--Memory--

The dimly lit hallway stretched almost endlessly, jail cells lining either sides, though cages were a more apt description. Each housing an experiment or a test subject, weather or not they were willing didn’t matter, not while a war was to be won. Many would say that this place was one of despair, horror, and insanity, but to me it was one of innovation. Plus it’s not as if these subjects actually mattered, slaves and prisoners were always in high supply.

Opening the door at the end of the hall greeted me with a subject already prepped and strapped to the operating table, surrounded by dozen’s of needles and medical equipment with only one task waiting to be completed; find a way to win the war.

As the battles raged around the outskirts of the sprawling city, I went to work.

Well the trip to find answers only left me with a few barely answered and a few more questions added on, but let me start from the beginning, because if I map it all out I might remember a detail that I hadn’t noticed. The weirdness started as soon as I stepped off train, I was the only one to disembark and was instantly greeted by the most desolate town to grace the world with it’s uninteresting visage. It was a single stretch of road with high canyon walls towering on either side, each of the buildings looked almost exactly the same. All were built out of a dark brown wood with an almost as dark red roofs, all dusty and desolate with not a single light on or person to be seen. To say it had a feeling of foreboding would be an acute observation.

Though if im being honest it really only made me feel a new onset of boredom, that is until after almost fifteen minutes of walking around aimlessly, I found the first person in the town. He was a tall and lanky stallion, but the main eye catcher, and overall weird as fuck thing, was that he was dressed in a large brown robe and face wrap that covered everything but his mouth. That of which had the widest grin/smile plastered on that never wavered, even as he spoke. That’s also how I knew he was a stallion, not that there’s anyone listening, but I digress.

As to what he said was, and I quote, “You shouldn’t be here, least we cleanse you of the blight that has consumed you and the last of your kind to come here.” I had to hand it to him, he managed to say that as creepily and as ominously as possible all without loosing the grin. Though that was lost to me at the time since he just lunged at me with a knife. Just like that, no hesitation what so ever. I managed to back peddle out of the way, instincts die hard I guess, and draw the Molten Launcher from my back. The stallion looked at the contraption for a moment before he considered his life choices, at least from what I interpreted from his mouth turning to a frown, before I pulled the trigger, and holy shit does that cannon work well. The damn thing blew his torso apart in a spray of black smoke and red mist and caught the rest of his legs and little giblets on fire.

Though my moment complementing myself for a job well done was cut short as the previously empty town became quite the hotspot for spontaneous mob gatherings. Out of the, what I had thought to be abandoned houses, came more and more ponies dressing in the same long robe and face wrap, all shouting the same word; Heretic. All with the same grin as well, not that it mattered at the time since all of them were brandishing some kind of weapon, be it a simple knife, to bows, and much more concerning were the ones with magic. And as a side note, there was a lot more than seventy nine people in that mob, I honestly feel lied to.

In spite of my want to test my amazing cannon contraption on a mass of people, I decided that running would be better for my health all things considered. So I ran into the nearest house/chapel looking place, and in retrospect it was the only building that looked like that and would probably explain what I found in the basement after I blocked the large double doors with a conveniently placed bookcase. A gothic era looking archway spanning what looked like at least twelve feet wide by eight feet tall was in the basement, how and why it was there I only have a hunch, but I’ll get to that in a bit, for now the journal entry must go on in chronological order.

Since I had no other option at the time, I had checked for a back door and any window that wasn’t eight feet above me and found neither before I ventured down to the basement, so I continued through the wannabe gate to Tartarus and into the longest and most confusing hallway I’ve ever seen. It was like someone mixed the gothic architecture and modern design together, there wasn’t a single chandelier in sight, only the dim and cheap florescent lights hanging from the ceiling and plastered intermittently along the walls. It was weird to me, and no I didn’t forget the fact that there was still an angry mob chasing after me at that moment, I just chose to ignore it for a bit.

Plus the room I found myself in at the end of the hall grabbed most of my attention anyway, I say most because I was still confused about the light fixtures. Back to the room though, it was more of a massive circular underground dome, complete with a sprawling mural depicting some sort of war or end of the world scenario. Though the most eye catching decoration, shall I say, was my former client hanging in the middle of the room in some sort of contraption. When I got closer I was amazed to see that he wasn’t dead, just extremely close to being dead, the machine seemed to have dozens of needles stuck into him, all drawing blood and pumping it to a much bigger machine below him.

The bigger machine was glowing an ominous blue and I could hear a constant clanking resonating from it, that and an overpowering feeling of a very familiar power. Dark magic to be precise, and damn was this thing pumping it out like a geyser dose water. I didn’t have much time to think on what the machine was actually being used for in a practical sense, considering in my lapse of attention to my surroundings the mob from before had caught up to me. Curiously though they didn’t come close to the machine or I, instead they all were yelling and screaming things about heretics and the great machine. That’s when I noticed something rather odd and interesting, the dark magic from the machine seemed to be flowing directly to the mob, it was something that sparked an, albeit stupid, idea in my head.

Now that I think about it what I did next wasn’t the brightest idea at the time, but I’m still alive to write this entry so the ends justify the stupidity. The stupidity being that I aimed the Molten Launcher right at the machine at let a shot fly, the resulting explosion was awesome, my eyebrows now are non existent, and it had an adverse effect on the mob. In the resulting seconds each member of the mob seemingly began to burn away, some actually bursting into flame while others just flaked away. It was gloriously satisfying, that is until the entire place started to shake and collapse because of course it would.

I ran through the hall, back through the massive archway, and up the stairs. It looked like the mob just forced their way through the makeshift barrier I had left for them since the doors were torn off their hinges and the bookcase was in splinters. Just as I ran out onto the front yard and back on the main road the building collapsed, and I was sent flying on my ass from the gust of wind and debris. When I picked myself up from my impromptu flying lesson I saw that not only did the chapel collapse, but the entire town was demolished. Picking around the debris didn’t yield any answers to my questions, I didn’t even attempt to dig back down to the big room underground, so in all not mush info was gained unfortunately. The most annoying part of the ordeal was that I had to walk over twelve miles to a train station in a neighboring town, of which the local peasants asked where I had come from. Apparently no one had even heard of Rockland Isles, so I just played it off as a new potential development around the area in the opposite direction of where the town actually was.

And through it all I only learned a few noteworthy things on who or what is after me; One – It seems to be some sort of cult, I haven’t dealt with one of those before, but there’s always a first time for everything. The reason as to why it’s a cult in my opinion is a combination of the desolate town, the robes, the things that the populace said as they chased me, and the sprawling underground chapel with the dark magic spewing machine that was linked to each of the cultists. Two – they definitely were the cause of at least one of my clients disappearances, as to the why of it I still don’t have the slightest inclination. Maybe a doomsday prophecy if the mural was anything to go by, but I didn’t get much time to study it.

So as of now I’m at a loss as to what to do next, and im none to happy about that, but I can hear the train in the distance so I’ll end this entry here.

Side note – I really need a shower when I get back to the lab.

Author's Note

A quick update because I got the drive to do a thing.

But im at work doing this, so comment if you want to, and hopefully you enjoyed since the first chapter wasn't particularly well received.