumble behind him. On instinct, he jumped to face the origin of the sound. And more than a hundred pairs of eyes met his own.

“Oh fuck man.”