Unloved

With Fluttershy behind my back, we both cautiously entered the doorway. Looking back now, I've wished I’d listen to Fluttershy’s suggestion. She trailed slowly behind me. When we were in the doorways landing, a loud bang occured behind us. Fluttershy shrieked and grabbed me tightly. I pointed my headlight toward the entrance, and saw there was a solid rock wall that closed right behind us.

“Shit, there’s no way bypassing this.” I said while I ran my hand against the stone wall.

The only light source illuminating within the pitch black room was from my headlight and Fluttershy’s lantern, which was dropped sideways from her shrieking.

“I’m…..I’m scared Ryan”. Fluttershy said to me while shaking.

“I know, but if there’s any chance of saving your friends, we’d better move on." I said to her, trying to ease the surprise.

So, I looked around at our new surroundings. There was a dark flight of stairs descending downwards from where we stood on the landing. I reached into my backpack and tore open a package of one of the glow sticks.

“Um, what’s that?” Fluttershy said looking up at the glow stick in curiousity.

“Oh this? This is a glow stick. They had a multitude of purposes served back on Earth, but are used mainly for lighting. Since my headlight beam only shines 10 feet in front of us, I’m gonna break one of these and throw it down there. That way, we can have a good idea of what we can see in front of us.”

“Um...that’s a good idea.” Fluttershy remarked with some hope in her voice.

I broke the inner glass tube inside the glowstick and gave it a good shook, mixing the chemical reaction. I tossed the stick down the flight of stairs, and glimpsed how far down it was from where we stood. There was another landing at the bottom of the stairs.

“We better go down now.” I said.

Fluttershy grasped a piece of Velcro hanging from my backpack as we descended downward. When we reached the bottom of the landing, I picked up the glowstick. Again, we were faced with another flight of stairs leading downwards, to the left of us was another downstairs landing. I threw the stick yet again as it reached another landing. This repeated on for another 3 stair flights, until I noticed something odd on the walls on each landing.

There was a mirror about my height facing directly at us on the wall. It was musty and caked with grime from aging. I looked at myself in the mirror. Fluttershy quickly glanced at the mirror and we continued on downwards. Another landing faced us as we descended yet again, with another grimy mirror.

Something was different...about this mirror... When I took a good look at this mirror, I saw wrinkles on my face that were previosly not there from before. Fluttershy took a look, and saw that she had stands of grey lining in her mane and aging marks under her eyes.

“Ryan, what's wrong with these mirrors?” Fluttershy said while staring into the mirror.

“I really have no idea...We have to carry on.” I looked at Fluttershy from below me, and she glanced up, just to reassure that we weren’t rapidly deteriorating from age.

We descended yet again, another flight of steps, with another mirror. My face looked bony and pale, and I had strands of white hair located on my head. Fluttershy had deep wrinkles, and her eyes were sagging deep within the back of her skull.

“I don’t want to look at these mirrors anymore....Let's hurry up and move along.” She said in panic.

“Sure thing, this is too bizarre to comprehend." I said back to her.

The mirror images became more horrifying as we progressed downwards. My face was rotting with bits of missing flesh from my skull, and Fluttershy was missing strands of hair and looked a lot worse. She refused to look at the mirrors as we progressed downwards. I couldn’t help but look at all of the mirrors as we went on. Around the 13th flight of stairs, I saw an image of my skull with Fluttershy’s sitting next to mine. She stood up and covered her eyes with her hooves in fear of the image. We hit dead end after the 13th floor...as we saw a dark entryway into a room.

We walked directly into a dark cell. Inside the cell, there was an old rusted metallic door in front of us. A wall closed behind us as we came closer to the door. Fluttershy jumped as I too was startled.

“Shit...Stay close to me.” I told her. Fluttershy was violently shaking in fear. There was a dim metallic looking candle sitting on the floor from within a cell. It barely lit up the room, as I took a good look around. There was a rusty metal bed frame with a rotted mattrice complete with covers. A wooden bucket with stagnant water was sitting in a corner. Two black vents paralleled from each other on both sides of the walls.

I looked back at the wall that closed behind us. It had an golden insignia, which resembled a cross connected to an upside down trident. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

“Oh Celestia..what’s going to happen to us?” Fluttershy wimpered in panic.

“I...don’t know Flutters, but we’re going to get out of here...even if it kills me.” I spoke too soon.

We heard loud, echoing footsteps bellowing toward our cell as I readied my rifle...