Strength to protect friends. Not light, nor darkness. (Broken worlds)

The deeper he adventured into dark tunnels of forsaken military base, the more his fear grew stronger. It was as if large cold hand grabbed his chest and prevented him from breathing slowly. Shade knew that it was foolish idea to go seperate ways, when he alone had no means of protecting himself. But his pride was stronger then fear, and so he continued walking through the darkness. Along the way he went past many doors, and he tried to open them, but all were locked and made of solid metal. And the last wise thing to do would be causing noise.

As the silent adventure continued, Shade started to realize things, which he hadn´t though of before. For example how exactly will he find what he was searching for, whatever that was?

When he first asked himself that question, his first reactiong were curses pointed towards his arrogance and desire to prove his independence.

Fortunately, the answer came quickly enough, so he didn´t had to give up. Maps and reports will be most likely in office and there was just a small chance, that an office would look like any regular room. Any architect would put it at the end of a road, so it would be easier to find.

Shade didn´t know how did he get to such conclusion, but he attributed it to his lost memories. He propably knew something about this before The Great Breaking and it was just a tiny bit, that was hidden in his memory and just now came to the surface.

His joy went quickly down, when he came across a crossroad. Multiple of them.

“Just fantastic!” whispered angrily, when he went pass third one. The last thing he wanted was to get lost, so Shade always went the left way, so getting back would be easier, but damn, that base was huge.

Just when he started to lose hope again, he saw lane of darkness, which was darker then shadows around it, far from him. And by far he realized, was meant several meters. Even with eyes used to three years of darkness he wasn´t able to see almost anything. He barely saw his hooves and all colors were shades of grey.

As he was getting near to the darker lane, he realized that it´s gap, made by half-closed doors. With this discovery he also noticed another thing. The base wasn´t nearly as quiet as it was minutes ago. Shade immidiately stopped close to the gab and listened.

In that moment it was just an echo, so he couldn´t really say, what the sound was, but as it was getting closer he distinguished the souces. There were fast clapping of hooves, some strange tinkling of something small, made of metal and the strangest one weren´t footsteps, but as if somebody was dragging behind him heavy cloth.

His first idea was that it was one of those fiends, that Dust mentioned, but he said that they were souls, and what soul makes sounds of clapping hooves?

Then he heard the voice.

“Leave me be!”

It was made by a gils and was mixture of anger and fear. Enough emotions to prove, that it´s owner was at least a bit sane.

Shade shortly wondered how did he know that it belonged to a girl, since he didn´t meet one since he met Dust and didn´t remembered any encounters from before. But now wasn´t time for that. It was a terrible idea, but he was going to save the girl and he even had same kind of plan.

By that time it was obvious, that the girl and whatever was chasing her had to run past him, so he opened the door a bit and turned his back on it. Light movement revealed, that even though they were old, the hinges were still well lubricated.

Then he just waited for them to show up.

The sounds were getting closer and closer, until he finally could see the one who he was going to try to save. She looked like a pony, but seemingly with better eyes, since she was staring at him, even before he himself could see her head.

In order to not ruin the moment of suprise he just smiled and shaked with his head to show her, that he wasn´t meaning her any harm.

The very second she ran past him he saw a silhouette of the “thing” what chased her. He couldn´t waste time staring at it, because it was very fast. All he noticed was that it was floating, it had heavy grey cloak, which was making one of the sounds he heard and from somewhere inside came the sound of tinkling.

Right when it was getting close to hidden Shade kicked the door as strong as he could.

Since he joined Dust in his adventure to find Ponyville, he finally started to eat like normal pony should have. There wasn´t enough time to fully recover, but he definetely was much stronger then when he radomly found the human, who became his only friend.

For a split of second he got afraid that his little trap won´t work, but finally he heard loud noice of metal hitting a metal. That thing sure was a fiend, which meant that a simple door couldn´t hurt it, but it was seemingly carriing the item, to which it was bound to with it.

And hitting that precious object was what made that sound...and also caused loud unholy scream, which shaked with Shade´s every bone.

“Come on, don´t just stand there!” spoke the girl behind him, he felt strangely sharp hoof around his front leg and she dragged him away.

“We have to get outside! That thing definetely isn´t dead and it will come back for us any minute!”

“Then we should kill it right know!”

“We can´t. These things are vulnerable only to magic.”

“They are not. This one is carring an object and is bounded to it with it´s life. You could´ve notice it, when I hit it with those doors.”

“An object? I really did see it carry an old ring with keys on it but I didn´t though...”

Shade interrupted her, to which she reacted with angry growling. “If you can create a distraction I could take them from it and break them with those opened doors. According to what my friend said, it should kill it.”

“Should...I don´t like this, but it´s better to let that thing hunt us down. Go hide in that turn and leave it to me.”

It didn´t take long to hear the sound of dragging cloth again. And that damn tinkling. After a while, the fiend appeared out of the darkness and Shade could notice how did he really looked like. And he wished, he didn´t look.

It used to be a human, but now it was half of spectal skeleton, covered in the cloak. Eyes, that should´ve been blind without any eyes stared dead at the girl.

“So you aren´t here alone after all.” whispered that thing with voice lacking any emotions.

“I will admit, that hit wasn´t really pleasing. First you and then your friends, you all will suffer and die in my prison.”

The girl was slowly retreating, but hit a wall with her back. Skeleton reached his arm to grab her and spinned the keys in his other hand.

That´s my chance!

Shade jumped out of his cover in darkness, bit the metal circle and snatched it out of the meatless hand. Then he immediately rushed towards the opened door. He could hear the fiend turn around and hurry after him, but he tried to not think about it.

Soon he was welcomed by line of black darkness. With keys in mouth he tried to force them inbetween metal doors and the frame.

His heart was beating like crazy and on top of that, those keys got covered in saliva and he almost got heart attack when they didn´t got stuck on one place, but instead slid down and got stopped by the hinge.

“Quickly! Close the door!” heard Shade voice of that girl and when he raised his head, he saw the fiend charging in his direction and just before he could reach him, the grey pony kicked the door to close them.

Sound of breaking metal came out and then there was just a scream of the undead creature as it quickly disolved and died again. Only it´s cloak stayed.

“Finally it´s gone.” the girl hugged Shade, which made him freeze on place just like fiend´s scream. Eventually he got hold of himself and returned the hug and again noticed, that her hoves and whole body was strangely sharp.

“Thanks for saving me. I am Violet. It´s nice to see face, that didn´t lost hope.“

“I´m Shade. Yea, it really is rare these days, but what are you doing in place like this?”

Violet blushed, which was something that Shade couldn´t notice in the dark.

“You will propably think that it´s weird, but I had a dream about this place. A day ago I went past this base, but then it appeared in my sleep. There was voice calling me inside and since I was running out of supplies I decided that i might as well visit it. What about you?”

“That´s kinda long story. Let me tell it to you on the way out.”

* * * * *

Dust, discousted, dropped on floor small madailon, which shattered into pieces after impact. Few minutes ago there was woman human fiend bounded to it. Hunter didn´t know what reason she had to become demon, but he didn´t care. He had enough skills and means to deal with enemies like that.

He did it in past and this one wasn´t anything special.

It took him about ten minutes to reach the end of the road, which ended with solid wooden door.

“If those maps aren´t here, then I don´t know anymore.” Dust tried to open it, but it wouldn´t budge. Nothing suprising, so he took out his knife and carefuly tried to pick the lock with it. After a while he heard the sound of unlocking and doors opened inside.

“Shade will be pissed.” said, when he saw tables covered with all kind of maps. Mostly of Europe. All of them had all kinds of notes on them and some even had red cirles around certain areas.

This was what they came there for, but that wasn´t all. One of the tables had on it instead of maps papers, which even hunter like Dust recognized as reports and orders.

Unfortunately they were all in that foreing language, but human didn´t lost hope just yet.

“There has to be vocabulary somewhere, in case they would get an order in foreing language. So he examined book shelfs, until he found the book he needed.

“Hmm, seems like I could translate all of this into english, even without knowing the grammar. It will sound akward as hell, but I need the informations, not freaking elementary school.”

Dust sat to one of the tables, which had at least some clear space on it and started to translate of of the newest reports, which came from place called Wewelsburg.

* * * * *

He didn´t even realize how much time did past, but he menaged to have one of the maps, that seemed as most important, and the newest report, translated, right when higly mad Shade and some unknown girl entered the office.

No...that wasn´t just an unknown girl he quickly realized, when he noticed her black skin, or more like quinine protecting her body, sharp hooves and eyes without pupils. She was a changeling!

“Oh, who do we got here?”

“Hi, thanks for NOT leaving any message at the entrance, which was the least you could do, since we agreed on meeting there. We spended like two hours standing there, waiting for you to show up, until we went to check on you!”

“Hups. Sorry. I got distracted by my find.”

“Anyway. Violet this is my friend Dust. He is that human hunter who saved me from madness. Dust, this is Violet. I met her deep inside the base, being hunted by a fiend. But we took care of it.”

“Pleasure too meet you.” said human from behind the table.

“You too. Shade told me, that you guys are searching for Ponyville. It´s not really my goal too, but could I join you? It´s been so long, since I traveled with anybody and I don´t have yet clear, where exactly I want to go.”

“Yea sure, if Shade doesn´t mind, then welcome to the group. Anyway, about these maps. Seems that almost all research of The Great Breaking was being made in a castle called  Wewelsburg. I got it marked here on the map, along with out location.If there is a place to get full map of the Broken, it will be there.”

“Then there is no reason to stay in this cursed building. Let´s go.” said Shade.

“The only problem is, how do we get there. According to this map it´s not only 200 kilometers far, but also it seems like part of Equestria appeared betweeen this base and that castle.”

Both guys seemed clueless, but Violet had an idea.

“Didn´t you humans have vehicles of some kind? Even in Equestria we hade some.”

“Of course! I completely fogot! It´s been so long. Yes, we did have them and I am pretty sure that there could be some in this base.”

Dust took all maps and papers, he considered as important ones, the vocabulary and along with their, new companion they left the office.

* * * * *

When the doors closed, near the table, where few minutes ago sat Dust, appeared a figure of a human. He could have been as tall as Dust and his whole body was hidden under grey robe. Even his hands were safely in same colored gloves and even through there was window to the room, his face wasn´t visible at all.

Human raised his head, or more exactly – his hood and looked at the window.

There was thin sunbeam, that somehow fought it´s way through permanent clouds and darkness. The cloaked person stared at it and reached with his arm, as if he was going to touch it. But before his fingers went through, the sunbeam dissapeared.

The cloaked human stood there for a small while and then he dissapeared too.