The Dead City

Part 14: NIGHTMARE

I am in a dream. It has to be a dream.

I am still in Manehattan, but the city is bustling as if the Cataclysm had never happened.

I see a shadow where there should be no shadow. It is strange seeing such a shadow in the middle of a busy street. Nopony else seems to notice it but me. It moves like ink in water, stretching out and blooming and moving closer to me with every passing moment. I try to move, without success. I am paralyzed. The city moves on without me, and everything seems to go faster and faster until time itself is having trouble keeping up. The shadow is noiseless. Everything is noiseless. Where there should be sounds of traffic and echoes of the urban jungle, there is only silence. The air seems hollow. The lights are flashing by, streaks of bright color moving faster than any pegasus in the world could ever hope to move. The shadow is hovering in front of me, constantly morphing as if it were unsure of what form it wanted to take. One moment it was a mass of black tentacles, the next a dark skull with its mouth drawn open in a silent scream. I feel like I should fear it, like my legs should be shaking and my brow should be covered in cold sweat. But I am still paralyzed. My legs cannot move.

From the shadow bursts an arm the size of a bull, with four fingers that end in claws. It grabs me and pulls me in, and suddenly I am blind. But my ears have opened. I can hear again.

I hear the music of madness, a masochistic melody with instruments of dying screams, a symphony of terror. The shrieks and moans of unseen ghosts claw at my airs and rake my mind. I struggle to do anything to ease the pain.

Then it is gone, and I hear a ringing in my ears. The blackness fades, and I see that I am above the world. Manehattan is sprawled out beneath me, a plain of concrete towers and burning bulbs. It is dark out, and I am flying.

But when I turn around I see a sight that I had forgotten: the Equestria Tower, the tallest building in the world. It was built as a fortress during the time of the Windigos, and now stands as a skyscraper, a blend of ancient stone and modern steel. It stands nearly two thousand feet tall, dominating the skyline. I wonder why I have not seen it in so long. Was it the clouds over Manehattan? Had I been too busy to notice it before? No, it couldn’t be. I’d been all over Manehattan since the apocalypse and never once caught a glimpse of the tower. Something had happened to it, something…

Suddenly a voice rings in my head.

“In the tower lies the end.”

And then I see it. It’s in the tower…everything’s in the tower…

The sky lets me go, and I am falling, falling, falling…

My stomach lurches and I gasp as I shot up from the ground. Around me, the familiar sights of destruction greet my eyes. It was a dream, only a dream. We are still camped in the abandoned building next to the parking lot. I seem to have woken up everypony. Twilight is staring at me with a concerned look on her face.

“Shining Armor? What’s wrong?”

I ignore her momentarily and go outside into the dusty morning light. I look up.

There it is. The Equestria Tower, absolutely untouched by the destruction. I point at it.

“There. We have to go there.”

The others are waking up. Twilight looks at me as if I had just said that I was a potato.

“What? Shining Armor, what are you talking about?”

I look at the tower. “We have to go there. We have to.”

“What? Why? What’s in the tower?”

I stare at her, my thoughts colliding.

“The answer. To everything.”

Maddux picks up his severed arm, realizing that the bleeding has stopped. He looks over at the girls. Fluttershy is now wingless and Derpy’s nose is broken. Lyra is dead. There is blood everywhere.

The red-eyed demons had been quick like shadows and brutal like hungry wolves. Maddux does not remember how they managed to drive them off. Was it the daylight? The noise? Or perhaps they managed to fight them back.

No. They had been like lambs to the slaughter. And they had welcomed the morning with bloodied lips and body parts.

And Lyra was dead. Fluttershy had used her body as pillow to gain the approximate hour of sleep that she could manage after the fight. Derpy is still upbeat even though she is covered in blood. They had all cauterized their wounds with the fire Maddux had managed to start. Fluttershy looks over at him.

“What do we do now, Mister Maddux?”

Maddux sits against the wall, feeling phantom pains where his arm used to be. “I don’t know, Fluttershy. I don’t know. That was…horrible. I thought we were all going to die.”

“Luckily we didn’t,” says Derpy, who smiles obliviously. “But what do you think those things were?”

“I think I know,” says Fluttershy. “Before we were separated, my friend Shining Armor was talking about something he called the Corrupt. They way he described him matches the way those monsters looked. I think…”

“Hey, is Lyra ever going to wake up?” Derpy interrupts. There is brief silence, then Fluttershy begins to cry.

“L-Lyra…”

“She didn’t deserve this,” Maddux says, standing up and feeling the scars on his snout. “None of us do. But we don’t have time to mourn. We have to find a safer place to go to.”

“Are we just going to leave her here?” Fluttershy says angrily. “Just leave her here to rot?”

“We don’t have a choice, Fluttershy! If it hadn’t been for the sun coming up we all would have been torn apart by those things! They ripped your wings off, goddamn it! They took my arm!”

“They broke my nose!” Derpy chimes in happily.

“And they broke Derpy’s nose!” Maddux snarls. “We have to go someplace where they won’t reach us.”

“But no place on this island is safe!” says Fluttershy. Her skin is still pale from blood loss and her eyes are bloodshot and full of anger. “We can’t go anywhere!”

“How about there?”

Maddux looks up and sees Derpy pointing at the sky, and as he turns he sees something he has not seen before: a big black skyscraper, standing tall over the ruined city. It is tall enough to touch the heavens, a giant tower that had not been there before. Maddux was shocked.

“Where did…how…what?”

“That seems like a good place!” Derpy laughs, but then she moans in pain. Her broken nose has not been set properly. The pain is still there.

Maddux stares in disbelief, but slowly a smile forms on his face, despite all the pain and debauchery that had befallen them. He has not smiled in the longest time, and now he grins from ear to ear.

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.”