Chapters “Applejack! What do I do?” Twilight screamed, desperately holding onto the hooves of Applejack, who was starting to shake from the weight of a flailing in the air Twilight. Applejack pulled with all her muscles but Twilight’s body just wouldn’t go up far enough. Out of breath, she looked around her for a solution, a second passed before she saw that Rainbow dash and Fluttershy had put Pinkie Pie and Rarity safely on the ground below and were coming back up to catch Twilight.
“Let go.” Applejack said, her grip already slipping. Rainbow and Fluttershy would have to catch Twilight.
“ Are you crazy ?” Twilight shouted, hooves shaking and sweat growing on her forehead. ‘Oh sweet Celestia is my life really going to end like this?’
“No I ain't. I promise you'll be safe.”
“That's not true!”
“Now listen here. What I'm sayin' to you is the honest truth. Let go, and you'll be safe.” Applejack assured her with the calmest voice she could muster in her current situation.
Twilight stared deeply into Applejack’s eyes, on one hoof she had known this pony for less than a day and she was sure that Applejack couldn’t save her. But on the other, she could feel that both of them were losing their grip on each other and it was unlikely to hold for much more. Finally, she decided to take a leap of faith, and trust Applejack.
She let go of Applejack and felt herself fall down from the steep cliff, body flailing as if trying to climb up the air.
“Yaaah!” She screamed. After a few seconds her fall was broken by a hard surface and everything went black.
x
The screams of the seagulls brought Twilight back into reality. Immediately waking up she was brought to heel by a searing pain echoing out from her skull and out over her body.
She tried steadying herself but the pain stopped her in her tracks and left her writhing about on the ground, blind to the world around her while the pain in her body dulled excruciatingly slow, as if it was trying to claw at as many nerves as possible before it went. Even when her sudden seizure had ended she lay on her back,panting and blinking in and out of consciousness while her mind settled.
“A-a-applejack!” She managed to wheeze out between her rugged breath, but no reply came. “Rarity, Rainbow, Pinkie… Spike?!” She called out, this time with a clearer voice, but still no reply came.
Panic slowly started to set in, and she opened her eyes to find that she wasn’t in the everfree forest anymore.
Instead of the purplish night sky that had just minutes ago been over her it was now an unending bank of grey clouds. She spun her head around from where she lay and fell further and further into panic, her mind simply not being able to comprehend how suddenly everything had changed. In front of her an endless ocean stretched endlessly into the distance, its the harsh waves occasionally squirting a few droplets of water onto her.
Behind her lay a collection of hills, all barren of any life except for the groundcover and a few measly shrubs. Around her, the beach she lay on stretched toward both horizons and was only interrupted by the occasional cliff.
Her head was overwhelmed, but before she could be fully taken by panic she reached up a hoof to steady her head and calm her breathing, but to her further astoundment she felt that it wasn’t a hoof that touched her head. Instead of the hard surface of a hoof that Twilight was accustomed to, five fingers touched Twilight’s face.
“Okay, Twilight, count to ten and everything will surely go back to normal.” ‘one, two, three...’ For a moment all of her sensations faded and were replaced by a numbing buzz throughout her body, it growing in volume before abruptly cutting out.
“Ten,”
She opened her eyes again and nothing had changed.
She desperately looked around even more, hoping to find some sign of an illusion spell, but found nothing. Instead she was met with even more drab landscape of hills overgrown by weeds and yellow grass.
Twilight felt another panic attack come onto her, but she caught herself, trying to piece together what had happened. “Okay Twilight, you’ve been suddenly transported from the Everfree forest to an unknown location, Nightmare Moon still has free reign, and no one came with you... that you know of,”
“What could have happened?” She quickly scanned her newfound body, and confirmed that it wasn’t equine as it had previously been.
Her body now was more like the body of a minotaur, only leaner, with just one horn and soft feet instead of hard hooves. Twilight gave out an exasperated sigh at the revelation, adding it to the summary of the situation she was composing.
“And apparently transfigured too,”. By now the craziness of the entire situation had made Twilight’s mind go full circle back to being calm. She took a couple of deep breaths and stood up, cringing slightly as multiple pebbles etched into the skin of her new feet.
“First off, who or what? Considering that teleporting me so far away from the Everfree and shapeshifting me would take an absurd amount of mana, I can only assume that Nightmare moon did this. Speaking of her, the sky also seems to indicate it being daytime right now? Has she already been defeated, or am i just on the other side of the globe...”
A gust of wind blew through the hills, causing twilight to cover up her chest with her arms, the thin coat of fur on her new body not helping much. The cold sensation reminded her to conjure a cloak, but as her brain went through the familiar motions of bringing up mana it could only pull out a miniscule flick of it.
‘Oh Celestia! she took away my magic too’ Twilight thought, her eyes shrinking to the size of pinpricks. “Why?! What’s the point to all of this, if she wanted to defeat me she could have done it in a million easier and more effective ways. Summon a rock over me, blast me with magic or even just throw a particularly sharp stick at me! And if it isn’t her, then what did this!?” Twilight ranted on, soothing her nerves from the lashing they had just received. By the end of it she was physically and mentally worn out, and fell down to sit on the cold and rocky beach.
The more she sat the more alternate possibilities of her arrival she considered and threw out, each seeming more unlikelier than the last. When there were no more possibilities to consider Twilight noticed how uncomfortable it was sitting almost naked on cold rocks. And at that moment it was as if everything came back into place.
“What are you doing Twilight! Nightmare moon is probably still out there and here you are sulking because of som-something trivial! After Nightmare Moon is defeated I’ll worry about my magic and my body,” Twilight looked around, once again scanning the environment, but this time looking for signs that could help her locate where she was in the world.
“Okay, rocky beach, rocky hills and not a lot of vegetation. This must then most likely be the southern parts of the griffin dominion. So, that means the nearest settlement...” She looked up, trying to see where the sun was through the clouds, and recalling her lessons in geography.
“That way,” She looked north. “About 200 km with cold weather and no food or water with me,” The thought made the hills infront of her seemingly stretch out and adopt an air of ominousity, the small rocky outcroppings becoming razor sharp edges and the skies descending onto the landscape and coating it in a thick fog.
“For Equestria...”
Chapter 2: Unending Hills
Twilight had never been so alone in her entire life. Sure, she had locked herself inside her study and sat there entire days and nights, even staying there for an entire week one time. But through all of those times she knew that someone was a call away. And the five hours of painstaking walking through the cold wilderness with the nearest sign of civilization being miles away, had left her in a state she couldn’t even describe.
She stopped her trek through the neverending hills and valleys to take a short rest so her feet could recover. By now the sun had travelled across the entire sky, and was on its way below the horizon.
‘I hope the girls managed to find the elements and defeat Nightmare Moon’ And while she hoped that was the case, she had an increasing worry that that sunset would be her last.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t be sure of that until the next day came, and she needed to try to get back to civilization so she could make a difference if worst came to worst.
Sitting under the great grey sky, and looking out at the rolling yellow landscape in front of her was strangely soothing. Observing all of the details of each hill and outcropping that made this landscape and then cataloging them brought a sense of peace to Twilight. Reminding her of the work she and Spike used to do back in Canterlot.
But as the sun fell further and further down she was forced forward by the sinking temperatures. If she wanted to make it to civilization she would have to find some shelter for the night. And while her feet were still aching, knowing that there wasn’t any kind of cave, tree or settlement anywhere near her made her press on. If she was lucky she would reach the lower dragon's plateau before midnight, and shelter would be easy to find amongst the trees there.
Movement, that was another mystery she hadn’t been able to solve. Despite fear that she would first have to learn walking in her new body, after the first step it was as if she had lived her whole life in that form. And if her whole situation was caused by a spell, it would have been impossible to do all of this without brainwashing a new movement pattern into her brain.
‘But if she already had me under a mind control spell why didn’t she just use that to defeat me?’ Back when she arrived she had assumed that Nightmare moon could be the only one that had sent her here. But the longer she thought about it she realized that while she could, there was no way she would. But this again only created more questions than it answered.
She chuckled, taking a moment to once again rest her sore feet. “Here I am, in the middle of the wilderness without food, water and shelter and I’m thinking about the motivations of Nightmare Moon.” However, she knew she couldn’t stop for long, as night was fast approaching.
At that moment she noticed something, the screams of seagulls. Quickly focusing back into reality she once again put out her ear, and sure enough the seagulls were screaming just beyond the hills in front of her.
“Ocean? It can’t be, there isn’t supposed to be ocean for another 1000 kilometers, have I been going in circles?” But that possibility was quickly discarded, as she always kept an eye on the position of the sun.
She ran towards the screams, hoping that beyond the hill she would find anything except of an ocean, hoping that she was mistaking the cries for something else, but yet the cries of seagulls got louder and louder. And after Twilight crested the hill she was struck still, because the thing she had found beyond it was much worse than any ocean.
A bridge. A massive bridge stood before her and over the ocean, a sheer monument of stone and brick compare to the decorative stream crossers that were everywhere in Canterlot. Being thick enough to have at least 100 ponies lined across its width and not have them touch each other. This monstrosity was held up by equally impressive columns that seemed to be mountains that had risen from the depths of the ocean to hold it up, the only place it wasn’t held up by one of the columns was a small part of it that was built directly on the landmass she was standing on.
And even from her distant spot on the hill Twilight saw that the bridge was richly adorned with statues and engravings. But for all of its splendor, that bridge should not have been there or anywhere else on the planet.
x
She was stunned into silence as she went down the mountain slope towards the bridge. Slowly approaching it she felt the crushing realization that she wasn’t on her planet anymore. The bridge was of such a scale that it wouldn’t have been possible to keep it hidden.
When she finally reached it and walked over a collapsed section of wall, she went to the centre of the road, marked by a line of scratched black stone, and looked into both ways on the bridge, but she didn't see any kind of structure on either end, only the road slowly disappearing into the fog.
“Spike...” She whispered, realizing that she may never see her loved ones again. A sob escaped her, followed by another until it turned into full blown crying. All of the stress from the summer celebration and the subsequent trip through the wilderness spilling out onto the cold hard brick in the form of a growing puddle of tears.
x
The sun had fallen below the line of hills and the world was bathed in the muted orange colors of the sunset, filtering past the clouds. Meanwhile Twilight had once again pieced herself back together and started moving east, picking a direction at random. Her mind was completely silent while she slogged her feet along the cold brick.
For what felt like the first time in her life, she was truly lost. No plan, no list and Spike, Celestia and her entire family were on another planet. But yet she didn’t give up and sulk forever on that bridge. If there was a bridge it meant civilization, and that meant a chance to get back to Equestria, her magic was maybe blocked but the people here might have mages that could help her.
Even as the darkness of night completely overtook the landscape, she pushed on, casting away any tiredness from herself with fickle hopes of a city appearing through the fog. And as the clouds parted above her, and the bright shine of the moon lit up the landscape she saw a silhouette ahead of her. She rushed towards it, having to almost drag her entire body in the process to keep it from collapsing.
The silhouette turned out to be an overturned cart, with mud and dirt splattered all over it, and one wheel having been broken in half.
“Hello! Anypony?” She shouted as she appraoched, but nobody answered. Coming closer to investigate, she found that a rusty smell permeated the air around the cart. At first Twilight didn’t realize what the smell was, but upon finding that red was one of the colors splattered on the cart she almost puked. Thankfully no bodies were in the cart, though if it wouldn’t have been for her not having any dinner, she still would have emptied it on the floor.
Twilight felt overwhelmed, there was too much to process for her. Twilight felt her muscles crying, and the world outside seeming scarier than ever. She considered walking a while longer, but the growing wind outside made her reconsider.
She looked around for anything soft in the cart but found none, and resigned herself to sleeping on a wooden panel with not too many splinters. At least it wasn’t as cold as the road.
Even though a storm of emotions raged on inside her and the cold wind whipped her body through the many cracks in the cart, she forced herself to fall asleep. She counted the waves splashing against the columns of the bridge far below her one after another, and eventually her senses faded and sleep overtook her. Thankfully no dreams came that night.
Author's Note
With this chapter done, i'm finally finished on the intro of the story. Expect some action to come soon.
Twilight slowly opened her eyes and stretched her arms, shaking her head from the headache she had received from sleeping on the hardwood. Despite just sleeping she felt exhausted, she didn’t know what awaited her out there, and a destroyed cart on a major bridge didn’t bode well. In addition, an entire day of almost non-stop walking had tired her legs and parched her throat.
Twilight gave the cart she slept in another search, hoping to find something that she had missed yesterday. Although she didn’t find any food or water in the cart, she got some use out of the partially torn blinds, which were used to cover up the front and back of the cart. She tied them around her like a toga, as she had seen spike do with blankets when he was playing.
Even though the toga didn’t provide much warmth, it did shield her from some of the wind, and that would have to suffice for now.
She stepped out of the cart and looked out over the clouded ocean and bridge. Moving away from the cart she went to the edge and leaned on the railing of the bridge, scouting the horizon for a possible end.
‘There!’ In the distance she could just make out five enormous towers rising up from the horizon, each one of them broke through the clouds, and hid its top from Twilight. She stared at them with wide eyes, admiring their still majesty.
“Civilization...”
‘Marvelous, bridges that are multiple kilometers long and towers that reach into the sky. Architecture like that should only be possible with magic, and if they are powerful enough to build things like these, there may actually be a realistic chance of them being able to send me back to Equestria!’ Twilight wanted to break into a full on sprint, but she kept her slow and steady pace, not wanting to exhaust herself further.
When she passed the towers she noticed that they were positioned symmetrically relative to the bridge, as to form a sort of gate into the town. Beyond them a sprawling city laid over what Twilight was sure was at least four times the area of Canterlot, and it was a lot more tightly packed too. Several tall buildings poked out of the sea of brick houses, and docks extended off the city and into the sea, a few of the docks having ships tied to them and some having a sunken ship poking out through the water. She leaned on the railing and gazed at the city, drinking up its ambience and feeling a modicum of safety.
But the more she stared at it the more she could feel something was off, and then it hit her. Silence, total silence. None of the distant sounds and none of the smells associated with such a big city were present, not even the seagulls were to be heard. Twilights walk slowed down to a cautious trot, and halted almost completely when she reached the true gates that led into the city, the portcullis had been torn off from its chains and lay facing out from the city.
Just as she had guessed, there wasn’t a single living creature in the city. The market that met her after she passed the gate was just as deserted as the bridge. Shops and stalls lay abandoned, some of the wares they used to sell still lying around on display and some having fallen out on the road.
The city was sending shivers down Twilights back, and her mind was screaming at her to get away from it. However, Twilight wasn’t listening to her own sense of survival, and despite her hunger, despite her thirst, she ignored the food in the shops and went further into the city, searching for clues about what had happened.
Suddenly, Twilight heard a scream.
“Somepony is in trouble!”
Without even thinking, she ran for the sound, turning corners, running past allies and through shops. Eventually she turned a corner and saw the source of the noise, but to her horror she had come too late. She saw a bipedal rotten corpse devouring a fresh body of similar appearance, spilling its guts on the pavement.
Before she fully could fully understand what she was seeing, the corpse turned its head around and stared deep into Twilight’s eyes.
A guttural growl came out of the zombies mouth, and Twilight started backing away. That was when the stench from the zombies mouth hit Twilight like a wrecking ball, stopping her retreat and almost causing her to vomit. The zombie took the chance and pounced at Twilight, closing the distance between them in an instant. Before Twilight knew it she was knocked onto the ground and staring straight into the zombies mouth.
Twilight’s world slowed down, and she saw the mouth coming down at her neck and did the only thing she could think of. She threw up her arms and willed her magic into them. Time slowed down even further and she felt the familiar arcane energies flow through her arms once more, although this time they weren’t as strong as she was used to, and created a ball of pink flame at the end of each arm. An instant later she fired off a gout of it directly at the zombies face.
The zombie was knocked off of twilight, and it emitted a high pitched screech as it flailed its arms around, the fire slowly spreading to encompass its entire body. Twilight was breathing fast, the spell having eaten up more energy than it ever should have. Even though she was horrified at how the zombie slowly died, she couldn’t take her eyes off of it, several question running through her mind.
Eventually the zombie emitted one last screech, this one much louder than the previous ones, and collapsed on the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
Immediately Twilight heard more such screeches rise up throughout the city, and she dove into the nearest building, a tall tower, and rushed up the stairs to hide on the second floor.
x
She felt as if she had laid there for an entire day before she risked peeking her head through the window. When she did she saw that a horde of at least one hundred zombies had gathered where she had previously been.
At first glance, they weren’t even looking for her, they were just wandering about, and some had even started to disperse. But when she noticed the sounds from the floor below that sounded like footsteps, a lot of footsteps in fact, she was glad that she had pushed a cupboard in front of the door to her hiding place.
Each time she tried to do something to find her way back, the further away the possibility seemed. From simply finding a griffon town, to getting the help of a completely new civilization that possibly had a completely different language, and could be hostile to her. And now to get back to Equestria she had to find a city that wasn’t overrun with zombies on top of that.
Even the fact that she could still use her magic didn’t calm Twilight down, as thinking about it only served to remind her of the way the zombie trashed about and screeched before it died.
x
When dusk came, the last of the zombies had finally dispersed. Now was the time to get out of there. She sat down and went over her plan once more.
“Okay, I can’t escape without food or water from this city, however i saw quite a lot of food left over in the market i passed, and I should be able to find some bottled juice or alcohol.” Quietly she wondered what alcohol would taste like, and also marked it down on her mental list to avoid getting drunk if alcohol was all that she could find.
Ideally she would have had water, but she wouldn’t risk becoming a zombie herself if the water in the reservoir held the disease that caused the inhabitants here to turn.
“What I also need is information. Even if I escape from the city I would have nowhere to go, so I’d need to find an archive, no a town hall or something similar, it probably has more recent information. There should be clues there telling me what happened here and if it has spread to other cities as well, and hopefully an indication to a place not overrun by zombies.”
Twilight walked through the streets, careful to stick close to the alleys. The clothes she had found in an abandoned house, an oversized white shirt and brown pants that only stayed on her due to a rope that acted as a belt, were caked in mud, dirt and worst of all, blood.
After she was sure the zombies had left her previous hideout she had searched through the house, finding her current clothes. Unfortunately there was no water or food to be found, however, when looking out of the busted attic she saw a couple of castles deeper within the city. She reasoned that a castle was bound to have an emergency storage of food and water, and probably some tactical information as well, information which could relate to the zombies. Going for the castle also saved her a lot of time and energy over looking for the town hall in the expansive city.
She had picked out the closest castle and set off towards it. But when traveling towards it she had cast a simple mirror spell in order to get a birds eye view of the city and at that moment a pack of zombies lurking within a basement that had a large hole blown into it ambushed her. The zombies appeared without warning, and had chased Twilight through the alleys for quite some time until she stumbled into an unexpected pile of rotten gore. The smell had stunned Twilight,and while she lay there, the zombies searched all around her, one even bringing one of its slimy appendages over Twilights fur, yet they didn't seem to notice her. It was a miracle that she didn’t scream.
The zombies eventually left, and Twilight had no other choice but to continue, still covered in the grime. At first she tried to ignore it, but the smell and feel of it all was pressing down on her, and she had no choice but to wash the worst off of her with water from a puddle. She stared blankly into the distance as she did so. Still, some stains remained but she could deal with them.
With no other choice she continued towards the castle, her head buzzing.
The closer she got the more elaborate and decorated the buildings around her became. The dull three story stone brick houses were replaced by larger mansions, some with destroyed personal gardens and usually having an overturned and/or destroyed carriage in front of them.
Just as she entered the plaza that held the castle she saw that a wall surrounded it. It was just short enough to be hidden by the surrounding houses, and its portcullis was shut. The houses here dwarfed even the mansions she had passed, and had been much more beautiful as well. Open staircases went around the buildings, stained glass seamlessly meshed together and connected into beautiful pictures which adorned each and every window, the roofs were covered by perfectly smooth obsidian tiles and each entrance was both entrancing and inviting in its beauty.
Of course, had been, was the key takeaway here. Most of what Twilight imagined was once beautiful works of art to rival the Celestial palace in their own right lay now in ruins. Stairways had collapsed, tiles had slid off and embedded themselves into the road, some buildings had completely collapsed upon themselves, now nothing more than a roof laying on a pile of rubble. However there were enough roofs intact to hide this destruction from anyone observing from a distance. In stark contrast to the ruins around it, the walled building seemed to be in good shape, standing tall amidst the ruins.
Twilight found it strange that the level of destruction here was much more brutal than at the outskirts of the city, which she imagined would be the first to be destroyed. Yet she only spared this curiosity a stray thought before going back to the matter at hand.
She scanned the walls for any low-points she could climb through, but found none, and the houses were placed sufficiently far enough from the wall that she couldn’t make the jump.
“Okay Spike, take out the parch…. oh right.” Spike wasn’t with her, she had to remind herself. “I have... I have three options. One, I use telekinesis on the portcullis and slip through before it falls down, however I doubt I have enough magic for it, and the noise of it shutting might attract the zombies.” Plus, she didn’t want to test the capability of the gate at warding off a horde.
“Option 2, I scavenge for some objects to stack upon each other and climb over the wall.” It could work, assuming the objects could be moved without creating a huge ruckus and she had the magic or strength necessary to move all of them.
“Finally, I could search for some rope and try to climb it that way, but I seriously doubt I could find a solid length of rope around here.”
Magic exhaustion, even more magic exhaustion and regular exhaustion or just wasting time. She looked back at the portcullis, frowning at first before she let out an exasperated sigh and walked towards the gate.
‘I hope I still have some mana left in me.’
The further away from the unicorn a spell was made, the more mana and mental concentration it took to manifest it, and currently Twilight needed every last drop of her mana in order to lift the portcullis. She pressed her hands right into the center of the portcullis and began summoning her magical reserves. The metal was cold to the touch but was trivial when compared to the grime still clinging to Twilights clothes.
Her brain, sharpened by years of magical study, instinctively went through the motions of casting, unnafected by Twilights change in appearance. Slowly, purple light began to gather around her hands, and then spread out from the center of the portcullis to also encompass the bottom- right and left corners. By creating three smaller fields it would lessen the load on her brain when casting, as opposed to gripping the entire gate with her magic.
The light in these areas brightened up again, turning from purple to a shining magenta. Twilights face was caked with sweat, and her concentration was almost broken by a pulsating pain growing at the base of her horn. Still, mana continued to gather and grip the cold metal tight.
She was going to run empty at this rate, she had no choice, she had to lift the gate up now or give up. Her spell wasn’t ready, her body trembled and wanted to fall down, but it was too late to stop now. Twilight screamed, pouring every sleepless night spent over a book, every last minute studying magic, every second her cutie mark had brought her joy and all the other stress she had gone through since to get this far into just one spell.
She heard growls, shrieks and a growing amount of steps coming her way from the city, but weaving into the hordes approach was the shrieking of the metal gate going higher and higher. It climbed to the heavens as her mana drained away even faster and she had to fall to her knees in order to not fall over. The sounds of the horde continued to approach. This was it, her last mana, she couldn’t waste it.
Twilight screamed, and pushed one last time at the portcullis with her magic, lifting it just over her head. In the last few seconds before she blacked out she threw herself through the portcullis and a split second later it slammed shut behind her.
x
Pulsating, burning and being smashed into a million small pieces, that was how Twilight’s brain felt when she opened her eyes and saw the moon and several distant stars stare down at her. Feeling vomit run down her muzzle and neck didn’t help either.
“Uugh” Twilight groaned, slightly chastising herself. Even when she was a foal, and way to eager to learn new magic she hadn’t been stupid enough to use up all of her reserves, and yet here she was, grown mare and lying in a pool of her own vomit. She really should have thrown herself through earlier. Now she was dehydrated, probably sick and unable to use magic for at least the next 24 hours.
At least her plan had worked. The zombies must have lost interest in her since there were none near the gate and she was still alive. Additionally, since the noise of the gate shutting would have attracted any zombies inside the walled area, and again, she was still alive, she could explore the building in peace. She wasn’t sure if her current predicament was worth it though.
She lifted herself up with one of her arms. She was surrounded by stone walls and the courtyard she had fallen into was likewise covered in stone. The only feature standing out in the barren courtyard were the tall statues of armored and helmeted bipedes, probably the same species that became the zombies. The castle loomed over her.
‘Please let this place have water.’
Twilight weakly stood up and began shambling towards the building, past the intimidating armored statues that flanked the stony road,each few meters apart. Twilight chuckled as her condition reminded her of the school nurse giving some foals that had suffered from mana exhaustion, even after all the lectures she had done on magical safety, a stern talking to.
“Sorry Amber Slither, but I can’t take three days off school right now, and neither am I available for detention after that.”. Twilight tried to laugh, but could only cough, her dry throat aching from it. Twilight stopped to take a breather, looking up at the sky she had once gazed at with Spike and Celestia beside her. She silently resumed her march.
Unlike the intact walls the gate to the castle was punctured in several places by something the size of a fist and half of the gate had fallen outwards. Splinters lay scattered about and the smell of rotten wood grew strong near it. Twilight stepped through the threshold and into the dimly lit entrance of the castle, accidentally stepping into a muddy puddle. She continued deeper into the castle.
Just as she had suspected the castle was devoid of life, with not even the skittering of mice or the buzz of insects to break the silence, only the rhythmic drops of water somewhere inside could be heard. While the entrance was somewhat grand, with a large wooden staircase leading up and halfway busted magical chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, the stony halls were cramped and dank.
The soft steps of her feet against the wooden floor soon joined the other sounds. Room after room, knocked over chairs, torn curtains, dried up blood, ransacked crates and broken doors. Luckily there were some dim lights she could feel were powered by magic lighting up the halls a bit. Unfortunately if she wanted to absorb the mana from the lamps she had to use her currently nonexistant mana, so she was left with all this mana a hoofs reach away yet completely useless to her.
The first floor didn’t have anything, information, food nor water. So she went back to the entrance and climbed higher on the busted staircase. This time, she saw something on it, a dirty, wet imprint. The imprint was of a set of weird patterns ascending the staircase, similar in shape to her new feet, but these ones consisted of stripes and dots instead of a singular surface like the imprints she left behind. But one thing was for sure, they were too orderly to be from a zombie.
She started following the trail, ignoring all other rooms. A survivor meant food, drink and most importantly information on what had happened to this world. Finally she came to a door that had the steps leading into it.
The hope that had been steadily building inside of her was crushed, completely and utterly. The door was barred, from the outside.
She knocked on the door once, then again, and then she threw both her hands at it, hammering it.
“Please, somepony, are you there! Can you hear me? Please, don’t be dead, I need you. I’m so lost, I’m so alone.” She cried, and slumped against the door. No sound came from it, and tears streamed down her face, some flowing into her mouth and others falling on the floor. Twilight cried. This had all been such a nightmare, from the moment she lost consciousness and woke up on that beach and until now, where her one hope at rescue while inside a city of bloodthirsty zombies had turned out to have already met a fate that she could meet at any second that she spent within this cursed world.
Twilight tried to go back to happier times, closing herself into a prison of memories, time spent playing with her brother while her parents watched. The first lesson she had with Princess Celestia. Looking behind her and seeing her very own Cutie Mark. She forced all her happy memories to play on repeat as her body continued to burn out and dry up. She wanted to go back, she really did. Twilight looked back to the door, it wouldn’t be hard to remove the bars and enter the room, but did she want to?
Two loud thuds, followed by the creaking of the floor resonated through the halls. Twilight meekly pushed the door open. The room was empty save for a couple of windows, but in the far right corner of the room lay a corpse with a festering wound on its leg, luckily not a zombie. She creeped closer, disgust and fear fighting against curiosity, she could finally take a good look at how the inhabitants of this world looked, and maybe even… she didn’t want to finish the thought but she had to see if the corpse had anything useful to her.
The being was covered by padded leather armor over a black shirt and green pants. It had a face covered by a thick scarf that had been spinned several times around the head, leaving only the eyes and the underside of the nose exposed. It’s figure was a bit on the larger side and a wretched stench came from the open wound.
As she unwrapped the scarf Twilight could see the face of the creature, it was sleek with almost no blemishes, moles, birthmarks or any hint of facial hair, although it had pudgy cheeks and its chin was hanging slightly down. It’s eyes were frozen in a state of pain, staring into the ceiling. Twilight thought that the face looked masculine, although she didn’t want to check if her hypothesis was true. Still, at least she didn’t have to call him “it” anymore.
“Oh Celestia” she had already cried away all her tears , but the sight of this poor man hunched over a wall all alone in a forgotten room was almost too much to bear. Twilight could imagine herself all too well in his spot, hunched over, uselessly begging for help while stranded in an unfamiliar place.
“I could, no, I will make sure you get a burial, you hear!?” Twilight shouted at the corpse. ‘If he had any family, I hope they’re alive.’ She thought, and closed the eyes of the dead being. The dead being had a leather bag strapped over his right shoulder, and no matter how much she didn’t want to defile a corpse, right now Twilight didn’t have any choice.
She easily undid the buttons and the contents were laid bare before her. Finally, a smile grew on her face.
“Thank you.” she smiled weakly at the man, inside the bag were two loaves of bread and a large canteen full of water along with some other stuff she couldn’t care less about right now. She undid the cork and poured the liquid into her aching throat. It was stale and lukewarm, it was amazing. Immediately after having downed at least a third of the canteen she bit into the loaf, it was hard and dull but she couldn’t care less.
Twilight imagined herself back home, sitting close to her family and biting into the delicious cake her mother ahd baked her for her birthday, competing with her brother over who could eat the most while her father sighed and her mother chuckled. She genuinely laughed for the first time since coming here.
With her need satisfied and the sun slowly rising over the rooftops outside the window, she checked out the other things inside the bag. There was a crumpled and slightly torn photograph and a sheet with something written and drawn on it. The picture showed the being when he was still alive. He was standing at a counter and looking out over his shop with a smile on his face while some nondescript, rich customers were browsing his wares, which consisted of jewelry and fancy clothes. On the back a sentence had been written in perfect equestrian.
“To my dear Beorn, we will always love you and be there for you. Happy Birthday. Love, p.s I wish you a happy birthday too dad! I’ll be sure to give you my gift when I get back from school (you were right, the kids here at consilio are great, I already got so many friends)!”
“You know, I have an acquaintance that sells clothes, really nice ones. Maybe you two could have become friends.” She said with teary eyes and wedged the painting between the leather armor and the shirt underneath. Twilight looked back into the bag and took out the piece of paper. As her eyes fell on the piece of paper her hope came back, full force.
Attention survivors of Carmi, we have found a SAFE HAVEN
The eye-catching title promised a lot, but the letter promised even more. It talked of a caravan gathering at a place called “Bell Farm” that consisted of enough survivors to defend against the zombies roaming the countryside, it promised that the survivors had plenty of supplies and would accept anyone as long as they were willing to work for the group. It also told the readers a scant few bits of info about the apocalypse. One of the most important being that water and food didn’t get contaminated and were safe to eat, although it didn’t mention why. Additionally it said to stay out of any major town or “place of power”, whatever those were. But best of all, it had a crudely drawn map showing how to get from the city she was currently in, apparently named, “Carmi” and to the gathering caravan at Bell Farm, with landmarks a plenty.
The letter finished by saying that the caravan would only be there until the fifth of september and after that would depart to an undisclosed location. Twilight looked back at the corpse, he had saved her, and given her a shot at coming back to Equestria. Twilight didn’t care that it was a corpse, she hugged it.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” The corpse was somewhat fresh, which meant that she probably had time to reach the caravan. When she did she could finally find out what had happened here, why people were becoming zombies, where she could find a mage, and how in the world did two worlds manage to develop the exact same language. Twilights mind buzzed with imagination, falling into one of those moods she got when she found a book she hadn’t read yet.
“Spike make a lis, oh, right.” The world came crashing back on her, for the second time that day. She was sitting in a dim room in a destroyed castle in some kind of apocalyptic world. No one: Spike, her mother, her father, brother, Cadence or Princess Celestia were here. She was stranded. But now, she had a goal, she had hope, knowledge that somewhere out there was a group of people that could help her and if there was hope then Twilight couldn’t let herself fail.
“Did you think you could beat me world?” she said staring at the morning sun as it finally cast away the shadows and bathed the city in its warm light.
“Well you were wrong.” she said, smirking.
Author's Note
So yes, this story's back. The crazy part is that I have had this chapter in my drive for a few years now, so I decided to post it to get back my momentum. Have a wonderful day.
