Dead by Sunset

I drift out of the blood-web and back into waking reality, for certain definitions of reality, and like always I’m greeted by the warmth of the campfire as the half-sleep—which is all you ever really get in the Trials—rises into full consciousness, although lately, it’s starting to feel more refreshing than the sleep I remember getting back in the ‘real’ world.

Maybe that’s just because I’m not having to deal with endless streams of abuse from everybody and their goddamn dog.

Despite what I said to Sparkle, I don’t really know how long it’s been. I’ve been through better than two-dozen trials so far, though.

I’ve seen the Wraith the most, we usually make it out with at least two of us but I think he has a taste for me. Fortunately, he’s easy to deal with if you’re good, and I’m a lot better than when he caught me the first time. I’ve seen the hag a bit more, too, and quickly learned that she likes to plant little burning totems around her Trial realms that layer deleterious effects on us.

Fortunately, the totems are fragile. So long as I can find them, I can quickly render her ineffectual. She’s only managed to sacrifice me a handful of times, and usually it’s because she gets sneaky with laying a delayed totem to activate after the generators were all powered that allowed her to call on far more strength, speeding her up and letting her lay us out in one blow.

She got all of us the first time I had to deal with it.

One of the worst ones is the freak called ‘The Doctor’ though.

That guy is… rough.

Halfway through my first Trial against him, I couldn’t even tell what was real. I was seeing him everywhere, laughing at me and cackling in my ears. The heartbeat thundered from all directions. It was a miracle any of us made it out of that. I didn’t, but only because I managed to snap out of it long enough to rescue Aria from her hook and ended up taking her place.

I did tell them that was the deal, though, right?

Tempest and I mended things... mostly. We're rarely apart now but I know she doesn't agree with a lot of the things I do. She says I'm too reckless, and I can't get her to understand that it's not recklessness, I know exactly what I'm doing.

I just don't care.

And I never leave her behind. Not even when it's a bad idea to go for her, and I've ended up on a hook near her more than once because of it too.

At least this way, she doesn't go into the dark alone.

She hates it when I do that.

Vis a vis the Killer's, though, I have to say, Ol’ Doc is pretty bad but he isn’t the absolute worst. I mean, believe me, I hate not being able to trust my eyes, and the migraine-inducing electrocutions are no joke, but it’s at least understandable.

Like, I get it. That's his thing.

No, the worst one is the one that actually scares me.

Even now he scares me.

The thought of showing up on his street again makes me shake a little even now. He isn’t horrifying to look at like Hag, or a grotesque like Billy, or even sadistic like Wraith. No, the worst one is so… quiet.

Trial Ten

We land in the middle of an open street and I’m immediately wrong-footed.

I’ve never seen a Trial like this before; Normally, they’re some version of a fog-filled hellscape defined by rot and madness, but this is almost… suburban.

In fact, it looks just like the Whitetail neighborhood of west Canterlot. Dozens of cookie-cutter, middle-class dream homes perched side by side in neat rows. It would look almost normal if it weren’t for the butcher’s hooks hanging from street lights and the police cars silently sitting by the roadsides with their lights spinning.

“No…” I hear Sour Sweet say softly from my side. “Not… Not this thing again.”

I’d tossed one of the shrouds I’d claimed from my blood-web into the campfire as the darkness fell, one that always ensured I ended up next to one of my allies, or at least close by. It’s always better to start a Trial with an ally if you have a choice.

“What’s the deal, Sour?” I ask as I crouch low next to her near an abandoned car and survey the street.

“It’s the… the Shape” she replies shakily. “It’ll just watch you. It'll watch you right up until it kills you. It’s so fast, and you can barely tell he’s there.”

“Like the Wraith?” I begin swiveling my head, checking windows, and hedges.

Sour Sweet shakes her head. “No, no, there’s no warning. Nothing, just… just a knife and cold, empty eyes.”

Well, he certainly didn’t sound any worse than the other guys we went up against. Billy and his psycho chainsaw. Wraith and his horror-scythe. The Hag and her freakish twisted claw hand. This guy has, what? A knife? That’s almost quaint.

“Okay well, the longer we wait here the long he has to watch us, right?” I say, a little irritably. “Let’s go run up a generator.”

Sour nods and follows my lead. I’ve never been here before but I’ve gotten sharp at spotting the towers, and I see one in the backyard of one of the little mass-produced houses. We move towards it slowly, keeping our heads low and our profiles small, and sidle around the hedges that divide the houses. We move around to the generator right near the back porch of one of the empty houses.

As an added bonus, there are only a few places to approach from, and there’s a pallet nearby. It’s pretty much as ideal as it can get in a ‘getting hunted by a murderer’ scenario.

“Get on the other side and keep an eye on my six,” I say quietly as I position myself up front.

Sour moves around to the opposite end and we get working. I roll my shoulders as a weird chill runs up my spine when I get onto the generator. I flick my gaze around, but there’s nothing, so I do my best to ignore it. It goes well for a minute or so before, out of nowhere, the generator sparks with a thundering bang!

I pull my slightly toasty arms out, cursing.

“Dammit Sour wha—!?” I look over the generator and Sour is staring over my shoulder and shaking like a leaf while backing slowly away.

I swallow hard and turn my head to look behind me and… and there’s nothing. Just a hedge.

“Sour, what the fuck?” I ask, turning back to her.

She points up. I follow her finger and see it: standing, motionless, at the second-floor window of the house across from us, looking down is a dark figure with a pale and expressionless face. It moves slowly away a second later.

Okay yeah, that was… weird. That was genuinely creepy, actually.

“The fuck?” I mutter. “O-okay, whatever.”

I turn back to try and make up some of the progress that Sour had undone, occasionally glancing up to check behind her.

There was no hedge, just an honest-to-Celestia white picket fence. I feel around inside the genny for one of the loose parts, glancing down for a moment to situate myself then look back up and nearly shit myself.

It’s there—a little distant and outside of the range I might have heard the heartbeat—watching her and us both from one of the back corners of the adjacent house.

Then It leaves. Turning away and vanishing around the corner. My heart is beating like a drum. Something about that face just gives me cold sweats.

I hear the heartbeat then, just for a moment, and it sounds like it’s getting closer. Sour Sweet tenses up and I do the same. We’re getting ready to run the moment either of us sees the Killer.

Then it’s gone. Nothing. Just… silence.

“What the fuck is up with this guy?” I mutter, but I can’t help grinning as I hear two generators explode into life across the realm. This one is wasting a lot of time. Our own generator bursts online a moment later and we’re up. “Let’s go, Sour, we’re almost there.”

Sour turns on her heel and heads for the alley behind her but as she turns the corner she stumbles back. I catch up a second later and see why.

He’s already there. Staring down at both us like caught mice in a trap. I have just enough time to think ‘Where the fuck is the heartbeat?!’ before the Killer suddenly animates like one of the protector golems of the Canterlot Armory but infinitely more terrifying. It goes from inert to a hurricane of torturous motion and ragged breath in a split second as it bursts forward with impossible speed, the heartbeat thundering into existence as he drives a thick-handled kitchen knife into Sour Sweet.

There was no playing, no glancing wound, the Shape just nailed her straight to the ground. He’s on me a second later as I turn tail, and his knife hammers into my back. It’s like getting a two-hundred-ton stone dropped onto me with no warning.

His knife nails me to the earth as he breathes raggedly above me. I gasp soundlessly, trying to make a noise, but I can’t. All of the breath is driven from my lungs and the shock is paralysing.

The thing, the silent Shape, stands mechanically, ripping the cold, smooth blade out with a wet ‘schlick’ and then walks over to Sour, hefts her up by her neck, and drapes her over its shoulder before walking out of sight as I try and crawl away towards the street. A moment later, Sour Sweet shrieks as she’s hooked and then the heartbeat grows louder as he comes for me.

Then it dies again.

I’m surrounded by silence. I don’t know how he’s doing it but I can’t detect him. A couple of moments later Starlight rounds the corner. She looks down at me and I can see the emotions warring on her face. Does she help? Does she leave me? I try to gasp out a warning. He’s close. He has to be. I can’t make a sound though.

Then I see her glance towards Sour’s hook, and her features harden. She turns on her heel and leaves me on the ground. It was what I wanted right?

Right?

A few tears track down my face anyway as the heartbeat returns and the cold, powerful hands of the Shape that had been lurking nearby seize around my middle to lever me up and onto its shoulder. It walks towards the same hook it left Sour Sweet on and I realise what happened.

It was setting a trap. Either me or Sweet. It knew someone would come for us.

But… oh shit.

We turn the corner just as Starlight is lifting Sour off of the hook, and there’s stark terror on Star’s face as she hears the heartbeat get louder. A moment earlier and she could have abandoned the attempt to save Sour Sweet and run, but she’s already bearing the majority of Sour’s weight. If she let go and tried to run they’d fall in a heap.

I feel the thing’s face cock slightly as it slows down, almost purposefully, and then lunges forward just as Sour’s feet touch the ground. Slamming her ruthlessly back to the earth as Starlight staggers away with a cry of panic. He slams me onto the hook and I shriek as the stained metal pierces my flesh as see the Shape turns to pursue Star.

Just like before, he accelerates in the instant that he attacks. It’s like whatever unholy will is animating his body suddenly gets a jolt of juice. He roars silently forward and drives his knife into her, slamming Starlight brutally into the asphalt and spiking her there before hefting her up. He walks a few meters down the street and towards another hook.

Another Survivor is slammed on the unforgiving metal, another meal for the Old Stain’s larder.

Then It walks… away. It vanishes behind a hedge at the edge of a house, and I want to cry out a warning but I can barely move. Sour is beneath me, weeping as she crawls towards the backyard. The heartbeat is gone, but from where I’m hanging I can still see him where he posts up, standing painfully still in the window, invisible to the street but still watching us.

No… not again. Please, Tempest just finish the last two generators and go. Let at least one of us get out.

Please.

But, of course, she doesn’t. I see her edge around one of the cop cars towards me a moment later. From where she is on the other side of the street I know she can’t see It standing in the window. The Shape can’t see her yet either but that doesn’t matter.

He will.

As Tempest closes in on me I groan. “D-don’t,” my voice is a ghost of a whisper. “T-Tempest, don’t…”

“It’s okay, Mi Sol,” Tempest says quietly. “I’ll get you down, just hold still.”

It stares at her back with eyes that are cold and black.

“N-no,” my voice is still so painfully quiet. “You don’t…” Tempest gets under me and starts to heave. “You don’t get it. He’s here!”

It explodes into motion, tearing out of the house and lunging for Tempest who cries out, staggering back to try and run, but to no avail. His knife digs deep and drives her down.

No one got out that time.

Even now, I shudder as I remember the feel of his knife. Now I know why Sour Sweet was so scared. There was something about that… that thing that's different from the other Killers. The other are almost manic. They're physical, visceral even. But not that one. He was just a shape in the darkness. Watching and waiting. Patient and uncaring of whatever purpose the Entity commanded.

Every other Killer gives the impression that, while they enjoy their grisly work, they still act under the yoke of servitude to the Entity. Small-minded and brutal they might be, but ultimately they're tools of a greater malevolence.

That thing? That Shape? No. He doesn’t kill for the Entity. I don’t think he even kills because he likes it. I think he kills because it’s just… what he does. It’s an action without purpose. A means without an end.

A rote movement.

An obsession.

I think that’s the part that really scares me.

“You okay, Sunset?” Aria’s voice broke through my musing. I look up and see her staring at me through the fire. She looks a little more worn than when I first got here. We all do, though, I guess.

I nod. “Fine, just had an annoying experience in the blood-web.”

“Useless stuff?” Aria asks with her usual bitter grin.

“Pretty much,” I respond dryly. “No worries though, there’s always the next time.”

“Yeah, the next time…” Aria looks pensive as she stares at the flames. “Hey, Sunset… did I ever tell you how I got here?”

I shake my head. I didn’t really care, to be honest. Maybe before all this I would’ve but now it just seemed… unimportant.

“Back a couple—shit, maybe a lot of trials ago—you said you jumped off a roof, right?” Aria continues, and I scowl. I don’t like being reminded of that place. “Sorry,” she says, seeing the look on my face. “Just… I figured you deserve to know how I and my sisters got here.”

“I don’t think you ever told any of us,” Tempest's voice breaks in as she sits up, waking from her own blood-web. “Why the sudden urge to share?”

Aria shrugs. “Dunno, maybe I just want someone to know. Figure it might as well be all of you losers, y’know?”

“Sure, why not,” I answer, getting comfortable beside Tempest as Starlight and Sour Sweet join us as well. “At least it’ll pass the time til the next trial.”

Tempest's arm goes around my waist and I lean against her.

I'm not sure when this happened, but between all the Trials and life-or-death situations, we'd ended up finding more comfort than not in one another. It's not like we're banging in the woods or anything, but when we're at the campfire and between our Trials, I can't help but just... sit with her.

Something about Tempest's solid presence is reassuring, I guess.

“Right,” Aria agrees uneasily, “so… it was actually just a month after the Battle of the Bands, and we were in a… a pretty bad place…”

Aria Blaze

As always, Adagio was leading us, but Sonata and I could both see the loss of our magic along with all of our power and influence had hit her pretty hard. We’d been living in a small apartment that we’d acquired more out of convenience for its nearness to Canterlot High than anything else, and the last enchantment we'd tossed up that was keeping the landlord thinking we were paid up would fall off soon.

When it did, he’d realise we had no lease, no ID’s, no anything.

The moment that happened we knew we were screwed, so we’d been looking for another place to live. Sonata made sure we had money, but the problem was papers.

Our identities had never mattered before but that’s because we had our magic to slide past that little obstacle. Now though? Now we were literally illegal aliens who didn’t exist as far as the government was concerned. We could get to our money, but it was through some convoluted series of trusts only Sonata could navigate, and in the short term we’d be homeless.

That meant we had to squat, but at least we could do it in style, right?

“What is this place?” I asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. Adagio was grumpy enough as it was.

We were walking through a field, in the middle of the night I might add, towards this massive, groaning structure that looked like it was barely standing. It had an almost classically haunted look to it, y’know? Boarded up windows, ‘condemned’ signs, along with all the usual marks of urban decay.

Our fearless leader scowled back at me. “It’s called the Chateau D’if, and it’s a failed hotel venture that could prove quite useful to us.”

“Ooh, ooh, is it fancy?” Sonata, ever bubbling with optimism in the face of logic and reality, smiled as she pranced beside us. Even I could see some of it was forced, though. She was trying to put on a brave face.

“It was,” Adagio answered softly as we ducked under some chicken wire and onto the prohibited property. “Now it’s just a ruin. Fortunately, I have a feeling it could be made… more.”

I rubbed my chin as we approached, analysing it as much as I could from the outside.

Adagio wasn’t wrong, the place looked a lot worse than it actually was. I’d have to do a real walkthrough but it looked like most of the load-bearing supports were still intact. Assuming the foundations were solid I could probably manually collapses some of the weaker areas with a sledgehammer to take some strain off the main struts so long as the collapse wasn’t too extreme, but I’d have to be careful.

“Is there a basement?” I ask, starting to feel a little hopeful.

Adagio shoots me a grin that’s almost normal. “There is, I checked the plans. It’s a spacious one too. There was supposed to be a bank of generators inside to provide emergency power in case there was ever a major outage.”

I actually smile, feeling a spark of hope for the first time in weeks. “Perfect, if even a couple of them are in good condition we could retrofit any of the bad parts using the scrapped ones and have all the electricity we need.”

Getting fuel would be the easy part, no papers required there. Just a big plastic tank and a bored gas station attendant.

We approached from the side and went around the edge to the back entrance loading dock. It was closed but the metal shutter sealing it off had partially collapsed some time ago. Thanks to that, we got in easily enough and started exploring the place and, I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty much a shit hole.

Seriously, it was bad. Not as bad as it looked from the outside, but still bad.

Mold was everywhere, the timbers were creaking, and there were whole sections I had to steer my sisters around because everything about it screamed: breathe wrong and you’re dead. I’ll admit, I didn’t like the place one bit from the moment we stepped in and, honestly, I’m pretty sure my sisters felt the same.

The second we got in there it was like everything was darker, more… empty. It was terrible. Still, we were desperate. None of us wanted to say anything but we knew we were walking a thin line in terms of places to live. No legitimate place would accept someone on a lease without some kind of paperwork proving their existence.

Even we know that’s shady as fuck.

So we kept going against our better judgment. No one wanted to be the one to voice a concern. Adagio wouldn't because it that would mean she’d screwed up and her pride wouldn’t let her face that humiliation again, Sonata was trying her damnedest to be optimistic, and I didn't speak up because I really thought I could make that place liveable. I was an idiot. I knew better than either of them and I should’ve said something.

It’s my fault they…

Fuck, sorry, anyways.

It all pretty much went to shit when we got to the basement. We went down and it was… it was bad, not like environmentally, I mean… ugh, this is gonna sound stupid but spiritually. Like, we’re Sirens, with or without our gems. We used to eat up bad juju for breakfast. That place though? It was sick. Of course, it wasn’t til we got down to the first sub-basement before we realised something was down there with us.

Even then, it wasn’t until we saw the generator room that we realised how badly we were screwed.

“What… what the fuck?” I knelt down in the middle of the hallway. “This is a bear trap, and an ugly one too, what kind of exterminator leaves bear traps?”

“A bear exterminator?” Sonata asked with false cheer.

Adagio and I practiced our synchronized facepalming technique. It was flawless after that many years of listening to Sonata ramble.

“No, dear ‘Nata,” Adagio remarked with an uneasy laugh. “It’s probably… just… uhm…”

“Adagio, I’m gonna level with you,” I said, standing up. “There is literally no reason for that thing to be down here. This could legit kill someone. Painfully.”

“But it’s… old right?” Adagio ventured, trying her hardest to remain in control. “We can just disarm it, put it away, and keep going, right?”

I let out a slow breath. “Uh, yeah, I guess? Gimme a sec and I’ll have it.”

It took longer than I thought. It was rusty as fuck and old as balls. That thing probably hadn’t seen real work since the friggin’ eighteen hundreds which lead me back around to my original question of ‘what the fuck?’.

So we went deeper.

We found a set of directions that pointed us towards the generator bank which was cheering. What wasn’t were the other four traps we found along the way. None of them looked any better taken care of or newer than the first.

Then we got to the generators.

Or at least where they were supposed to be.

Instead of generators, though, there was line upon line of those bloody, fucking hooks. Each one made with a weird kind of ritual care. They didn’t look good, but they looked like they were made purposefully. Even the junk that made up the main structure seemed almost religiously polished, and every one of them stank of blood.

I hate to think about it now but back then even we weren’t that jaded. We stood there and gaped at them like stunned sheep. None of us, not even Sonata could find the words for it.

We were so shocked we never even saw Him coming.

The meager lights went out immediately and I heard my sisters scream out in pain. I went down an instant later. I remember… a glimpse of something. A face. A smiling face. And then nothing. Then it was just the sinking darkness and the grip of the Entity.

“Wow,” I say, leaning back against Tempest. “That’s a pretty shit deal, I wish I’d known things were gonna get that bad for you.”

Aria shakes her head. “Nah, contrary to popular belief we never held any ill will towards you and your, uh, bandmates. Not even Adagio. She was just sore she got beaten. Sirens culture demands ‘survival of the fittest’ if you get beaten you get beaten. Griping only makes you weaker.”

I nod. “Huh, fair enough I guess.”

“That’s way more dramatic than me, though,” Sour Sweet pipes in with a small smile. “I was cutting through a section of the Everfree forest one day during a country retreat. I like getting around by myself, but… but I got lost. I wandered for hours and eventually it got dark. I found this place. Like a mining site, but old and abandoned. Thing is… Aria, what you said about the traps? Yeah, I found one. With my foot.”

We all flinch at that.

“Wow, that is some hot shit, Sour, sorry to hear that,” Aria says with a groan.

“I screamed for hours but no one came,” Sour frowns, absent-mindedly rubbing her left ankle. “I thought I was gonna die there. And then I… I heard a heartbeat and I felt something grab me from behind. It was a huge arm, stained red and covered in cuts. Then the Entity took me and dropped me here.”

“I…” Starlight starts in after Sour goes quiet. She looks terrified. “I wasn’t even sure anything I was seeing here was real for the longest time.”

“Huh?” I stare at Starlight for a few minutes in confusion. “I mean I get that it’s pretty fucked up here but that aside it’s pretty, uh, visceral, y’know?”

“I woke up here one day and… and I thought it was just another nightmare,” Starlight continues. “Sometimes they were really real, especially if I missed my meds.”

“What kind of medication did that, l’strella?” Tempest finally joins in, voicing the question that’s in my own head.

Starlight just chuckles bitterly. “Anti-psychotics. I was in a psych ward. My rich parents kept me penned up there. ‘For my own good health’ my mother would say on the rare occasion she’d visit. Right, more like so you don’t have a bat shit crazy daughter ruining your galas and social ladder-climbing.”

Tempest leans over and draws Starlight into a hug. “Lo siento, l’strella, no one deserves that.”

Tears start dropping from Starlight’s eyes as she keeps speaking. “I-I had a dream about something dark and hungry and when I woke up my room was cold and there was this… taste in the air. Like blood and rot. I thought I was hallucinating again.”

“That’s right,” Aria broke in, “we found you in Lery’s, the Doctor’s realm.”

I shudder at the thought of it. I hated that flash-fried bastard, Trials against him are like playing a rigged game. “That’s a shitty first Trial.”

“Not as bad as it could’ve been,” Tempest remarks. “We were almost done and the Doctor was on the other side of the realm chasing Adagio, this was… a bit after we lost Sonata.”

“Anyway,” Starlight took a breath, wiping her eyes. “I thought I was hallucinating at first and then we made it to the campfire… It took me to the start of the next Trial to realise I had actually gone somewhere real, though.”

“How about you, Shadow?” Aria asks with a grin. That question actually does perk me up a little. I can’t deny I wondered where she came from. “Since we’re all sharing and caring.”

Tempest stares into the fire for a few moments before she responds. “I… It’s a difficult question. It happened after my family died… and—”

The thunder comes and cuts off any other words. I grimace and spit into the flame, grabbing another shroud from my collection and throwing it into the campfire to make sure I was with someone when we entered the Trial.

“Later,” I say, looking at Tempest evenly. “I’m still curious.”

Then the darkness starts to consume us, I look around, wondering who’s going to be left behind this time. Then I hear it. We all hear it.

A wail of despair and pain that cuts to the bone. I’ve never heard that one before. A new Killer?

“No… please no.”

I spin around at the sound of Aria’s voice. I’ve never heard her so terrified. So distraught. Tears are streaming down her face as she looks around the darkness, swinging her arms to try and ward it off.

“Please! Not Her! NOT HER!”

The wail comes again, and then the darkness drags us away.