Rarity breathed in.
Snow and coal dust coated her tongue. Freezing needles of pain pierced her gums, while scalding blisters of ash sizzled against the back of her throat for the barest of seconds.
Rarity breathed out.
Her breath turned to a cloud in front of her, not quite as white as the snow and ice that fell mercilessly outside her window. Some of the coal dust that had settled in her lungs added a gray tinge to the cloud, and she felt the usual itch at the back of her throat as her body half-heartedly considered coughing and wheezing. But there was no point coughing or trying to fight the dust. Heat was life, and coal was worth a million times its weight in gold. Without coal, there would be no civilization. Without coal, there would be no life. There would only be the howling wind and the skitter-scatter of sleet on the icy walls of the crater. Ponykind and its defiant scream into the cold would be strangled by the storm.
She cursed herself for letting her mind wander. She had work to do, and if she didn’t finish patching up Sweetie Belle’s heavy coat before morning, she knew her younger sister would be dancing with frostbite. It was a terrifying thing in this cold; the winds were so bitter and bit so deeply that a pony could lose a limb to the ferocious shriek of winter in minutes. She shivered, not from the tepid air inside her house, barely staved off by the fireplace and the guttering flames within, but from the mere thought of seeing her sister as an amputee. Too many foals had lost limbs from the cold and the work. She had sworn that she wouldn’t let the only family she had left suffer that misery too.
Her ears turned to the window, where the furious clatter of the generator began to quiet down. She recognized the sounds, or lack thereof, of the Furnace running at half-power. The coal reserves must have fallen dangerously low again. As the steam pipes that brought life-saving heat into her bunkhouse began to hush, she knew it would be up to her and the ponies she shared the house with to provide the fuel to their own fireplaces to keep warm tonight. Even as she thought it, the chiseling pain of a brain freeze began to set in as the cold gripped her horn with ghastly, icy tendrils of air.
What I wouldn’t give to see the sun again, she muttered inwardly. The days of spring and summer seemed so far away now. There had been nothing but the crushing cold of winter for years. And every day, it only grew colder. She didn’t know how much colder it could possibly get, but the weather always found ways to surprise her.
Damn Snowfall Frost. Damn her to the frozen plains of Tartarus and back. Though the mare had died decades ago, it was her fault that Equestria had succumbed to the snow and ice. Keeping the windigos at bay with magic had worked for ponykind at first, but eventually the weather spirits simply multiplied and overwhelmed Equestria’s mages and weather teams. If Rarity closed her eyes and listened closely, she could hear their braying and howling on the winds, the mindless cries of a horde of spirits that had destroyed the world.
Shivers ran down her spine, and she set aside her needle and thread. She’d patched Sweetie’s coat up as well as she possibly could, and she’d had to sacrifice half of her scarf to get the fabric to do so. But Sweetie needed the protection more than she did. Rarity worked in the mines, where the deep shafts helped insulate against the worst of the winds and cold. Sweetie, on the other hoof, had been assigned to a gathering post to haul in the coal dredged up by one of the numerous thumpers clustered throughout the crater. It was terrible work for a child—foals shouldn’t have to suffer such backbreaking labor when they were barely ten—but everypony had to do their part to keep the furnace running and the city alive. Even the children.
The City Must Survive.
Rarity folded up Sweetie’s coat and held the fabric to her nose. Underneath the stench of coal dust and sweat was the precious scent of her sister. She looked over her shoulder and spotted Sweetie’s small figure huddled under a mass of blankets and ragged coats on their bed. They hardly saw one another while awake apart from a few words during the evening meal. Rarity’s shift at the mine started at six and didn’t end until eight, while Sweetie had a more reasonable eight to six shift. She missed spending time with her sister more than anything. If the winter finally ended… if the sun ever returned…
She set the coat aside and trudged over to their bunk, her wrapped hooves padding softly on the wooden floor of the bunkhouse. Her magic, tired and wavering, lifted the corners of the blankets, and she slid onto the makeshift mattress. The frame of the bunk creaked and groaned under her thinning weight and heavy jackets, and she gently wrapped her forelegs around her little sister. Sweetie grumbled and groaned as the contact began to stir her from her rest, but Rarity gently shushed her and nuzzled the back of Sweetie’s ear.
“Go to sleep, darling,” she whispered, exhaustion pulling at her own eyes. “Tomorrow the sun will come out and we’ll play in the fields.”
Soothed by the familiar lullaby, however much of a lie it may have been, Sweetie shifted twice and settled into the comfort of Rarity’s warm embrace, drifting back off to sleep.
Only then did Rarity let out a slow breath, count to ten, and slip off into another dreamless night.
The sun did not come out the next day.
Rarity was awake long before the bellowing of the horn that signaled the start of the extended shift. After giving Sweetie Belle a gentle nuzzle and kiss, she rolled out of bed and hastily buttoned up her coat now that she no longer had her sister’s warmth against her chest. Motes of frost clung to her eyelashes, trying to freeze them together, and she grimaced as she wiped her eyes with the soot-stained back of her hoof. Another day of work in the mines awaited her, and once again she’d have to struggle through backbreaking labor on five hours of sleep.
She rummaged through the cabinet in the bunkhouse kitchen and pulled out a tin bowl with her cutie mark etched into the surface. Inside, a block of frozen soup stared back at her, and she flipped the bowl upside down to knock the coal dust from it. Then, carrying it over to the fireplace, she threw two more logs onto the flickering flames and set the frozen bowl on top of the grate just above the fire. Her stomach quietly whimpered as she watched the frost slowly thaw. The soup was little more than water with a few carrot peels and sprouts thrown in—hardly filling by any stretch of the imagination. But there wasn’t anything else to go around. Last week’s record low had caused the glass on one of the hothouses to crack, and the cold air had killed all the plants inside. They would have to do on smaller rations until the farmers could get a new batch of crops growing again.
Celestia bless the earth ponies. If it wasn’t for them and their magic, they all would have starved long ago.
The door opened and shut for the tiniest of moments, and a shivering gray pegasus slipped into the bunkhouse. Rarity looked up from her soup for a few moments and nodded to the wall-eyed mare shuffling inside. “Another quiet night I hope, Miss Hooves?” she asked, her voice rough and scratchy from months spent deep in the coal mines.
The gray mare nodded. “It’s too cold for anypony to even think about putting up graffiti anymore,” she said, joining Rarity by the fire. She held trembling hooves out to the warmth, and Rarity watched as the ice that had built up along her wraps slowly turned to water. “I don’t know why the Mayor still has us in the towers.”
“Ponies feel safer with the Watch out there to look after them,” Rarity said. “After the horrible business with the Canterloters…”
Her mind wandered back to that dark time when the city had almost torn itself apart. Some ponies had tried to convince others that they would be better off at Canterlot where at least there were more than enough houses, and the city’s position on the mountain would keep them from suffocating beneath the snow. The city was a haven, they had said, and the Princesses protected it. Surely they would be better off there than here. Yet other ponies like Rainbow Dash had urged them to stay, because only death would await them beyond the walls of the crater. Nopony even knew if Canterlot was still standing, or if the storms had pried it off the side of the mountain. Nopony knew if the Princesses were even still alive, or if they’d fallen to the cold as well and nature had swallowed up their divine sparks that let them move the sun and the moon. And then, on the day the Canterloters prepared to leave, the Mayor had ordered the guard to stop them by any means necessary.
Now Rainbow Dash lay buried under the snow along with seventeen other ponies who fell in the ensuing melee.
Derpy fidgeted in place. “Nopony has any fight left in them,” she said. “There’s no point to the Watch anymore.”
Rarity slowly bowed her head. Derpy was right in a way. Rarity had already resigned herself to a never-ending struggle against the cold. And one day, she knew the cold would win. She just didn’t know if she’d live long enough to see it snuff out New Ponyville as well.
“Mama?” a tiny voice asked from the corner of the room. Both Rarity and Derpy turned their heads to see a little violet unicorn filly sitting upright on her bed, bleary eyes squinting through the light of the fire at them. Derpy immediately rose to her hooves and quietly rushed over to the bed, throwing her forelegs around the filly.
“What are you doing up?” Derpy asked her in a worried voice. “What’s wrong? Are you sick? Do you need to go to the doctor?”
“No, Mama,” the little filly, Dinky, said. “I just missed you.”
“Oh, my little muffin…”
Rarity turned away from the mother and daughter, instead pulling her now-melted soup out of the fire. She didn’t waste any time with a spoon, instead sticking the warm bowl directly to her lips and drinking down the broth as quickly as she could. Even though the bowl had been hot from the fire, the blistering cold quickly stole away its warmth, and if she wasn’t quick with her meal, it would freeze again right before her eyes.
When she was done, every last drop of soup licked out of the bowl or scraped out as ice chips, Rarity stood up and grabbed her headlamp and pickaxe from her tiny trunk of personal possessions. “It won’t be a problem to make sure Sweetie eats her breakfast before her shift today, will it, Miss Hooves?” she asked, interrupting the tender embrace of Derpy and her daughter.
“Of course not, Rarity,” Derpy said. “I’ll make sure Dinky and Sweetie are all set to go before I go to sleep.”
“Thank you,” Rarity said with a small smile—the most she could muster anymore. “I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Derpy insisted. Then, almost as if she suddenly remembered something important, the gray mare’s tired features set into a resolute frown. “The City Must Survive.”
Rarity silently nodded in agreement and slipped out the door.
The Furnace roared, throwing off wave after wave of scorching heat. Rarity stared at the fire raging in its heart and idly wondered what it would be like to sit in the middle of that miniature sun. Surely it had to be a more pleasant way to go out than her skin cracking into tiny frozen shards and her blood congealing in her veins if she ever happened to be caught without her layers of warmth on.
The image would be burned into her brain for the rest of her life, she knew. Even in death, her cheery smile had remained plastered to her face…
Ponies began to crowd around her, all fighting to get a few more inches closer to the life-saving heat of the Furnace. Rarity stood her ground, refusing to be jostled out of the way. She needed the heat as much as they did, and she wasn’t about to give it up. A few bitter remarks were shouted between ponies, and a few shoves were thrown but nopony came to blows. Nopony had the strength to fight anymore.
Movement at the podium in front of the Furnace caught her eye. Standing above them was the Mayor with a contingent of bodyguards at her flanks. Rarity felt a sickness leaching into her gut as she saw that pony stand before them all. It had been the Mayor who pushed for the survival of the city above all else. It had been the Mayor who instituted the crackdown on dissent and banned speaking out against her policies or the city. It had been the Mayor who demanded that the police stop the Canterloters from leaving the city in the first place through whatever means necessary. It had been the Mayor who had sent Rainbow to the grave through that order.
Rarity tried to push those thoughts away with four simple words, the only words that had any meaning anymore.
The City Must Survive.
“Attention, citizens of New Ponyville!” the Mayor cried, her voice amplified by her magic. “I have several important announcements to make, so listen closely!
“Item number one!” she shouted, levitating a list in front of her to read off of. “The coal thumpers are to work continuously for the next twenty-four hours! I will be appointing a foremare to the facilities to ensure that enough coal is washed to the surface to get us through the storm! Everypony assigned to thumpers three through seven are to report to their stations at six with the early shift horn and will not be allowed to leave until six o’clock tomorrow. You will be given one meal break for dinner and two bathroom breaks. Use them wisely!”
Rarity heard the affected ponies grumble and mutter to themselves, but nopony dared raise their voice loud enough for the Mayor to hear. Coal was not wasted on the prison cells, after all.
“Item number two!” the Mayor continued. “A window on Hothouse 2A shattered last night. The frost killed next month’s potato crop. Rations will therefore be reduced from one-half to one-third for the next three weeks.”
Again, there were no shouts of rage or cries of protest, even though Rarity could feel them burning inside of everypony around her. Instead, they all quietly seethed as hope fell. Rarity knew they were all thinking the same thing: why did they have to go to one-third rations while the Mayor herself still ate full meals? The Mayor’s hollow eyes and gaunt cheeks told a different story, but it was easy to fix blame and lies to a pony so resented.
The City Must Survive.
Rarity’s stomach rolled at the mention of food. She longed for the days when she actually had to worry about her figure. Now, nopony could see what she looked like under her winter garb. Her ribs poked through her thin white coat and she had lice crawling through her hair, but she hardly cared anymore. Winter was no runway for beauty models.
“Lastly, item number three!” The Mayor seemed to hesitate as she looked at the last note on her list. Frowning, she folded the sheet of paper up and stuffed it down the neck of her jacket. It took her a few moments to set her lips and posture before she spoke again. “The latest reports from the beacon are… not promising,” she said. “The storm is going to get worse. There’s been a windigo herd roaming nearby, the largest ever seen. Over the night, they’ll be coming closer to our city. Expect temperatures to plummet to a hundred below, centigrade. Maybe lower.”
This time, the worried voices weren’t so easily silenced. Cries of fear and fury rang up from the crowd. “How are we going to survive this?!” one pony shouted. “Tartarus itself is freezing over!” cried another. A third, daring voice called out above the rest: “Give us more wood to heat our homes, you monster!”
The Mayor’s eye twitched, and for a moment, Rarity feared she would bring her fury down on the crowd and force her guards to disperse them. Instead, her nostrils flared, sending forth steamy billows of air, and she kept her voice at an even level. “Wood rations are not going to change,” she said with a firm finality. “Use them more wisely.”
Pipes clanged and clattered on the Furnace, and a burst of steam bellowed through a horn affixed to the side. The bass howl seemed to shake the icy walls of the crater, and the Mayor waved a hoof. “Those of you on the extended shift, it’s time to work. The City Must Survive.”
And then she turned around and left, her bodyguards faithfully following her off the podium. The crowd lingered around the base of the great engine for a few seconds longer, but then they too reluctantly set off to their jobs. Rarity shivered and drew her scarf tighter around her neck as she turned toward the north, toward the mines that kept the city alive. Coal thumpers could break and fail, and eventually they would run out of coal to dredge up, but the mines would never run dry. So long as the mines remained open, then the Furnace would continue to run.
At least, that was what they told her.
“She didn’t say anything about Lyra.”
Rarity shuffled through the dark and claustrophobic corridors of the mine. What little of her white coat still remained exposed to the air had been stained as black as the night sky by the coal dust filling the tunnels. Her back ached from stooping down for so long under the low ceilings, and the flickering light of her headlamp provided just barely enough light to see by. Her pickaxe struck true at a clump of coal jutting out from the wall, and when she’d amassed a small pile by her hooves, she swept it back into a little railcar to her rear for shipping back out topside.
“What happened with Lyra?” Rarity asked, her eyes glancing sideways at the hunched over figure of Bon Bon. Just like her, the mare toiled under the low ceiling of the mines, and her cream-colored coat had been replaced with an obsidian spray. Black mucus streamed down from the earth pony’s running nose, and her eyes were bloodshot and red. In her, Rarity saw everything she feared that she’d become, and it only made her happier that her bunkhouse didn’t have a mirror.
Bon Bon hesitated, her movements freezing like the air around them. She looked away, and when she didn’t answer, Rarity immediately knew what had happened. Her lips pulled down into a worried frown, and she shuffled sideways to press her weight against Bon Bon. “Oh, dear, I’m… I-I’m so sorry,” she said, using what strength she had to prop the shaking mare up. She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to put a foreleg around Bon Bon to hug her in the claustrophobic space. “What… what happened?”
“She… she came back with the last expedition,” Bon Bon managed. “She’d fallen through some ice into a river… soaked to the bone… When they brought her back, she was frostbitten from horn to hoof, coughing, sneezing… Fluttershy did what she could for her, b-but…”
Rarity gave her a comforting squeeze. “I’m sorry,” she managed again, pressing her cheek against Bon Bon’s. “If you want, I’ll join you at the cemetery tonight.”
“I… I’d like that,” Bon Bon said with a nod and a sniffle. “I’d like that a lot.”
Rarity offered her another small smile—such a little, frail thing—and hefted her pickaxe again. “Focus on our work until then,” she said. “We have our job to do.”
Bon Bon again nodded, and the two of them put steel to coal, amassing a pile of precious rocks between them. As they worked, the cart slowly moved up and down the line, and Rarity would heft their haul into it as it passed with her flickering magic. It was exhausting work, backbreaking work, and they didn’t have anything to drink. Even with the heaters running, it was cold down in the mines, and any water they might have taken with them would freeze solid in minutes. Occasionally the rail car would come back with a few bottles of melted ice kept in a heated tray, and they would have to drink what they could before it froze and toss the bottles back in with the next load of coal.
But soon, the itch in the back of Rarity’s throat became too strong to ignore. Dropping her pickaxe on the stone, she pulled down her scarf, which had been pulling double duty as a facemask to keep the dust out, and began to cough furiously. Every inhale sent icy shards of the frigid winter into her lungs, coating their insides with slick coal dust; every cough out made her grimace in pain as it felt like her lungs tried to climb out of her throat and escape. Bon Bon moved to her side to try and support her as her chest heaved and black-colored phlegm coated her teeth and tongue. Finally, as her diaphragm began to ache like she took a buck to the chest, her coughing fit subsided, and she found she could finally stand on her own again.
Bon Bon didn’t say anything, and nopony else in the mine paid her any mind. She wasn’t the first pony to have a coughing fit today, and Rarity knew she wouldn’t be the last. The coal dust was killing them, slowly but surely, yet without coal they would all die. She tried her best to put those thoughts aside. What was a lifetime of coughing and shortness of breath if it kept Sweetie warm and away from the mines?
With that thought in mind, Rarity took a sip from her water bottle, noting the ice cubes already floating in it, and pulled her scarf back over her muzzle. Work was the only thing that mattered now. The coal kept the city alive, and it kept Sweetie warm. She would do everything in her power to keep it that way.
The City Must Survive.
Rarity shambled out of the mines like a zombie when the horn finally bellowed that her shift was over. She had promised Bon Bon she’d join her at the cemetery for a funeral for Lyra, but the earth pony had collapsed halfway through their shift. Instead of burying her marefriend at the cemetery by the edge of town, Bon Bon was now fighting for her life inside the infirmary. Exhaustion, the cold, the lack of sleep and good meals coupled with the stress of losing somepony she loved—it had all been too much for the poor mare. So it was no real surprise to Rarity when she saw a pair of ponies carting a cot out of the infirmary with a body covered by a blanket, a soot-stained cream-colored hoof sticking out of the side.
She watched them pass in silence. At least Bon Bon and Lyra could be together again now…
When they had passed, she shuffled into the infirmary. At least it was warmer in here; the infirmary got a larger share of the Furnace’s steam to help the sick recover, so the moist air felt positively balmy. Rarity took off her scarf and let down her hood; it was actually above freezing inside the building. A guard looked up at her as she entered, but he let her pass without question. Other ponies he would have turned away for clogging up the infirmary just to get a little heat, but Rarity was a regular here. After all, she and the head nurse were close friends.
She found the nurse standing in the back of the infirmary, looking over a patient with severe burns down the left half of his body. “You just take it easy, okay?” the nurse cooed at the patient, adjusting his blankets with butter yellow wings. “When you’re feeling better, we’ll give you your things back and get you an easier job. How about the hothouses, hmm? They surely have to be better than steam hub maintenance.”
The pony mumbled, or groaned, or whimpered—Rarity really couldn’t tell what the pathetic noise was supposed to be from where she stood. But the nurse only smiled and made sure the blankets were tightly tucked around the stallion. “I’ll be by to check on you in the morning,” she said. “Just focus on getting your rest.” When she turned around, her eyes lit up. “Oh! Rarity! Goodness, it’s wonderful to see you!”
Rarity returned the smile. “Fluttershy, darling, I hope you’re doing well. Another patient, I see?”
Fluttershy nodded and moved towards Rarity, first embracing her, then leading her away from the beds with an outstretched wing. “His side is badly burned from a steam pipe rupture while he was repairing a steam hub,” Fluttershy said in a voice low enough that they wouldn’t be overheard. “If he survives, he’s going to lose half his face.”
Rarity glanced back over her shoulder at the heavily-bandaged stallion lying in the bed. “You don’t think he will?”
The nurse hung her head and reluctantly shrugged. “He’s burned badly, Rarity. And then he was out in the cold for a few minutes with his jacket scorched through. The fluid building up under his burns would have frozen and damaged the tissue around it. It’s… it’s not good.” She swallowed hard, and then her caring eyes looked over Rarity. “You’re not hurt, are you, Rarity? Bon Bon came in today, and I wondered if something had happened…”
“I’m fine,” Rarity assured her, and she put a hoof on Fluttershy’s gown. “I was originally coming here after work to see if she was alright, but…”
The words trailed off into silence, and soon the two ponies found themselves staring at the mess of steam pipes radiating heat from the corner of the room. “They’re going to put the Furnace into overdrive tonight,” Fluttershy eventually said.
Rarity blinked in surprise. “Again? It hasn’t even recovered from the last time…”
“I know,” Fluttershy said, fear creeping into her voice. “But the windigos are coming closer and the temperature’s dropping…”
“Well… we certainly should have the coal for it,” Rarity said, coughing lightly at the end of the sentence. It took all her effort not to let the coughs descend into a body-shaking fit like she’d suffered in the mines already today, and even still, she wheezed for air. When she finished, she saw Fluttershy looking on at her with concern, and Rarity roughly cleared her throat and waved a hoof. “It’s… it’s nothing, darling,” she said. “It’s a cold, that’s all.”
“There’s no such thing as a cold here,” Fluttershy said with a shake of her head. “If a pony’s coughing, it’s either pneumonia or COPD.” Her lips pursed, and she shuffled closer to Rarity, close enough that her feathers brushed against the coal rubbed into Rarity’s jacket. “Rarity, I’m worried about your health…”
“Worry about the others first,” Rarity said, adamantly shaking her head. “There are plenty of others in worse shape than I am. It’s just a little cough. I can live with it.”
Fluttershy meekly backed down, surrendering the topic without contest. “Is Sweetie Belle still doing alright?” she asked instead, likely knowing full well that Rarity wouldn’t hold back any of her concerns for her sister, unlike her own.
“As far as I can tell, she’s okay,” Rarity said. “But then again, it’s not like I get much of a chance to see her with the shifts I’m pulling…”
Frowning, Rarity’s blue eyes looked over the cots. “Applejack’s expedition didn’t come back yet, did it?” she finally asked. “I’d imagine you’d be the first to know, given how many ponies come and go on a daily basis.”
“I… I haven’t heard anything about it,” Fluttershy said. “But the storm is getting worse, and they were supposed to come from that direction. They should have been back three days ago.” Her chin trembled, and she hugged herself with her wings. “Rarity… do you think…?”
“I refuse to even entertain the idea,” Rarity insisted. “Applejack is strong. She’d find a way to survive. We’re not going to lose her too, not after… after Rainbow and Pinkie…”
Tears pricked at her eyes. When had she become so alone in the world? Every day more ponies died, and every day she lost more friends. The only ponies she truly had left anymore were Sweetie Belle and Fluttershy, and she feared that the cold hoof of the Reaper would find them when her back was turned. Death walked among them, and she saw it in every shadowy corner, in the sunken eyes of the ponies around her, in the lethargic trudging of foals shuffling from home to their jobs and back.
She forced them down and instead rubbed a shoulder against Fluttershy’s. “Thank you for the talk, darling,” she said, already turning to face the door. “I need to collect my and Sweetie’s rations before they’re all gone. And if it’s really going to get as cold as the Mayor said tonight, then I need to make sure we have enough wood to keep the fire burning.”
Fluttershy nodded and let her go. “Take care, Rarity,” she said, taking a tentative step or two back from the door. “Stay warm.”
Rarity slipped past the guard and out the door, leaving the warmth of the infirmary behind her. She shivered as a blast of cold wind struck her in the face, and she immediately fumbled with her scarf and her hood to cover her exposed head. Even as she pulled the hood over her ears, she could feel pins and needles pricking them from top to bottom. She hoped they hadn’t become too frostbitten in the ten seconds she’d spent trying to raise her hood against the gale.
As she trudged to the cookhouse to grab her rations, she looked up at the smoke billowing from the Furnace. Even from a distance she could hear it creak and groan as the unmitigated heat stressed the metal. With the usual safeties to its temperature removed, the outside began to glow red in some places, and Rarity knew it wasn’t unusual for rivets to pop out of its metal hull and go flying across town when it was stressed out like that. Far above the crater, storm clouds circled and swirled, and she could hear the ghostly braying carried in on the wind. The windigos were coming closer, and soon the full might of the storm would be upon them, snow and ice trying to snuff out the last bastion of ponykind forever.
Rarity shivered and dropped her eyes back to the precariously overheating furnace.
The City Must Survive.
The one-third soup rations did little to make Rarity feel better that night. In fact, the pittance of food only made her hungrier. But there was nothing to eat, and it wasn’t the first time that she lay awake in bed, clinging onto Sweetie Belle in a desperate bid to keep her sister warm, wondering if she could break into the hothouses and steal a carrot. Just one measly carrot to chew on. The guards wouldn’t notice one missing carrot, right?
She swallowed hard and buried her muzzle into Sweetie’s sooty mane. It was nights like these that she was glad Derpy and the Watch were keeping the peace in the moonless dark. While Rarity might only think about crimes like that, there were plenty of more desperate ponies who would be moved to action. Lawlessness and chaos could dismantle the city in moments were it not for the Mayor and the order she imposed on them all.
The City Must Survive.
Another night of dreamless sleep embraced her, and when she woke the following morning, she saw frost gathering on her pillow where her muzzle had been. She sat upright and breathed out, cloudy breath forming in front of her eyes. Even though the fire crackled in the corner and the steam pipes hissed their saving heat into the room, it was still frigid inside the bunkhouse. Rarity suddenly worried that the temperature had fallen far more than what the Mayor had warned them it would the morning before. The howling blizzard outside had certainly picked up in its intensity.
Again, Rarity climbed out of bed long before the horn blared, and again she put her one-third ration of soup over the fire to melt it so she could eat before leaving for work. Her joints ached and her bones hurt like they were rotten and splintering to the core. Her lungs burned, and the freezing chill of the air only made it worse. She felt like the world was trying to freeze her from the inside out.
By Celestia, by Luna, by any other dead gods she could think of… it was cold.
When the door opened and Derpy staggered in, Rarity gasped as a shrill shriek of wind washed over her, the air slicing through her coat like millions of tiny razors. Her hair stood on end for all the good it would do her, weighed down by coal dust and flattened under her jackets and wraps, and she began to violently shiver, even though she sat no more than five feet away from the fireplace.
When she turned around, Derpy looked like a demon of frost, ice and snow clinging to her clothes, her face, and the loose blond hairs of her mane and tail. Her jacket crunched and crackled as she hobbled into the building, and she stumbled against the wall, leaning heavily on it as she tried to catch her breath between chattering teeth. Rarity hopped to her hooves and rushed to Derpy, her soup abandoned. “Derpy! Heavens, darling, are you alright?!”
Derpy attempted a smile—or at least, Rarity assumed she attempted one beneath her scarf. “It’s… I-I-It’s c-c-c-c-cold-d-d-d,” she said with a shiver. “The h-h-h-h-heat-t-t-ter… at-t-t t-the t-t-t-t-tower…”
Rarity gently guided Derpy away from the wall and toward the fire, but she found she could hardly touch the other mare herself; the cold clung to her body, and even her gray coat felt cold as snow. “Sit,” she urged her, sticking Derpy right in front of the fire, almost close enough for the flames to lick her nose. “You need to warm up, you poor thing!”
“Mama?” Rarity turned her head to the side and saw Dinky sitting upright on her bed, with Sweetie Belle rubbing bleary eyes nearby. The commotion must have woken the two fillies up, and Dinky hopped off the bed to rush to her mother’s side. But before she could, Rarity caught the young unicorn and held her back with her magic.
“Let your mother warm up first, dear,” Rarity cautioned her. “She’s covered in snow and ice, and you don’t need to get cold.” She turned her attention to Sweetie Belle and pointedly nodded to the bed. “Go back to sleep, Sweetie, you need your rest before your shift.”
But Sweetie didn’t go back to bed, instead hopping down and joining Dinky with a shiver. “It’s too cold,” she said, her breath fogging in front of her face. “The fire’s warmer.”
Rarity frowned but relented, and as the frost finally began dripping off of Derpy’s jackets, she released Dinky and let the filly hug her mother. As Derpy and Dinky embraced, Rarity and Sweetie sat down across from them, where the flames of the fire kept the chill at bay. “How cold did it get out there?” Rarity asked her. “Was it as bad as the Mayor warned us?”
Derpy shook her head. “Worse,” she finally said. “The thermometer in the tower went down to a hundred and twenty below. I’ve… I’ve never seen anything that cold.”
“I can’t even imagine anything that cold,” Rarity said with a worried breath. “How are we supposed to work in this weather?”
“But you’re in the mines,” Sweetie said. “The wind doesn’t get there.”
“True, but the hydraulic fluid we use to set up the supports and keep the mine open, that… t-that’ll all freeze!” Rarity shook her head in disbelief. “One hundred and twenty degrees below zero, centigrade…”
“Your breath snows when you breathe out,” Derpy said. “It’s cold enough that it freezes instantly. And it’s only going to get worse.”
“Are…” Dinky choked on her words, and her little hooves, wrapped tightly in dirty fabric, pawed at the ground. “Are we going to… die?”
Derpy and Rarity looked at each other, and each saw the fear in the other’s eyes. Even still, they both shook their heads. “No, of course not,” Rarity said. “The Mayor knows what she’s doing. She’ll keep us alive.”
“We’ll be fine, little muffin,” Derpy said. “It’s just a storm. Storms always go away, no matter how big or scary they might be.”
A gust of wind shook the bunkhouse, and Rarity could see the haphazard bolts and joints that held it together strain against the storm. Ethereal horses brayed and galloped somewhere outside the crater, and snow slipped in through the tiniest of cracks, quickly dusting the walls and the ground. For a moment, Rarity feared they would be blown away or the bunkhouse would collapse on them, but a cough and a screech from the corner of the room immediately stole all her concerns.
The four ponies turned their eyes to the steam pipes that jutted out of the floor. Those steam pipes brought in hot air from the Furnace and at least kept the bunkhouse livable. Those steam pipes were the life of the city, the veins and arteries that kept it warm. And as they watched in horror, those steam pipes began to belch coal dust and flickering fire instead of steam into the room.
And they weren’t the only ones to take notice. Ponies shuffled by their windows and commotion began to rise from the bunkhouses around them. Rarity trotted over to the window and all but placed her nose against the glass as a crowd of ponies braved the cold to trudge towards the Furnace rising out of the center of the city. And when she turned her eyes to the furnace, she gasped. Fire roared and billowed out of its numerous pipes and blow-off valves, and the air was thick with a heavy cloud of smog and coal dust. This wasn’t right. The Furnace had never acted like this before.
Almost as if to emphasize the point, a shrill whistle escaped from the fiery behemoth: the alarm. Rarity galloped to the door and burst through it on instinct, her soup forgotten on the fireplace, and the patter of three more sets of hooves followed after her. Derpy, Dinky, and Sweetie all emerged from the bunkhouse as one, and the four ponies joined the rush of worried citizens flooding toward the center of town. Derpy pushed forward, her Watch uniform helping to clear a path, and the two fillies followed close behind. Soon, they found themselves in the thick of the crowd gathered around the Furnace, and Sweetie and Dinky climbed onto the older mares’ backs to see what was happening.
A team of engineers stood around the Furnace, halfway stripped down as the glowing plates threw off wave after wave of tremendous heat. The Mayor stood by and watched with worry on her face, and her bodyguards ducked in alarm when the whistling end of a pressure release valve blew free and fired off into the sky like a bottle rocket. The whole structure creaked and groaned, and Rarity’s heart sank as her pupils shrunk to pinpricks.
The Furnace was about to blow. If it did, the entire city would perish.
After consulting with two of her engineers, the Mayor shakily nodded and brushed back her bangs. “Ponies, listen to me!” she screamed through her magic, her voice rising above the fearful cries of the crowd. “We’re not defeated yet! The storm won’t get the better of us, do you hear me?! I refuse to let it! The City Must Survive!”
Rarity saw her swallow hard, and with a signal from her hoof, members of her guard began to move through the crowd, batons held at the ready. “The Furnace is overloaded,” the Mayor explained, “and we can’t shut it off. There’s too much coal in the bins and the safety switches on the outside are slagged. The backup blowoff valves are still closed, and they’re letting pressure build up. But they’re on the inside, in a space too narrow for ponies to pass!”
The guards made their way closer to Rarity, and she began to backpedal out of worry. Their eyes set on her and Derpy, and suddenly they changed course, approaching the two of them. Derpy watched them approach, confusion written on her muzzle, when one of her compatriots snatched Dinky off her back in her magic. Derpy whipped her head around, startled and surprised, and immediately lunged for her child. “What are you doing?!” she cried, trying to force her way forward as the guard’s magic pulled the terrified child away from her. “What are you doing with my muffin?! Where are you taking her?! Give her back! Give her ba—!”
One of the guards shoved Derpy back, cracking his baton against her jaw. The gray mare stumbled and fell as Rarity screamed, and the ponies standing around her all drew away from the pegasus and the guard in worry. “Mama!” Dinky cried, struggling against the magic, but the guard deposited her in front of the Mayor. The purple filly froze immediately as she stared up at the haggard and distraught face of the Mayor, and apart from Derpy’s whimpering cries on the ground, it seemed like the entire congregation had fallen silent.
The energy in the crowd had changed. Rarity could feel it as clearly as the wind tearing at her face. Faces long set into hopeless resignation now firmed into frowns. Those without scarves bared their teeth just the tiniest amount. Ears perked up, and all eyes settled themselves on the Mayor and Dinky. The listless mood of the crowd had been tempered by what they saw unfolding before them. An uneasy worry began to settle in Rarity's gut, and she inched backwards on instinct.
The Mayor stooped down and put a hoof on Dinky’s shoulder. “Take these,” she said, pressing a wrench and a pair of goggles against the filly’s chest. When Dinky picked them up in her magic, the Mayor nodded toward the Furnace. “I need you to open the emergency release on the blowoff valves inside the Furnace, okay?” she asked in a soft voice. “Do this, and we’ll stop the generator from going critical. I’ll make sure you never have to work again. You’ll have full meals and a warm bed for the rest of the storm. The City Must Survive, do you understand?”
Dinky swallowed hard and nodded even as tears streamed down her face, mixing with the coal dust clinging to her coat. The Mayor gave her another pat on the shoulder and helped the filly put the goggles on, then urged her off to where the engineers were waiting by the ramp leading up to the Furnace’s midsection. Rarity felt her throat seize as she watched the little filly tread up the ramp with tiny, frightened steps, and she could feel everypony gathered holding their breath as they waited with anticipation. Rarity found she couldn’t turn away, couldn’t say anything, couldn’t think anything as she watched Dinky take one step, and then another, and then another, all the way up to an open hatch on the side of the Furnace.
The engineers up there said something to Dinky, but Rarity couldn’t hear what the words were over the groaning roar of the stressed generator. Sweetie Belle clung onto her neck, her hooves trembling not from the cold, but from fear as she watched her fellow child crawl into the insulated hatch. The engineers backed away, the hatch fell, and everybody watched, unblinking as the seconds slowly ticked by.
The storm howled at them in its mindless rage, and the winds picked up, driving another dagger of cold through the coats and jackets of everypony present. Snow and ice lashed against the Furnace, and the heart of the city creaked and groaned as the wind battered it around on its struts. All eyes remained trained on the set of pressure valves poking away from the hull of the generator, waiting to see a release of smoke and steam that would signal the brave filly had done her duty. Prayers were said, fearful murmurs joining together with the deathly screech of the storm. Rivets began to pop off of the furnace one by one as the temperature outside fell and the pressure inside grew. Through it all, the Mayor only watched from her podium beside the Furnace, her bodyguards huddled tight about her, her teeth bared and lips trembling as she waited for a sign.
And then, a hiss of steam. The heads of the blowoff valves suddenly burst open, and an otherworldly scream rang into the night as the excess pressure finally began to vent. The tension started to melt and break like ice gathered on the buildings around them, and ponies moved to celebrate—until the hatch on the side of the Furnace burst open with a roar of fire and the panicked, haunting shrieks of a filly burning to death. Flakes of a coat rained down on the crowd as the engineers leapt clear of the hatch, and scraps of scorched, purple fur and tufts of yellow hair drifted through the air like the snow.
Above the silence of the crowd, the heartbroken sobs of a mother pierced the storm with raw pain.
It was the catalyst that sparked ponies to action. The Mayor looked on, shocked and aghast, as the ashes of the filly drifted around her. Cries of dismay and fury began to pick up through the crowd, and she whipped her attention down to the ponies pressing in on the podium around her. “Her sacrifice was for the good of the city!” the Mayor cried out, even as her amplified voice began to drown under the roar of anger around her. “She died so that the city would survive! Do you hear me?! I’ve given everything for the city! Everything I’ve done has been for you! When nopony else could shoulder the hard choices, I did! Please! The City Must Survive!”
Whether they heard her or not, Rarity didn’t know. In one action, in the death of a filly, the Mayor had rekindled the anger and fight that had been squashed out of her ponies since the Canterloters incident. Now, Rarity could only turn away and cover her eyes as the mob surged up around the podium. Guards tried to keep them back, but the crowd was not so easily dispersed. As one, they fell on the podium, the guards, and the Mayor herself. Pushing against the crowd, Rarity tried to escape the chaos and block out Twilight’s screams as they dragged her down and set upon her with their hooves and their pickaxes and whatever else they could find.
“The City Must Survive,” she told herself, tightly hanging onto Sweetie Belle to not lose her in the mad rush of the crowd. “The City Must Survive. The City Must Survive. The City Must Survive.”
But those words felt so hollow now.
A child had been fed to the Furnace to save them all from death.
What city that did such things was worth saving?
Author's Note
