Tuesdays

On the road, it wasn't entirely unheard of that certain conditions- take constant rain as an example -would obscure details about the scenery. Details such as, but in no way limited to: forks in the path, landmines, cracks in the road, ravines that you swore weren't there a second ago, craters filled with radioactive bog-fog, eldritch horrors, swarms of ghouls, and other unpleasantness best left unspoken.

I was doing my best to convince myself it was totally fine to encounter an entirely new pre-war ruin along a well traveled route. Really, what were the odds that an entirely new building would just show up on a dark and stormy night? The cliche didn't escape me, and I groaned at the thought of it.

It was a few minutes travel-by-wing off the main rail we were following, standing tall and wide. The structure was windowless and looked like it was made solely out of concrete, jutting out of the ground like a smooth pyramid with a flat, square top. A rusted, metallic rod stood in the center of the roof, charred and blackened like something had burnt it. I chalked it up to lightning.

When Aphelion and Tile were close to the building, I stopped my circling and swooped down to meet them, flapping my wings and hovering above the ground. I wasn't keen on landing just to get stuck in the mud. Aphelion, much to my surprise, was levitating both herself and Tile. Her pained scowl was enough to keep me from asking...well, anything. She needed to concentrate, and while just talking probably wouldn't break her focus, I didn't want to chance it.

A stone patio extended from the building's only doorway, giving the three of us stable ground to land on. Aphelion exhaled sharply when her and Tile's hooves touched solid ground, dropping the telekinetic fields she had been holding. I turned away while she took a few seconds to recover, eyeing the empty expanse behind us and keeping a talon on Laconic's grip. The rain had lightened to a mild pitter-patter, barely noticeable after what it had been not an hour ago.

All three of us knew we were exposed, standing out in the open, right in front of a large stone hunk of creepy. When Aphelion lifted her head again, the three of us exchanged looks, deciding unanimously to move our little break inside.

"We're wasting time," I offered, taking up the back of the group.

"Eeyup," Tile said, leading from the front.

"It's probably a death trap."

Aphelion replied, mildly sardonic , "We know."

"So, why're we doing more than just marking it on our map?" I asked, taking another quick glance behind us. Nothing but the rain, as usual.

"Loot."

"Information."

"Adventure."

"Shelter."

"Supplies."

"And more. Never know what you'll find."

"Oh, would you look at that. Someone opened the can for us."

I sighed, looking forward to find the two standing in front of the door. The very pried-open door. I tentatively stepped past them, eyeing the dark interior of the building before looking at the twisted and splintered steel. Observing more carefully, it looked like someone, or something, had blown their way out from the inside. The constant rain would have washed out any tracks left by...whatever it was that decided to leave.

The scent of burnt flesh and cooked metal stung my nostrils as I leaned closer.

I could feel my nerves twinging.

"Something's cooking in there," I said, my voice monotone with just a drop of venomous sarcasm. Really, just a teeny drop.

"Or someone," Tile supplied informatively.

"Not helping."

Inside wasn't wet. That was nice. In every other regard, it was less nice. We were cramped together, almost bumping into one another in the narrow space before us. The burning, fleshy, metallic stench that had been wafting out near the entrance grew- might I add, unsurprisingly -much stronger the further in we went.

Tile's helmet lamp and Aphelion's horn were the only things lighting the tunnel, casting conflicting shadows and illuminating just how empty the hallway was. The entire area was practically screaming at us to go away. Creepy cramped tunnel, smell of death, eerie ambiance, etc. Exactly the kind of place I would definitely avoid on solo-runs.

Several minutes later we hit the end of the hall, staring at an inconveniently intact, closed door.

"Why the hell," began Tile, "would the first door be blown open, and this one not? That doesn't make any sense!"

He was speaking rhetorically, as both Aphelion and I knew very, very well. An answer was neither needed nor wanted.

We- Aphelion and I -shared a brief glance while Tile continued staring at the door.

Should we? my expression conveyed.

Not yet. her eyes stated. Wait for later. Answering seriously in this situation isn't going to be THAT funny. Not much to say or reference.

We nodded, both of us returning our attention to the closed door.

"Perhaps we should...knock?" Aphelion suggested. "I don't see an access terminal, and melting through would take time AND announce our presence rather aggressively."

"Not the worst idea..." I mused, exhaling sharply through my nostrils. "With the air like it is, I'm guessing the smell's coming from further inside. There was nothing in the hall, so, must be something past this door, right?"

I was liking this less and less.

"What do you mean by 'smell'? The air's plain and dusty."

Less and less and less and less.

If the question had come from Tile, I would have been fine. He was enclosed in a suit of metal and tech with an air filtration system and emergency oxygen supply. He didn't have to smell the outside. He wouldn't be exposed to the horrid stench permeating the air.

But no. Aphelion said it. I turned to look at her, my head tilted as I resisted the growing urge to cough. I was starting to taste it.

"You...don't smell it? That acrid, meaty, burnt smell of a decayed, toasted corpse?"

Her eyes narrowed. She didn't.

"No, I don't. I'm guessing it's what you were talking about earlier, and not the door."

"Which door?"

"First one."

"Ah."

"I can't smell anything," Tile blurted.

"We know," Aphelion and I said simultaneously.

Aphelion sat down, magically producing two heavy scarves and a water canteen from her saddlebags. I could see where she was going with this. She soaked the two lengths of cloth thoroughly, floating one to me afterwards. I grabbed it out of her glowy telekinetic field and promptly wrapped it around my head, tugging it up over my beak and tucking in the lower bits. She had already done the same.

"We still knocking? This place is giving me vibes and I'd rather be going in than sitting here all day." Tile asked, having moved to the door while Aphelion and I were prepping. Aphelion was quick to answer.

"Use your head, Tile. What does it look like we're doing?"

She really should have been more careful with her words. Tile reared himself back, hydraulics hissing and metaphorical gears metaphorically turning as he rose like a bear striking down a fish in a river. He brought his armored forehooves down with a crunch, cracking the concrete and slamming his forehead into the door, leaving a respectably large dent. Aphelion hardly had time to protest before he rose again, repeating the process.

I sat back and watched, drawing Laconic with a little spin. The weight of the barrel and the fit of the grip made it so much easier to do the little spinny, and it made a delightful little swishy sound whenever I spun it!

Tile was rearing up for a third headbutt. Or maybe fourth, I wasn't paying attention. Spinny gun plus minor concussion equals stupid bird hours. He brought himself down, slamming into ground and door alike once more. The door, once a proud staple of the distant past, untouched and ever-standing, crumpled inward as something somewhere broke. There was a resounding metal clang further inward, echoing briefly.

"Knock knock, yah motha' fuckin' door!" Tile huffed triumphantly, trotting in place.

Behind us, heavy metal sheets thundered down in rapid succession, reaching from the entrance to not far from where we were sitting. A shrill, bone-chilling scream sung out not a moment later, which was soon joined by an echoing chorus.

"Fuck you, Tile," I said, monotone and dry.

"Yes, fuck you," Aphelion agreed.

Often I wondered what would do me in one day. I never really imagined growing old and kicking the can to age, 'cause that'd be boring. Maybe I'd get rad-poisoning and hemorrhage to death. Maybe I'd be shot down by some crack-shot on the ground, only to plummet straight at them and take 'em with me. Or, maybe I'd trip on a crack in the road and set off a megaspell.

While dying was on my mind a lot, I never really appreciated what it felt like to be faced with a situation where I was genuinely worried about being killed in a horrible, painful, disgusting manner. Sure, being a courier meant running into bandits and raiders, but both were easy enough to dispatch (especially with the help of a metal death machine and an atomic pyromaniac.)

Stepping into a vast room of darkness, screeches, and assorted screams was rather disheartening. The only thing keeping me from losing my cool was that the screams weren't getting closer. From the furious metallic banging, I surmised that whatever was making all the commotion was, as of the moment, unable to fling itself at us in a wild frenzy. Yay for small victories.

Aphelion grimaced as she gazed into the dark, charging a spell. With a flash, she sent a pale orb of light from her horn into the center of the room. At first, it only glowed faintly, pulsing in an almost tentative manner before flaring brightly, illuminating the area.

It was some sort of reception room, made up of the same material as everything else had been. Grey walls, grey ceiling, and another steel door at the far end of the large room. A metal desk sat to the side of the door, a dead terminal and some well-preserved pencils sitting on it. Long observation windows ran along the left and right sides of the room, metal shutters closed down over top them. The distant banging was coming from them, and I could see them shutter and quake with every round of dull thunks. Unlike most ruins we'd come across in the past, there was a complete lack of dust, rust, or other natural signs of abandonment.

I tentatively entered the room, craning my neck around in wide sweeps. "Must've been sealed tight. 'Till recently, anyway," I thought aloud to myself, my voice barely a whisper.

"You know, I'm startin' to agree with ya'll," Tile started to say as he took a few very loud steps in. His armor was great for protection and all, but it had zero subtlety.

As if on cue, the close screaming started up again, and I jumped back toward the sealed entrance, panicked. The distant screams were still echoing from somewhere behind the metal shutters. Looking over to where the screams actually in the room were coming from, I saw what first looked like an irradiated ghoul-pony trapped under a metal sheet. The longer I looked at it, the more wrong my initial assumption became.

Two long forelegs jutted out of half a fleshy, pink, equine torso- the other half was stuck under the big chunk of metal floor panel -and each ended in a darkened, spherical, pulsating blob. It was thrashing them around, smearing a fizzy, dark liquid around on the smooth stone floor in front of it. I really, really hoped it was just blood. Attached to the torso was a neck. A long, limp, noodly neck that screamed and smacked into the floor repeatedly. The skin near the top where a head would normally be was darkened, like it's oozing hoof-blobs. It was like looking at a small, decapitated meat-giraffe.

Aphelion and I slowly approached it while Tile trailed behind, his gaze flowing over the long barricaded windows along the sides of the room. Upon closer inspection, from a "safe" distance, the "head" area of the neck was coated with a porous layer of that dark purple skin material. The ethereal scream was coming from the holes near the center, which were disturbingly riddled with shiny, blackened teeth. It was like staring down a bundle of tubes that were chock-full of ebony knives.

Aphelion stepped around it, standing to my left and charging her horn. "I'm not seeing any recognizable weak spots. If these things run at us, go for the legs and I'll clean up from there." And with a flash, she sent a focused jet of arcane flame roaring over the pinned monstrosity. It's screams rose in pitch as it smacked it's burning limbs down against the heating floor, which sent the dark ooze splattering out in front of it. The flame spread to it, much to our surprise, and quickly burned. Aphelion cut off her spell, and we watched in morbid fascination as the fleshy hunk of screaming meat was reduced to a roasted, pulpy mass of carbon and teeth. In total, the process was over under a minute. Embers licked the air from beneath the crust of what was left.

Tile clunked over to the husk's side, reaching out with a forehoof and poking it. "So, they bur-"

The next two seconds hit me like a sky carriage. Tile had crunched the side of the sizzling corpse, then everything went white and red as it exploded. Any sound- aside from an earsplitting ringing -was damned to double hell and tossed out the window. I felt my limp body hit the table, roll off of it, bounce once off the floor, and smack into the wall. The taste of zinc sizzled on my tongue while I rolled over, groaning all the while. Well, I thought I was groaning. Couldn't actually hear it.

I flexed my talons and wings first, slowly trying to get a bead on the damage the little toss did. Muscles were sore, tendons functional but complaining. Alright, alright. So far so good. Legs operational, good. Tail still attached, yay. Beak not snapped off, check. Organs all in place? Bah, I could worry about that later, so long as they're all inside. I wiggled my midsection, testing for pain. Pain feedback came back as "mostly bruises, but you're still a dumbass." Great! My brain was still working. How dandy. Mr. Headache, too. Absolutely delicious. Really.

Now came for the most unpleasant part of making sure everything was working: opening my eyes and getting up. Waking up every day never made it any easier, which I made sure to add to the mumble-grumble list of things to complain about when we're not in mortal peril.

With eyes opened, I truly began to understand how sucky it is to have organic eyeballs. The bottom halves of my eyes were burning and cold, while the upper halves were dry but otherwise fine. The overall sensation was like an arid sting with a subtle undertone of "screw you, that's why it hurts." I really needed some coffee.

I was not surprised to find Tile standing exactly where he had been before, his front half blackened and sooty from the explosion. If I knew Tile, I knew he'd probably be trying to keep himself from laughing. Not because it'd be awkward or uncalled for, but because he'd probably piss himself. Sure, his magical power armor had a filtration talisman and recycling system, but it gave him the heebie jeebies. Personally, I'd be psyched about having an almost never ending supply of questionably clean water.

"Okay," Aphelion started, "they explode. Good and bad, I suppose." She had been blasted back across the room. I thought her lucky, having been thrown over open space and onto a single smooth surface until rolling to a stop instead of being slammed into a bunch of stuff. She was trotting over to the two of us- I had been meandering over toward Tile to peer into the fresh crater in the floor -and joined our transfixed gazing into the gaping hole in the metal.

I leaned forward and sniffed and- aw, hells below that reeked! Bad idea. The rancid odor was almost physical at that point. "So, uh, is the door by the desk open?"

Tile huffed, probably trying to sound amused. It came across as a metallic 'fwoosh', like someone breathing into a speaker system. "Locked, and reinforced. I checked while you two were poking around with the, ah, thing."

"Any chance either one of you wants to shrink a little bit and crawl through scary-stinky death vents?" My smile was so fake it could have passed as a frown. Both of them looked at me, the exposed ventilation shaft, and then back at me.

We knew this wasn't going to end well. I sighed, and went down anyway.