The Dead City

Part 8: TERROR

This is a stupid idea. A very, very stupid idea.

I suppose I’m going through with it because I can’t at the moment decipher all my thoughts at once. Flashes of memory…no, not memory. Dreams. Was it a dream? I can’t tell.

Those dots and dashes…Twili…

We stood now on the edge of the hotel roof. The building is leaning beneath our hooves. I am carrying a unicorn and have two pegasi at either side of me, and we are all attached to a big array of canvas and lumber that vaguely resembles a dragon.

I must be insane. There’s no way in Tartarus this will work.

“This is gonna work!” Derpy cries enthusiastically. I can only grimace.

Still, I imagine the fall into the water would be nowhere near as painful as burning to death.

But something else is in the water…

Lyra is shivering. Thankfully she’s light, so she won’t be a burden. But Fluttershy’s shaking is making the whole contraption wobble. I don’t blame her, really. If my mind wasn’t so screwed up, I’d be scared, too.

“Okie-dokie,” Derpy says, grinning. “On the count of three. Alright?”

“Yeah, okay,” I answer, regretting having opened my mouth.

“One…”

“…oh no…”

“Two…”

I ready myself, but I don’t know what to expect. I’ve never flown before.

“…uh…what comes after two?”

“Three,” Lyra responds, and suddenly Derpy jumps up and whinnies, making us all jump, and she takes off, dragging us behind her. The whole plan is going haywire. I try my best to get a grip on the situation, but then I run out of ground.

Soaring over a concrete wasteland. Then over dark water. I gulped. The wind slams into my face as the pounding of wings fills my ears. We are lopsided above the water. Derpy is pulling the canvas-craft one way while Fluttershy pulls in another. Lyra screams. I think I am screaming, too.

My mind decides to organize itself at that moment, and I feel fear, cold, slimy fear.

Wait.

That’s not fear.

“GAHK!”

We’ve run into the river monster. Literally. Slamming full force into the monstrosity, the makeshift glider folds and breaks like a twig, and suddenly I am falling, falling…

“Gotcha!”

I feel warm hooves on my back and suddenly I am no longer falling. Derpy!

“What?! What happened?!”

I don’t hear her response over the roar of the monster.

“KAO OFI’LAK ZOTO! AKA’M KHUNOR!”

Huh?!

Who said that?! What said that?!

“What?!”

“I said I’m sorry!” Derpy yells, flying with tears in her eyes. “I didn’t see it…it came out of nowhere!”

My mind races, and a horrible realization surfaces. “Fluttershy? Lyra?!”

She shakes her head as we race through the wind, and for the first time, I can see land on the other side of the river, through the fog.

“I can’t go back for them, Shiny! I’m just gonna hafta…”

WHAM!

More cold slime, and a hit so violent I feel something break in my chest. Derpy disappears, and the last thing I see before plunging into ice-cold water is a long black tentacle lined with teeth.

Underwater. No air. No light. And yet I see perfectly. What the…?

“ER’TRIO, AKA’M KUNOR. DAR FIGAS L’ZOHO?”

The voice is like the Royal Canterlot Voice, loud and reverberating through the water. I can still see nothing, and yet I see everything.

Oh, my…

I see the inside of my own body, my heart beating in my chest; my ribcage, bent and broken, blood slowly pooling around my lungs; my eyes, searching, blind; my brain, working at lightning speed and yet still completely ignorant…

I see something else. A mountain of black flesh, bigger than Canterlot, bigger than the highest peak in Equestria. Many-tentacled, many-toothed, and black as night. Slimy. Necrotic. I knew that aboveground it would smell like a dung heap. Through the murky black, I see it. Through it. But there is nothing to see through it. Nothing to see…

Only darkness. Complete. What’s going on? My head…

Oh…

Tentacles. Like fingers. This time black. They swarm toward me like hungry snakes ready to rip into pony flesh. My vision is clouding. My lungs scream for air, and, in a spout of terror, I scream soundlessly into the abyss.

Fingers.

Dark fingers.

“KAO FU, KHUNOR. KAO FU G’ALAAM…”

BOOM.

Low boom, low something. A circle opens up underwater, a red circle, in it blackness.

It appears. The thing from the staircase. Come to reclaim me. Its white fingers are like tendrils of a jellyfish, like quills of a porcupine. Its eyes are white as snow. It is whiter than white, yet is still subdued by the darkness that is the watery abyss that will soon become my grave…

The black snakes coil around me. Choke me. As if I needed choking. My lungs were filling with water.

I hear a scream, the most horrifying, unnatural, inequine scream I’ve ever heard. It is a scream of pain, of misery, like the sickening roar of a wretched beast. The black tendrils uncoil themselves and scurry away into the darkness, and now I float soundlessly, dead…

My eyes are closing. My world is closing. My world…

Vibrating water. Quaking. The white thing with the needle-fingers.

Reach out.

“Touch fate, Shining Armor.”

Who said tha…

Fingers. Rushing  up at me like the snakes. And I am dead again.

“PAA…ooo…huh…gah…guh…”

I am ashore, waterlogged and chilled to the bone. My chest aches. My ribs are broken. I hear voices, low and quick. I am too weak to think, so I crawl and crawl until I see the edge of what looks like a forest, and from the woods appear three figures, all ponies with armaments.

“…help…” I moan, unable to stand up. The first one gasps, but I cannot see him through the haze of water and tiredness that has clouded my vision. He steps forward, as if to examine me, and I see that he is holding a crossbow.

Then things become clearer. I cough violently, hocking up blood. The pony steps away in disgust, and I look into his eyes.

Her eyes.

Purple. Crystalline. Above which sat a purple horn, and a mauve mane…

“T…Twi…?”

My sister.

It’s her.

“TWI!”

I struggle to my hooves and stagger towards her, my heart bursting and my head full of exhausted joy. “Oh, thank Celestia…I thought you were…you…”

My words trail off, as does my elation. For Twilight’s eyes are hardened, like Lakota’s were when she had taken aim at me on the hotel rooftop. I do not understand.

“Twi, it’s me! It’s Shining…”

Then pain. Oh, more pain. My cheek. Something has slammed into my cheek, and as I fall to the ground, blackness settling in around my eyes, I realize that my sister has just sucker-punched me in the jaw. She says something, but I have gone deaf again. The pain is too much. Pain…

Blackness.

[Helix Point to Echo Team, status, over.]

[Helix, this is Echo One, we’ve got a situation that’s beyond fubar right now! We gotta get the hell outta Dodge before more of these biters show up!]

[Roger that, be advised, you are in the target path of an incoming B-52. That sucker’s gonna light up Michigan Avenue, so get the hell outta there!]

[But sir! We have civilian casualties! Charlie Team is unresponsive! And the UO is…wait…what the fuck? Ferron, you got eyes on the UO?]

[Echo One, please repeat.]

[Holy shit…Helix Point, something…no, two…fuckin’ Christ, three more unidentified objects have just appeared in…oh, my God…]

[More Deltas?]

[Negative, negative, they look like…fuckin’ dogs, or something…but holy shit, the UO just lit up like the Fourth of July. Helix, we’ve gotta much bigger situation on our hands right now. We gotta see what this thing us and what the fuck just came out of it.]

[Negative, negative! You are in the path of the B-52, danger close, repeat, danger close! Get the hell outta there, Echo One!]

[Helix, if you were seeing what I’m fuckin’ seeing right now, you’d wanna see it further!]

[You ain’t gonna be seein’ anything if you don’t get the fuck outta there, Echo One! Grab your men and GO!]

[…]

[Echo One, do you copy?]

[…]

[Echo One?]

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