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                      The Shaded Sun                       
                     -by Hearth Fire-                      
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            Every Ending Starts a New Beginning            
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Every Ending Starts a New Beginning
With my hooves planted in a pile of ash from my once strong house, I start to get those voices in my head again. The ones of my big sister Metal Wing. My father Strong Will. And my Mother Sprouting Flower. All of them whisper in my acute ears in quiet bouts of words I can't completely understand, with a cold breeze blowing in my fur from the door leading to my old street where I used to roam when I still felt the lasting effects of happiness.
Feeling tears begin to form in my eyes, I do what I always do to fight off the fits of madness and anger and sadness all rolled into one emotionally unstable ball. I begin like usual.
"I shouldn't be alive, in fact I am not truly alive anymore. Not little old Shaded Sun who used to stray away from the common rabble. Not the one who was so caring for life, the one who saw point in it. It should be somepony who has a lover, and parents, and children. Ones who still fight death for a purpose. Not me... Not me!" I yell at the burnt wood and tiles on the floor, as if they would grow mouths and agree with everything I had just said. I patted my black leather jacket closer to my skin, against the cold and the pain that was welling within me.
With no such luck to have company of my own, even if it were just a piece of wood, I trotted through the hallway. Ducking under the larger fallen beams to get farther into my old abode.
Those little rants always calmed me somewhat, admitting everything is hopeless somehow makes it easier to accept it and keep on moving. Giving out a sigh, I use my hooves to push against a fallen piece of timber, with rotting wallpaper resembling that of what used to be the bathroom.
The air smells like death, but this is no surprise to me. It always does. Even after a disease had killed 99% of the ponies, it still smelled like it's thirst for death had not been even remotely quenched.
That's what happened, the nightmare that I was still waiting to wake up from.
Breaking through more timber with my limber Pegasus legs, I reached my goal and prize. The thing I had sought for since the outbreak of disease and agony that had spread like wildfire around the Empire, killing nearly all of the population in under 6 months, fear had enveloped the ponies everywhere. But I forgot this temporarily as I grinned for what felt like the first time since everypony died.
Sitting in the middle of the living room on the stone overhang over the fireplace with somehow still unused cords of wood, stood my Sister's Cooper. Her doll she used to give me when I was upset, after she grew too old for it. Cooper was a linen velvet colored violet, with beady pink eyes and a straw tail. My sister Metal Wing had been 8 years older than me and I know she passed away in the hospital. Her name was on the list still printing names non-stop at the hospital on a machine that was lucky not to have emotions. That was where I was coming from, the hospital. Hospitals aren't as sanitary as they used to be, what with the rotting bodies strewn all about the structure in positions that remarked the stories of how they were trying to live when they died.
My parents had committed suicide by jumping off one of Canterlots many grandiose, beautiful buildings, back when they still stood tall. Now they had tumbled over, blocking streets and crushing smaller buildings that never achieved skyscraper status. Making my birth place seem more like an empty maze made of stone than the place of joy and culture it had been not a year ago.
It had been a year and a half from the acclaimed 'first victim', but I was too smart to buy it. They just wanted somepony to point a hoof at to calm us down, that the number was so few. Bucking mistake, underestimating it out of fear. Stupid, stupid, stupid. That's all ponies had been when it had afflicted half the population with only a couple of deaths, stupid.
The irony of it all was that more deaths were cause by rioting ponies with the disease than the actual disease, out of pure jealousy for the lucky few to have been passed over by it. There had never been an official name for it, but I didn't care. Names don't matter anymore. Shaded Sun, my own name, was meaningless now. You barely ever use it, it's always someone else who uses your name, not you. And seeing as there was nopony as to announce my name anymore, there was no use for it anymore.
But boy there sure used to be, around here. Ponies knew me as the dreammare next door, the one who's name was imbued into all the younger colt's memories as the big crush. I had grown up here, and had been sent to boarding school down in Gingersnap, far below the mountains the held Canterlot.
Old Shaded Sun, she seemed like a distant memory to me. Old me had color in her cheeks and had been quite beautiful, with a long and radiant flowing blue mane and Midnight purple coat. With eyes like Amethyst stones dipped in silver, I had been happy, smiles were part of every hour and sometimes every minute of my life. I had been happy with life and knowing one day my crush Fruit Loop, the corky and funny Stallion from Calculus class, would ask me on a date.
That didn't happen, he never got to ask me on that date. Here's what did happen, school shut down, the Princesses noble attempts at the use of the brain of the populace ponies and focus on the task of quarantine. But the three Princesses had been ignored, and riots continued. Scientists claimed it was incurable, and any medicine known by pony kind had been utterly useless against the mystery disease that had claimed so many. Taken so much. But still lust for more.
But the new me is different. I have dark circles under my eyes, causing my silver drop eyes to start to seem rusted, and I never smile like I used to. I drag my hooves on the ground when I trot. My hair is cut short, with maybe five inches in length all around, pat down into a smooth fashion and brushed to the side to allow for easy visibility and not so easy hair grabbing. My coat was filthy, from weeks on end from my last run in with a water source, which had been rain. You don't waste water just to look pretty anymore, a few drops could mean life or death. I had been a Freshmen in high school at the school down in the city below the Capitol, named Ginger Snap. But names don't matter anymore, remember? I had been sent to this prissy private school, seeing as my parents were rich, and the beauty of the family actually, surprisingly, turned out to be the brain of the family too. It was a private gifted education society, second to supposedly none in cases of intelligence and knowledge gaining. The library had been massive, took up half the building. Despite my proverbial 'Popular Girl' status, I still spent a fair share of time just melting into those pages and gaining everything I could from them. Those days were gone though.
Stepping back into the street with my Cooper doll in the back pocket of my old cloth backpack, I cringed. You never got used to seeing it, never. The dead ponies scattered in the street, in odd freakish angles of pain before their untimely death in the streets. Being left there by officials who were already coughing up blood, and kissing their already affected family members foreheads with tears in their eyes, tears of blood of course.
Diverting my gaze from the blood stained bodies spread around me, I gazed back at my burnt down house. It had been gigantic, with two floors and five bathrooms, with sixteen rooms in all, every one being the size of the normal basement complex. We had white colored walls with even whiter colored wallpaper depicting flowers of fascicled flowers with faces, and a staircase that led to the door, and a roof of solid brick that looked brand new with how radiantly orange the bricks had been. The windows had been stained beautifully, of designs such as Celestia's sun or Luna's moon or Twilight's star. But now, the wallpaper was rotting and the faces on the flowers were moldy, the bricks now lay on the street broken into hundreds of shards, the staircase had crumbled into near nonexistence, with only one section of steps remaining standing, and the beautiful depictions of such amazingly created things on marvelously stained glass were nowhere to be seen. Looters had taken everything they could from the mansion of a house, and burnt the rest to cinders.
Turning around with a heavy heart, I used my wings to fly above the bodies and slowly glide over the many ponies below decaying  with dried blood on their faces and bodies. Looking around, I realized that the old me would've loved this weather. What with the warm breeze, and fall making the leaves fall on the ground in beautiful patterns. And the way the sun glinted as it set below the mountains in the farther reaches of Equestria. But new me didn't care. New me only cared that the cold breeze that had been blowing through the barren town earlier had dissipated.
Flying higher to move over a fallen stone column that had been an old hotel, the Maneton by the look of it. Very prestigious I had heard, very nice and relaxing to live in. Not that anything lived there anymore, besides microbial viruses seeking to kill and consume you of course.
Landing on the other side of the peaceful giant of stone, feeling the stone beneath my hooves, I gave a sigh of relief. The air down here is much less intoxicated with stench than the fumes that rise into the air.
Looking around with sharp eyes, looking for anything to help me, I spot a mare with fresh blood pouring out of her mouth laying face down staring blankly in my direction with her mouth mimicking a plea of desperation. But obviously no help had come for her. Luckily, that was the only dead body in this area. Even though the blood looked new enough for the mare to have passed but a day ago.
That's what happens eventually after you see enough dead bodies often enough, you adapt an innate ability to determine the age of blood just by looking at it.
"Nothing, again. This is bad, I want to stay longer but supplies are running scarce here since I came," I mutter to myself under my breath to my new friend Cooper.
I had come here looking for my parents, because of my staying with relatives in Ginger Snap, I had not seen my parents since I left for school. That was two years ago. But all I found after I flew to the entrance doors to Canterlot from the train tracks, were either dying or dead ponies trying to make their way down the endless tracks on their own 4 hooves, maybe trying to gallop away from death.
Poor things, didn't they know death was better than the alternative?
In the train station the only train there had been tipped over, idiots. All of them. They had all wanted to crowd on the train, so what do they do? Push it over out of selfish wants to survive the disease that was already inside of them. Logic is impeccable for these folk.
I understand these are harsh words, critical and cruel. But one thing I've learned from the pandemic, if anything, is that the real side of a pony always seems to be revealed in how they choose to die. Gruesome lesson to learn, I know, but it's an observation I couldn't help but make after witnessing the selfishness within a pony repeatedly over and over and over again. Occasionally, one died with honor, but that wasn't exactly even a weekly occurrence, more like a monthly happening.
Examining the mare that lay dead on the cool concrete, I determined she was undoubtedly one of the many upper-class ponies that Canterlot hosted, due to the pearls braided around her pale neck. Her mane was a twirling mixture of teal and purple raveling up into a braid that lay strewn about on the sidewalk. Her coat had been yellow once, but it was hard to conclude this through all the dirt and grime that ravished her coat. Her mouth was slightly ajar, maybe a scream, maybe a cry, maybe a moan, I wouldn't try to think too hard about it. A trail of blood ran from her mouth and her ear down to the sidewalk into a frozen lake of red. New Shaded Sun found it slightly humorous, her eyes had been red before becoming pale, almost a premonition.
Ignoring the mare in front of me, I stepped over her and trotted forwards down the street with pursed lips as I continued to find bodies. Either suicide victims from buildings, or ones that had run into the streets to find help. But I was just glad that I didn't know where the Medical Center was, so I wouldn't have to loot it. A hospital is one thing, but that's where the ones who had a hope for survival went, the doomed ones were sentenced to the Medical Center.
That's where everypony had gone after being contracted with the disease, lining up to die in the slight hope they would make it through. But there had not been a recorded survivor of the sickness. Once you got it you were toast, simple as that. How I survived I still don't know. Why I waited so long to come here, I do not know that either. The only thing I know is that I'm the last one standing alive with my sanity still in tact. Well, the second part of that statement might be exaggerated, the voices from my old house had been bugging me for quite some time, maybe I am insane and just can't recognize it yet.
In my old town, I had helped my grandmare pass, along with my grandstallion. They had both contracted it, from something or other. That's where I had first seen the symptoms. And I could honestly say death would've been a blessing after they had gone through those stages of pain, more like torture.
Off the bat, constant nose bleeds. Never stopping, never ceasing. Then it starts experimenting other places after your nose dies and you can't smell because of dried blood lining everything in your nose, clogging the pores. After that, you might bleed from your eyes, or your nose, or mouth, or you might even start to leak out in the posterior area.
Slow too, took you about a week of suffering to finally be spared from any more. God above Celestia, help them.
I wasn't sure if I was immune, but I never got a single symptom. But others in town had tried to kill me because of thinking I had hoarded medicine from my wealthy family members. But when I denied this, Fruit Loop had come up and tried to strangle me with a look of madness and regret in his eyes, with no sign of the humor or love he had in his eyes for me before. But bucking him off of me, I flew up into the sky and made a beeline for Canterlot.
The trip flying away, was one I barely remember through the tears. I didn't just cry, I felt a little piece of me break back then, when I still felt things. Everything, all the potential my future held demolished, the love in my heart for Fruit Loop crushed to a pulp in a murderous ill bent fashion, and the utter feral fear of the possibility of Canterlot meeting the same fate. Stupid Shaded Sun from the past, could you not deduce that this is where it started? The mail from Canterlot stopped arriving, and before the epidemic that hit Gingersnap a young romantically inclined couple from Canterlot had traveled here to get a blessing of marriage from the suitor's father. So odd too, that the young Stallion just couldn't seem to stop his nose bleed he joked off with a smile and a dismissing wave of a hoof.
Traveling had taken a month, and it had been ok when I arrived in the city. A rare few were still seeming invincible and immune, until one by one they got nosebleeds too. I hadn't seen a single survivor in weeks. And on top of this, the survivors I had encountered I never spoke too, for I always felt the hostility and caution in their eyes drilling into my soul.
For the first time I had seen somepony die in the middle of the street, it had been a small brown coat colored colt with an electric blue mane, at most, age 9. I had flown over and sang a lullaby through the sounds of my bawling and sniffling. A lullaby my mother had sung to me when I had dreams about mean stallions taking Cooper, or monsters in the closet.
"Now you'll lay me down to sleep,
Pray The Lord your soul to keep,
But your heart is safe with me,
If I die before I wake,
I'm sorry darling, for every mistake,
I've ever made.
I could sing you the most beautiful song you've ever heard,
You could sing along, my little hummingbird,
But you don't need to sing,
I don't need to play, It'll be alright,
I just want you to fall asleep tonight.
When you told me you were scared,
I was well aware,
That your heart came unprepared,
You left it under lock and key,
I swear, my dear, that your key is safe with me,
Please believe.
I could sing you the most beautiful song you've ever heard,
You could sing along, my little hummingbird,
But you don't need to sing,
I don't need to play It'll be alright,
I just want you to fall asleep tonight.
This is your lullaby, little hummingbird."
After all these years, she remembered every line her pitch perfect mother sang flawlessly. I missed her. That small colt, he deserved better, buck, EVERYPONY deserved better. But I can't tell which is more a curse at the moment, a slow agonizing death, or a long painless life, but secretly dying of the pain in your heart. He smiled up at me halfheartedly before they glassed over as he turned limp in my hooves, as if thanking me for his last gift.
The song, my Mother's voice, they were what kept you going in the end. Not the big details that seemed so epic in the moment, but the little things that seemed uneventful and near unnoticeable, that is where the real joy is found eventually. Maybe that's because eventually, you realize you always took them for granted, took those who made them for granted. They were what anchored you, the little things, I don't know how to phrase it any better than that.
Realizing I had been humming my mother's song and standing in the middle of the street, I sighed and wished there were ponies around so I could feel embarrassment, so that warmth would flood to my cheeks like they used to. My emotions are probably the thing most abused during my walks, seeing everything that happened and knowing that I was somehow the unluckiest one out of them all.
Trotting through the ruins of civilization, I feel so insignificant and depressed that I think about actually doing what I've been thinking of doing. Suicide would be painless compared to the feelings I get walking through every street or every past civilized area, the bile rising in your throat and the nausea that makes your thoughts swim like trout up a stream. Or how trout used to swim up the stream. That's right, not even the animals survived. Everything, gone. But I couldn't kill myself, I had to keep fighting so hope remained. I don't care how much I wanted to, I had to fight through this. Just hoping things will be the same.
But part of me, probably the logical part of my brain, says that nothing will be the same. Never again will it be the same. No longer will I write to my parents from boarding high school, never again will I sit next to Fruit Loop in Calculus class flirting shamelessly with batted lashes, and never again will I feel a lick of happiness. The only thing I can hope for is the last option on that list to be scratched out.
Looking in a store window, I see a dead cash register pony with his hoofs in the air and a bullet planted in a circle of dried blood located near his forehead that had been there for awhile. He had died from a robbery on the store, with the assailant using a gun to take any witnesses out. Probably a desperate pony with or without the disease. Anyhow, the store had been fully looted and nothing remained but the dead pony.
Moving on from this pretty picture, I arrived at the intersection to travel up to the castle of the Princesses. Now that she was thinking of it, Shaded Sun wondered what had happened to the Princesses after their failure at calming down the riots and panicking civilians. They were probably alive, what with their Alicorn magic and practically being immortal, they couldn't die. But one look at the castle said that nopony had lived there in months, and had even been ransacked. Windows were smashed, I could easily observe this fact from a distance. But that was the only physical damage to the magnificent structure of spiraling stone.
Barely noticing myself, my hoofs began to move for me. Forming steps with my hooves and gradually moving myself up the path to the entrance doors to the castle. When my goal was reached, I shoved my hoof outward and pushed in the doors with a resounding clap of Booms that resounded down the hallway. My shadow stretched in front of me, and the setting sun behind me illuminated the small entryway to the castle. There were, surprise surprise, the bodies of guards in glistening golden armor, most with weapons in hoof. Something was definitely wrong, the bodies seemed to have died from causes other than the disease, how could I possibly know this? There were bushels of arrows protruding from the plates of armor that encompassed the guards.
As I gazed into the abyss that stood in front of me, with an ocean of blood pooling from the wounds of the guards, I felt a twinge deep within me. Something was odd, my instincts were causing my muscles to tense to an almost unbearable level as my heart raced.
The smell that wafted in my nostrils was one of death, blood, and steel all mixed together in a heterogeneous mixture of repulsing nature that I was convinced should never have been mixed.
Old me would've skimped out from the creepy scenery, but never again. Death no longer had any sort of power over me now that I didn't fear it. Even would go so far as to welcome it and ask where in Tartarus it's been for so long without including the good old me.
But with the rush of fear and apprehension came the sense of courage, and the feeling that if she kept walking, exited the city and never looked back, she'd always regret her decision to shy away from this great unknown.
Using my hoof I reached behind me to pull out a flashlight with a button and a hoof brace (For us Pegasus and Earth ponies who were bereft of the ability to use magic) out of my musty old brown cloth satchel that slouched on my lower back that weighed near to nothing, but held a good chunk of favorable items that allowed for easy access and use. I knew it was old, and that I should probably start looking for a new one, but it had been my grandmare's, and the memory of them being brought back to me every time I reached for my satchel brought a sense of peace in the midst of all this turmoil.
My hoof hovered in hesitation over the satchel as I gazed into the dark hall, I was trying to decide whether or not I should bring out the knife I'd discovered in the ravished and near completely burnt poor district of Canterlot. After branching off from the train station when I first arrived, the poor hut villa had been the closest place that didn't seem to have much activity. But upon arrival, a crazy and shaved to the nude stallion had run up to me and tried to stab me with my little friend here. I had run away, with him close on my heels, and taking advantage of his ill brain, I eventually lured him to a sharp incline that was located near the edge of the cliffs that led far, far below and simply dodged from his mad charge with my wings as he charged right past me, missing entirely and falling to his death. Flying to the location of his smashed to bits body, I had picked up the beautiful, sticky with sweat leather hilted pommel and a silver tipped edge that curved backwards on itself in a crescent manner. To my complete disgust, the blade had a good portion of dried blood all over it, and none of it fresh from the pancake nearby. This guy had been doing what he'd been doing for awhile. Checking the rest of the non burnt to the ground huts and shacks was fruitless, with suicide victims ranging from one to three in each house.
Later that week, I had myself a little splurge and broke into a locked mall, finding nearly untouched territory. This was an impossible miracle, what with everything in the area being looted but this establishment? It was too good to be true, impossible yet here it was. Making my way inside through the broken glass I had smashed open with a nearby stone from a collapsed housing complex by way of chucking, I had hit the clothing store, my natural popular girl habitat. I had almost laughed at that thought, I can remember. That is where I located my presently worn leather jacket, with two large pockets and a zipper as well as gray jeans that were made of a finely woven tight cloth and a replacement for my torn and ratty pink shirt in the form of a strange hybrid of a hoodie and a shirt in the way it was purple with long sleeves for hooves to be covered, and a hood built in the back of the neck area. Catching a fancy for it, I had removed it from its special little 'New Fashion' shelf and put it on. Moving through the mall, I took my sweet time, like it was still in business and I was out for a Saturday with the mares. I drank a warmed smoothie on the overlook of the mall from the vending machine that I had simply toppled over seeing as I no longer carried currency, as well as a side of fries I had found in the garbage that seemed nearly untouched, no mold, and still smelled relatively fresh. Other items taken include a superLITE sleeping bag, medicinal supplies from the pharmacy such as painkillers and tons of bandage, a bright red belt that I had not put on ever but still somehow had with me, a Swiss multipurpose knife, a few feet of rope, and an analog wristwatch.
Snapping out of my memories, I dug my hoof back into the bag and removed the curved knife that I figured would do more good than bad in an unknown setting. Strapping the flashlight to my right hoof, I put the knife in between my teeth, aiming a beam into the darkness. A hallway with a red carpet and no observable anomalies. Turning my attention back to the dead guards, I quickly trotted over to the dead guard and without looking reached out with my left hoof and removed an arrow from his chest as a sickening sound filled the air as organs realigned to where they were  prior to the penetration.
Bringing the arrow back to examine in the light of the setting sun filtering in through the doorway, I found the tip to be covered in blood, all of it dry. Breathing a sigh of relief at the dried blood, I felt a bit better about the possible danger having vacated from the premises. The shaft of the arrow was dominated by a dark green hue, with a few red speckles occasionally, and the feathers at the end of the arrow were a white pigment, incredibly white in fact. Whoever had made this kind of paint had used pure snow dye by the look of it, but feeling the feathers they were at moderate temperature, same as everything around it. How could something like this be made?
Putting the arrow on the floor carefully, I raised my flashlight to observe the rest of the hall as I tried to steel my nerves to plunge into the shadows. The hall was huge, with the guard's bodies dominating only one small chunk of the floor, although the blood expanded their ground entirely. I scanned the guards with my eyes, counting twelve in all mentally. There was mural on the wall made from water coloring, making strange irregular art that consisted of a strange, quite flexible, pony curving around and around continuously until the entire wall was filled, a yellow eye resting in the center of all the circles with a black pupil that was dilated to the point of it creeping me out.
The tan tiles that layered the floor seemed to make up the entire entrance, excluding the mural. Raising my flashlight further, I confirmed this hypothesis by the ceiling resembling the floor in color.
Enough procrastination being done, I took a deep breath and turned back to the corridor with the red carpet that led deeper into the castle.
Carefully trotting forward, I double checked the strapping of my flashlight and made sure the knife was securely tucked in between my teeth at an angle for rapid use if I had to. Silently placing my hooves on the carpet, I realized how long the hall was, it seemed to reach on forever in the darkness.
I trotted for what seems like hours, beads of sweat pooling on my forehead as my ears search for any sign of threat, and my eyes continuously scanning my surroundings for any hint of danger, scarcely bothering to blink with how much adrenaline is pumping through my veins. Fast ragged breaths escape me, no matter how hard I try to keep them steady and fluent with as little noise as possible, I could feel something was wrong, my body wasn't letting me relax for a reason.
Finally reaching a cross section into two larger, less narrow hallways to my left and right, I come to a stop. Checking my watch, I find that only five minutes had passed from my little journey down the hallway. Shaking my head in exasperation at how incredibly torturous time was sometimes, I stepped closer to the corner section of the wall, and peeked around the corner while bringing my flashlight up. A long corridor led to a spiral staircase leading up on the right and down on the left, along with two passageways on either side of the spiraling staircase. Turning to look in the opposite direction with my flashlight following, I spot light creeping out of the bottom of a double door at the end of a hall of around twenty meters maximum.
I could make up some tough pile of crap about why I chose to go the double doors, but the truth is I just wanted to be out of the dark. Tired of hearing imaginary noises in my head and tired of feeling like something is watching me when I'm just trotting down a hallway, as if the darkness had eyes.
Maintaining my silence while simultaneously going as fast I can, I reach the double doors and push them open, stumbling through as the blaring light stings my eyes, causing them to water. Wiping the tears of discomfort away, I stand back up and close the doors through squinted eyelids. Turning around with my hoof raised to shield against the waning sunlight, my mouth drops open from shock, allowing the knife between them to clatter to the floor with a ring of steel emanating from the fall.
I was standing in the throne room of the castle, with three towering thrones laying at the end of the cathedral like structure that encompassed the throne room. A long red carpet with golden tassels led up to the alabaster white center throne, embossed by a golden sun to represent Celestia's cutie mark, with Luna's blue throne and white moon on the left and Twilight's purple throne and sparkling star on the right.  The ceiling flew far above, with a large golden chandelier hanging down with most of its lights broken, glass having fell to the floor long ago.
Banners hung all around the room, waving aimlessly as wind blew through them. The wind was seeping through broken stained glass windows around the room, shards haphazardly laying all around the floor below the shattered windows. This instantly snapped me out of my stupor as my awareness and instinct took hold. The glass on every window lay below the window inside the room, which could only mean the glass had been broken from the outside to have fallen inside. But why...?
All questions were put on hold as the tiny sounds of hoofsteps echoed through the room from the ceiling above. There were several of them, steadily beating on the roof now at a steady pace, spreading out by the sounds of it.
Not wasting any time, I bent down and retrieved my knife before sprinting towards the door, but with the sounds of more breaking glass behind me, I knew it was too late.
My hoof reached the door knob just as somepony behind me commanded "Stop!" in a gruff, low tone.
I was wondering if I could make a blitz out of the room before they could reach me, but with the sounds of crossbows being cocked, I knew my hopes would never come true. I would be similar to a pincushion with all the arrows that would fly into me by the time I opened the door, much less got through the doorway. I would have to get the intruders to lower their weapons before I had the slightest of chance of getting out alive. Another such example they had crossbows was simply that nopony moved towards me, which would have to be done with a melee weapon, or maybe simply because they thought I might be ridden with plague. Either way, I would have to choose my actions and words carefully, for my life depended upon it.
"That's right, now turn around nice and slow, no sudden moves and you'll be fine," I heard the same gruff voice call out, "We don't want to hurt you any more than you want to be hurt, but trust me, we can and will." I couldn't decide from his tone and word choice if he was being threatening, or simply sympathizing. Either way, he had every card on the table, I just had to wait for my hand to be dealt.
I removed my hoof from the doorknob, my throat suddenly dry and scratchy, and slowly turned around. My heart leaped into my throat at the sight that met my eyes. Eight stallions with crossbows aimed at my chest in kneeling position were waiting silently, all in a strange black garb that covered their bodies completely as a stallion, well more colt from how young he looked, stood above them and seemed to be the one who was calling the shots with his gruff voice. His body seemed young, yes, but his hazel eyes were cold and hard, showing no compassion or joviality. Unlike the stallions under his command, he wore a brown jacket with a jet black mane that matched a storm gray coat. In the crook of his neck lay a black headset with a mic, attached to a cord that wove back and disappeared into a black leather satchel swung around his shoulder in a similar fashion to my own. So nine stallions in all with weapons, yes she certainly felt the urge to turn around and flee faster than the cool wind that blew through the windows they had entered.
I resisted the urge though, not wanting to become a porcupine anytime soon. Instead, I held my hooves up in the air to symbolize my compliance, although I couldn't stop a frown that spread across my lips. The sweat on my forehead had greatly increased in quantity, and my tongue felt like a raspy dry snake in the dry sand pit that was my mouth currently. I wanted to reach into my satchel and take out my water bottle, but I knew that would be the stupidest thing to do in my situation.
One of the stallions on the far left whistled. "Hey, Rail, know what you were asking about what I wanted for Christmas and all? Well, I found what I want for Christmas."
The stallion next to him chuckled, shaking his head while rolling his eyes as a grin spread across his face mask. "I may be Santa, Sandy, but I'm not God."
The rest of the bowmen burst into laughter, with the only exception being the colt in the middle who sternly looked around him venomously, as if regarding toddlers. Reacting under his influence, the rest of them shut up near instantly, as if his angry gaze physically shut them up. I wanted to cheer on the only decent one in the lot, but something told me he wasn't doing what he was doing for my sake. He was doing it to maintain authority, leadership, he was the big kahuna currently. He was the one I needed to fool, to deceive.
"Where's  your group, girlie?" The colt asked, with a mocking tone on the word 'girlie'.
Group? He couldn't be serious, there was nopony left to form a group with! As weird as it was, I felt more relieved than fearful right now, that I was being threatened by ponies who seemed to have it all together without any blood dripping from their eyes or mouths or ears. And the headset that rested on the crook of his neck, ponies don't carry around dead weight anymore. There was somepony on the receiving end of that communication, I just knew it. The glass from the window falling inwards made more sense now, this wasn't their first rodeo.
Upon inspection from my squinting eyes, I observed the arrows in the crossbows to not match the ones in the guards, these ones were a ugly shade of bright purple with simple red feathers. They could've just switched arrows from all that time ago when they might've killed the guards though, there was no guarantee that these were or weren't the ponies that had killed them. My head was spinning from how hard I was trying to calculate what was going on, I should've grabbed some aspirin while in the mall pharmacy.
"Just me, it's always just been me," I croaked through my dry mouth at the renewed experience of speaking loud enough to actually be heard.
"That's a load of bull, tell us the truth, don't try to go on and play the hero for them," One of the bowmen on the right growled, obviously not happy with my answer.
"It's true, I have no reason to lie right now do I? It's just me." I wanted to sound tough, but the depressing tint of my ending words betrayed any sense of strength of will.
"She's not giving us answers, please let me beat them out of her Cosmo, just say the word and I'll-" The growling of the seemingly furious pony ceased when the center colt extended his hoof and shook his head.
"No, she's telling the truth. I know when ponies aren't telling the truth. Plus, she's carrying way too much to just be out on a scouting for somepony else, she's got everything with her right now. She's alone."
That word, alone. The way he said it, he understood. It was the only word he had bothered to put a light touch of empathy on, alone. The stallion who had outburst seemed to be stilled just by his assessment, which slightly surprised me. Stallions aren't ones to back down so quickly with such conceit. This Cosmo, he commanded a lot of respect from these black clad crossbow fanatics to calm them with just his words.
The colt I was assuming was named Cosmo looked at me with a stoic gaze for a couple more uncomfortably slow seconds, and then asked, "If I tell the rest of my boys to lower their crossbows, will you run away? And before you answer, know that what's waiting in that castle is going to be far more unpleasant for you than us."
The hair on my neck prickled, because I had the similar ability of lies or no lies. And what he had just said, was truth. My desire to flee suddenly waned as I imagined what undesirable creature might've lurked in the shadows I had passed. I was too lucky, I was way too lucky. Or was this what he wanted me to feel? What he wanted me to think? Although what he said might've been truth, maybe he has something else in mind that he's not telling me, and if he knows what is in there is dangerous, surely he must know what it is to begin with. Why didn't he simply tell me and avoid all these mind games? Because he's hiding something. Why had he come here before anyways, why come to a deserted castle not by my measure of at least once before, and now two? Why all the weapons as well, if there was not a prey to be had?
Slowly, I shook my head no in answer to his question. He bore into my eyes with his own for a few more seconds before making a hoof signal in the air. The crossbows lowered and the stallions in black got out of their kneeling position.
"Take her back to the Stage, I'm aborting our hunt." Cosmo declared to the group, drawing looks of surprise and shock.
"Whoa, ok hey now Cosmo, I get the fact we don't find many other ponies who've lived through the shit storm, but come on! You're risking all of our lives for some stupid pretty, yet creepy mare we found wandering around the very place we're getting our flanks whooped by? I for one hate your stupid plan." The one who was earlier saying he wanted me for Christmas, (Going to label him as an ass) Sandy I think it was, said.
I was so confused, I gave the dumb question. "What?"
Turning his attention back to me, Cosmo rolled his eyes. "Ok, maybe you're not as smart as I gave you credit for to begin with. Anyways, if you expect me to stand here and explain it all over a cup of tea, you're freaking batty. I'll explain when we get back, and that's final." Turning to give the last part of his sentence to Sandy specifically.
"Whatever, just all of our lives at stake, yeah let's take it slow and leisurely. Oh, and hey, it's not like the entire planet is in danger of complete destruction, you're right, come along little gal' and let's drink away our time!"
With an exaggerated wave of his hoof, Sandy finally spit on the ground and looked up at Cosmo in disgust before trotting back to the window, where a rope hung down from the roof above.
Cosmo responded in a calm tone, absent of it's previous gruffness, "Sandy, we both know that nowadays every life is worth the world. We're in a hell of a heap right now, and everypony who can help is worth a day's inspection in my opinion. And what, Sandy? You expect us to find a vestige on this day in particular when we've mapped this place to the square inch? Cool it, there's a reason your father put me in command, and it wasn't just because of this pretty face, you hear?"
He was silent for a moment as his hoof grasped the rope lightly, seeming to actually take note of what Cosmo had said. Giving a quick tug on the rope, he shot straight up through the window as the rope dragged him with it through the air.
There was something important in the dialogue that was just exchanged, I could sense it. If they had searched the entire castle, mapping it on the way, they weren't here for supplies or shiny little trinkets, they wanted something that was so important that all these black clad stallions had come along to help search, despite the danger Cosmo had warned me of before.
Looking around at the members of the group while they were preoccupied with their friend throwing a temper tantrum, I realized that every single one of them was an Earth pony, no Unicorns or fellow Pegasus. Noting this, I knew it would come in handy later for a connection of some sort. Coincidences used to happen, but not anymore If they had lived this long.
Interrupting my prying eyes, Cosmo gruffly said with a obvious lack of emotion he had in his voice before, "You're coming with us, try anything I snap your neck. Deal?"
My eyes widened at this statement, until he rolled his eyes with a grimace and growled, "Look, I understand you don't know us and all, but if I was going to spill your pathetic blood, I would've done it on these elaborate tiles that used to be worth something, ok? We don't mean you harm, and from the way your eyes resemble black pits, I think you could use some company."
Not bothering to allow me the chance to respond, his black as deep space mane swished as he turned his head and headed for the window, not looking back to see if I was following behind. But why should he, for he already knew that with his promise he had hooked me. Despite every thought rushing through my head, I dearly wanted to play this 'Cosmo' at a game of wit, for it seemed to me that his youthful prestige showed his talents for logical assessment, as I had just witnessed first-hoof.
I took one last glance at the doors behind me before making up my mind. Cosmo was right, I could use some company, as well as answers to a whole new set of questions that were rushing through my head. And if this little push came to drastic shove, I would take measures to ensure I wouldn't be without a plan and a way of escape or attack.
Whoever they were, even if they turned out to be hostile, I couldn't stop what had been set in motion by a new feeling in my chest. I felt something twinge on my face. Shocked, I realized it was a smile.
Goodbye death and mildew, hello Hope.