The Dead City

Part 5: ASCENT

The first two floors are empty, devoid of life and spirit. The darkness nearly overwhelms me on both floors, and I expect a Corrupt to pop up out of any of the abandoned rooms. But there is nothing. No people. No bonewalkers. Just us.

We continue in silence. Nopony wants to make any noise in fear of attracting whatever it is these floors hold. The stairwell is cold and foreboding. Our hooves ring loudly on the concrete. The lights flicker. I’m surprised the electricity in the stairwell still works, when the rest of the building was pitch-black.

“Derpy,” I say. “Back in the lobby, did you say this Bonbon was on the eighth floor or third?”

The gray pegasus looks at me with her strange eyes. “We all were on the eighth floor when it happened. The last time I saw Bonbon was on the third. I don’t know where Lyra is.”

“Don’t worry, my little pony,” Rocky says with strained sympathy. “We’ll find her.”

“The darkness…” Fluttershy utters. “It’s so…so…”

“This ain’t that bad,” Lakota smirks. “Back in the Broncs, at night…”

“Quiet!”

I hear it.

A girl crying.

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That crying…”

“That’s Fluttershy.”

“No, it’s not!”

“Shh! I hear something crying!”

“Is it Lyra?”

“Shut up, you!”

I listen.

“…”

Come on. I know I heard it.

“…help…”

“It’s coming from up the stairs,” I say. “C’mon! She needs our help!”

“What? Shining Armor, who…?”

“I dunno, but if we don’t get up there something really bad might…”

Darkness. Complete. Surrounding me all around. The others are gone. There is no light.

I am alone.

What happened? Where were the others? They were here just a second ago. The lights have gone out, but it is more than that. A new darkness, strengthening the old darkness to form a black monster that nullifies every sense in my body except my sense of fear.

Corrupt?

No. It is worse. Much, much worse. For I see no red eyes and feel no chill. I feel nothing.

“…help…”

I want to gallop, but something (the darkness?) is slowing me. I am in a bog, a black soup of air, like molasses. There is no light except for the minute twinkle that fizzles in and out of existence on the tip of my horn.

I hear it still, but I want to find the others, so I turn around.

The staircase is gone. I look up.

I see it for a fraction of a second. A face, unlike any face I have ever seen before. White. Pale. Eyeless. A smirk on its face…no. Nothing. No mouth. It is not the face of a pony. It is…

Oh…

Hands, slender white hands with fingers as long as snakes and as menacing as whips. They are rushing at me, eager to scoop me up and drag me to hell.

I scream, but it lodges in my throat as the face stares emotionlessly, and I see only death in the form of white, slender, snake-fingered hands.

…

…?

…wake…up…

“GAHH!”

“Huh?”

“’Chu hear that?”

“Yeah, sounded like it came from there!”

…wha?

“Lift it up, Rocky, c’mon!”

Light. Flooding my eyes, blinding me. Then a form, a horned body that lifts me from my tomb.

“Well, I’ll be. It’s Shining Armor!”

“WHAT?!”

Rocky the minotaur sets me down gingerly on the floor. I can see light streaming through the ruins of the hotel…

Wait. Why is there light?

Then, as Lakota comes up to greet me, I see the reason. The hotel’s façade has collapsed, taking with it the whole front of the building that now lay in a heap on the streets below and in the green waters of the West River.

At least it is sunny. No longer is the sky a pallid, lifeless gray.

“Shining!” Lakota cries, then screams as a river of fire tumbles out in front of her, spilling onto the carpeted floor and over the side of the broken wall like a flaming waterfall. Rocky takes me in his arms and launches himself over the fire, grabbing Lakota in the process and skidding to a halt in front of a fire escape. The heat of the flames still presses on my mane, but I am not burned.

I am not harmed.

Why am I not harmed?

“Lakota…Rocky…for hoof’s sake, what the heck is going on?!”

“We’d ask you the same thing, mate,” the minotaur replies. “You ran up the steps, remember? Then the whole thing came crashin’ down.”

“What?!”

“He’s right,” Lakota says. “Might have been an earthquake or something, but I don’t know. We got separated and had to dig our way out. Then the fire…it came down the floors one by one. The whole upper part of the hotel is burning, and it doesn’t seem to be going out. We were just about to head through this exit when we heard you.”

“Which leads me to my question,” Rocky interrupts. “What the heck were ya doing in those stairs?”

“You mean…” I start, trying to catch my breath. “You didn’t hear the crying? You didn’t see the face?”

Lakota looks at me incredulously as Rocky begins to open the door. “What face? Crying? Shining Armor, I don’t think you’re…”

WHUMP.

“OOOOWWWW!”

Suddenly there is blood. A lot of it. Rocky falls back to reveal a gaping wound on his flank, and standing in the doorway, looking like she has just made the biggest mistake of her life, is a unicorn mare with a turquoise mane, turquoise coat, and a cutie mark of a lyre. She has an ax, the handle gripped between her teeth and the blade dripping with minotaur blood.

I am a second too late as I try to stop Lakota, but I do manage to smash into Lakota's arm, disrupting her aim. The bolt veers just a little to the left, enough to miss the unicorn’s forehead, but grazes her skull and makes her cry out and drop the ax. Lakota and I end up on the ground, and she stares at me with the most furious look on her face.

“What are you doing , you clod?!”

“It was an accident! A mistake!”

“AN ACCIDENT? ARE YOU STUPID?!”

“IF YOU WERE IN HER SITUATION, YOU’D HAVE DONE THE SAME THING!”

She shuts up, cowering at my loud voice, and then I realize something.

“Wait…where are Fluttershy and Derpy?”

Lakota pushes me off and refuses to answer. She goes to check on Rocky, who is in pain but will most likely live. I stare out into the dark horizon and I realize that Fluttershy and Derpy are probably dead.

I shed a tear. Just one tear. The heat has evaporated the rest of the water from my body, but I have enough for a single tear.