Sea

The colt looked to his left and right down the dark alleyway. Once he was sure nopony was looking, he leapt up and grabbed the edge of a low roof. He pulled himself up, his body scraping against the edge of the thatch, and stood up. He started running down the row of low roofs, his large clothes flapping as he did so. His long mane and tail billowed behind him as he leapt across alleyways and streets. The roof level rose by a story; he leapt up again and barely cleared the lowest corner of the roof. A few hundred meters ahead, the smoke and lights of central Red Rock lay.

The cavernous rocky roof above him was completely black. It was perpetually filled with smoke, the air at that altitude; soot and ashes simply floated up continually until they reached the very top of the ceiling, where they'd been collecting for years. A number of smokestacks poked out of the dimly-lit sea of roofs, belching thick black smoke that only met with the bottom of the continual cloud. Wooden pillars all over the city led into the inky blackness of the roof, illuminated by the lights below. In the walls of the city all around, houses were inlaid into the red rock.

Eventually, he reached the side of a particularly tall building. It was a cobblestone-sided, wood-framed, sturdy-looking tower, with a large clock on its face and a shingled roof. The stallion stopped for a second to look up at its entire height, before shrugging and running towards it before leaping up onto its side. He began to climb the tower, using anything he could as a hoofhold. He pulled himself up past a small ledge, using it as a hoofhold, before coming to the lip of the roof. He hoisted himself over and climbed to the top of the roof, coming to a rest next to the massive brass spike at the highest point. Here, at the highest point in the city, where there was nopony around, he closed his eyes and relaxed.

After a while, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a hard piece of bread. It wasn't much food, but to him it was more than enough for a midday meal. He scarfed it down in under a minute, before returning to his meditation. The smoke above billowed, dimly lit by the city, while below him he could see ponies moving through the streets, doing whatever. He simply watched them for a while, before groaning and getting to his hooves.

It was probably getting late, he reckoned, and he still had work to do. He looked down over the side of the building; seeing a conveniently-placed pile of hay, he leapt off the side of the building straight for it. He landed in the hay with a heavy thud, shaken but quite alright. He got to his hooves quickly, albeit with many stares, and began to nonchalantly walk away towards another city block. He heard running hooves behind him; turning around, he saw a pair of police-ponies galloping towards him. He gasped and his eyes went wide as he started sprinting down the street.