"Alright sleepyhead..." Gold said, the tiredness evident in her voice. "Wake up!" She shook my arm lightly like a child would, trying to wake their parents.

"5 more minutes..." I mumbles and rolled over, pulling the blanket tighter around me. I didn't want to leave the comfort of the bed just yet. The blankets seemed to curl around you in all the right ways, with their amazing smoothness and warmth.

"Come on! I wanna eat breakfast and I don't wanna go alone!" She said, shaking a bit more aggressivley. I sighed, and pushed the blankets off, then proceeded to rub the sleep out of my eyes.

"Yay!" Gold yelled happily, and shot towards the door. "Well are ya coming?"

"Yeah yeah..." I yawned and stretched and got up to follow towards her. We started to walk down the hallways, following the delicious aroma of food. We could smell pancakes, fried apples with cinnamon, maple syrup and various other foods, but it was even better when we arrived. I still couldn't believe how much they still had during the end of the world. It almost made me forget that the Slaughterer existed.

As we walked into the large dining hall, once again we were meeted by several ponies making their ways around, either to get food, or to sit down and eat, so we made our way towards the line. At the large table where the line was held, we could see large quantities of delicious looking foods. Their were indeed pancakes with hot syrup and fried apples, but their were also a couple bowls of apple sauce with cinnamon and nutmeg, pumpkin and cream cheese rolls, several bars of food with different assorted nuts and berries, and large loaves of warm, steaming banana bread.

They also had drinks. Freshly squeezed orange juice, apple juice, cool refreshing water, coffee, mint tea, strawberry cordial, and even a festively spiced autumn ale.

We quickly made our way through the line, taking whatever looked delicious, and I ended up settling with a delicious cup of coffee. However, once we looked around, their didn't seem to be many seats left open. And their would be even less knowing that some ponies still haven't woke up. So, with our food in hoof, we ventured forth to find a suitable place to eat. As we were walking, a sudden voice said, "Hey! Over here!"

We looked over to see a light blue pony with light red hair waving us over to a surprisingly bare table, so we hurried over and sat down.

"Hello! My name's Dual Spectrum but you can just call me Dual!" He said happily, shaking both of our hooves.

"Hi Dual! I'm Golden Speck and this is Astral Glimmer." Gold introduced us while shaking his hoof as well.

"Cool! Some other ponies should be getting to the table any second now. Oh! There they are!" Dual said, looking around as two more ponies sat down. One of them was a stallion with a white coat and short red hair, and the other was a mare, with red hair as well, but she had a pink streak in it, and a light red coat.

"Astral and Gold, this is Arrow Blaze, and Lila Sapphire. Arrow and Lila, this is Astral and Gold." Dual said, as the other ponies smiles and also shook our hooves.

"Hi! It's so nice to meet you! Were you guys selected for the expedition too?" Lila said, taking a bite of a pancake.

"Yep. We had to travel for a few days to get here too." I said, remembering the bandit that had tried to attack us on our way here from the bunker.

"I hope it wasn't that hard of a journey. It only took a day and a half for me and Arrow here, but that's because our shelter was close by. Now tell me, where'd did you two come from?" She asked curiously.

"We both came from the same bunker. I think it was... 23-D?" I said, looking back to when I was there, and Gold shook her head in agreement.

We sat there for a bit just eating our breakfast. The pancakes were amazing, as well as the banana bread. It was moist and filled with nuts and flavor. I was in the middle of a bite when the room went quiet, and we all heard a piercing scream echo throughout the dining hall.

"What in the..." I said quietly, right as we also heard a loud CRASH! I suddenly thought back to dream, where the Slaughterer had started to destroy the castle.

We heard another crash, but they didn't sound like they were inside of the castle, and the pony that screamed ran in and yelled,

"THE SLAUGHTERER IS BREAKING DOWN THE MAGIC BARRIER!"

The whole room exploded into chaos as ponies screamed and ran in different directions. Their was another CRASH! and the room fell silent once more as a different sound was heard. It was a loud buzz, and one of the ponies at a window yelled, "The barrier is down!"

Once again everypony ran for their lives. Me and Gold started to run as well, with Arrow, Lila, and Dual following behind us. We were able to make it to the large set of double-doors that leaded to the entrance of the dining hall, when we were all teleported away. In fact, several others were too. When we reappeared, we found ourselves inside of a different room. The room was fairly large, with all the ponies that had arrived in it. Surprisingly, we seemed to have all 100, but Princess Celestia was here too.

"My loyal subjects..." She said, the sadness in her voice all too evident. "The time to leave is now. The Slaughterer has arrived earlier than expected, and has started it's reign of destruction on the castle. All of the ponies inside of the castle have been teleported to a safer area, and their is nothing we could do to save the building, or even the rest of Canterlot. You one-hundred ponies are out last hope of survival. Please try your best, stay safe, and save Equestria. We have already assigned jobs to ponies. The lists are displayed in the main office, and their are digital maps placed around the ship so you can know where you are. I believe in every single one of you. Pilots! You may start the ship now." She said, a tear rolling down her cheek as the ship vibrated and hummed.

"We believe in all of you!" The Princess yelled, stepping off of the ship as it started to slowly rise off the ground. We all waved and yelled back to her different things.

"We love you!"

"We won't let you down!"

"We we will save you guys!"

And with that, the ship was completely off the ground, and we started to go up. An intercom came on, and directed us all to the bunk areas to rest and get ready to leave the planet. Following the maps, we were directed to various bunk areas by assisting ponies. When we left the room we were in, which was a large area with chairs that were bolted into the flooring, we were handed little tickets that told which section of the ship we'd be in, and we could choose which bunks we wanted.

Luckily, me, Gold, and the others had the same section of the ship, so we decided on the same bunk areas. Their were five sections, and each had two bunk areas, with ten bunks in each. We all got section 2, and made our way to the rooms.

I took a top bunk in the back corner of the room, with Gold on the one underneath mine. All of the bunks were built into the walls, with small ladders to get up to the top ones. Each bunk room had four bunks on the left and right walls, and two in the back, making it a fairly small room, but in the bunks, next to the mattress itself, was a little shelf and a sliding compartment to hold stuff. It was small but comfy.

Dual took the top bunk in the back of the room, and Lila got the one underneath him. Arrow decided to take the bottom bunk closest to the back wall on the left side of the room, leaving five other bunks for other ponies, which were taken quickly.

Underneath Dual's bunk, sat a little hole which had a window in the back of it to see outside. I laid my stuff, (which appeared next to me when I was teleported here) in my bed, and looked out the window, and the sight made my stomach turn. I could see the castle perfectly, but with smoke and fire everywhere in the front of the building, which was slowly getting smaller as we made our way up. But, I could also see the beast itself. The Slaughterer.

It was just as big as it was in the dream... Err, nightmare I had, and it was demolishing the castle. Walls and roofs collapsed before it's horrible power, and I had to look away. It was too awful. However, it was good that I looked away, because the intercom came on once again.

"Attention everypony. We advise all of you to get in your bunks, and press the button to flip open the railing, to assure that you do not fall out when we start going up faster. Also, please do not leave the bunks for any reason until said otherwise. Thank you." The intercom clicked off, and I climbed back into the bed. I looked around a bit, and finally found a little button that sat right above my head. Upon pressing, two rails came out. They had a flat top, with little bars spaced out evenly to hold the flat part in place, and to create a barrier. One from top and one from the bottom of the bed appeared next to me and locked in place once they touched. There was another button next to it, and I pressed that as well, which caused a metal panel to slide out of the top and cover the bars, to where I couldn't see out. I guess these were for privacy, but I kept I kept them there.

It was strange, and felt like prison bars, but these weren't here for prisoner containment. It was for safety. It was also neat though, because now I wouldn't fall out of my bed. And with nothing else to do, I lay back and waited.

The ship started to speed up and tipped upwards as the jet engines roared to life in the back of the ship. We were all pushed back into our pillows as the speed increased. It gave me the feeling of riding a carriage and going down a hill really fast, but this time, going up. We cruised along like this for a few minutes before I got used to it, and instead of doing nothing, I decided to check out the little compartment.

Upon inspection, it was just a little cabinet that could slide open, but now that I noticed,next to it was a little circular outline on the wall, where I though was nothing. I touched it, but nothing happened, so I started to look around. It wasn't hard to find, but it wasn't super noticeable either. Right above it, was a flat, gray button. I touched it, and the metal disk in the wall pushed into a little hole, and slid sideways into a little slit. Inside the hole was another window.

I sat up to look out, and saw the planet below me slowly getting smaller. We were so high up, I could see all of Canterlot, and even a little bit of the surrounding areas. It was a beautiful sight. I sat there looking out for a while, up until other cities were appearing. I laid back down, and allowed the final rays of light from our sun that I might ever see again light up my little bunk area with a calm warmth. At first it was gray, until we passed through the clouds.

Now it was a beautiful golden color, and warmer than before as well.

I smiled and hummed quietly to myself. This might not be so bad after all...

Author's Note

I am SOOOO sorry this took so long to get out! I didn't have time to write so I did this in one session. I will try to get the next one out sooner, but I still have stuff coming up that I gotta do. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!