Please Remain Calm: A Cithara Tale

by Q-22

Rating: mature
Tags: Horror, Dragons, Profanity, Adventure, Griffons, Violence, Death, Fallout, Narcotics, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Original Character
Length: 4279

An easy salvage job is interrupted by a public service announcement.

The date is often disputed and the weather -- while ever changing -- is always terrible, but the location never seems to change. Tucked in the upper bit of the Celestial Sea lies an island home to both Trottingham and the Griffish isles, inhabited by ponies, griffons, and a wide manner of mutated abominations.

Quincy, a dragon with a mind for the mechanical, has sent the Cithara twins on a simple salvage job. Specifically, to retrieve preserved technical documents and holotape notes from an R&D center in Trottingham. Known for their punctuality and thoroughness, the two have almost everything planned and accounted for, from supplies to engagement plans.

Tavern rumors of ghost signals, surging hordes of ghouls, and strange wails in the night hint to the two that maybe they should have done a little more homework on the area before hitching a one-way ferry to the little town of Mirelight.

Published 2020-01-08 05:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-03-07 01:43:56 UTC

Prologue

Now, I know you're all wondering why I've called you all here today, and I promise you won't be disappointed!

Cicadas and crickets sang their nightly song as mist draped over all below the clouds. Wind blew gently. Trees, mostly pines, shook in that reverberating chorus they seemed to always sing. The air smelled of salt, as always. Pine sap, too. Sulfur. Ozone. Zinc.

Crumbles, a Knight in the ranks of the Steel Rangers, Trottingham Chapter, sighed through her broken helm. She, in full power armor, was halfway through a cement wall, unable to feel most of her body, with the vaguest notion that her lungs were getting a little tighter with every breath. They, her squad, had been out on a routine patrol, as per usual, when they had been directed to respond to a sudden alarm coming from a cluster of buildings in the woods. Likely had been a town, way back then. The higher-ups thought it might've been some Ranger personnel who had gone MIA two weeks back, using whatever they could to signal for help. Boy, were they wrong.

The racket of gunfire and screams picked up again, nearby this time. She breathed. In. Marsh. Wood. Sap. Ironic, she thought, how she'd be dying in a place so full of life. She'd been living most her life in a dead land, so, in a way, she preferred this over dying back home, on some flooded farmland barely scraping by under the constant rain plaguing most of mainland Equestria.

An explosion, flesh tearing apart wetly, bones broken and flung like and with the shrapnel of fragmentation grenades. She breathed. Out. In. Sap. Sulfur. Zinc. Blood. She was fairly certain her lungs were punctured. Maybe something in her throat was torn? It was hard to tell, what with having a broken spine and all.

The shooting stopped. Metal clang. A tree falls. Screams. Different screams. Stonethicket's screams. A crunch. Growls. Wet slurps and meaty tears. A wretching from something higher. Something fluid hitting something meaty. No more screams. Just those damnable alarms, loud, blaring, looping. They had fallen for it. The other Rangers from the other week probably had too.

She breathes, one last time. Out. In. Out. Her helmet light shines prettily on the mossy ground, she thinks.

A minute prior, Stonethicket, also a Knight, fully adorned in a rather well-kept suit of mechanized metal and tech, was biting down hard, eyes squinted as the blinding yellow and red flashes coming from his side-mounted minigun contrasted with the heavy dark around. A cascade of ghouls were pouring in from the woodwork, screaming and wailing as they stampeded right into a river of lead. Bodies were piling and he was having to blast through falling corpses just to hit the ghouls behind. All the while he stayed mobile, backing toward a metal exit door as the ghouls pushed him down the thin hallway. The only light came from his headlamp and his minigun. The shadows stabbed at the light with every flash. The screams only grew louder. The irradiated abominations he was mowing down weren't dying immediately. More came. More fell. More screams.

The minigun, its barrels glowing with unfeeling wrath (and, you know, the heat from all the bullets going through them), only stopped for a moment as Stonethicket's shoulder-mounted grenade launcher lobbed a volley into the crowd. He turned around and bolted as the explosives went off in a cacophony of percussive beats. He rammed the door, heart racing wild, and was wishing Crumbles hadn't, well, crumbled so soon. He hadn't seen what had hit her, but she was the energy weapon specialist. Her guns and munitions incinerated organic and inorganic matter alike, and, well, were damn good at killing ghouls. His guns were best suited for the living. Killing what was already mostly dead was considerably-

A loud, magnified, blaring beep was the only herald to the tremendous whollop he was then subjected to. Something broke somewhere, or maybe a lot of things, and his HUD went dark. His adjusting eyes weren't able to see the silently sprinting and sloshing horde making their way over to his body. He was making noise. Quite a bit, really. Something had broken somewhere, and while his suit's lights were out, his weren't.

There was a small garage at the edge of the little ruined town. Once it had been a mechanic's shop of some kind. Rusting tools littered the floor and engines and other old bits and bobs were all stacked neatly on shelves, in boxes, or on the ground in rows. A dinky little lightbulb hanging from the ceiling flickered now and then, casting everything in a dulled, yellow-brown light. The garage door, which had recently been shut by the press of a button, was splattered in fresh, crimson blood. The front half of a unicorn stallion was sprawled out inside. The back half, outside, was being quietly torn apart by the horde of ghouls.

A stack of chairs blocked the door the rest of the interior of the shop. Huddled in the back corner of the garage was a terrified Field Scribe, who had just watched her senior Scribe get dragged back under a closing garage door not five minutes ago, and was not daring to make a single sound. The third Knight, still alive and well, was sitting in the other back corner of the garage, side-mounted anti-material rifle aimed at the pile of chairs, headlamp off, radio off, helmet speaker off. Mistakes were made. Someone had to survive to pass the info along. "Oh! There's a thing in the woods, and a bunch of ghouls too! Do anything and you're dead!" The official report would have to come later, once they got out of the current mess.

It started raining not too long after. The pittering of water on the tin roof of the garage made it hard to hear the sloshing and the shuffling fading away deeper into the mire. A fluttering of wings and a shaken branch briefly sounded, dismissed as a bird by the horde. Maximus, the small griffon who had just glided off, had heard more than he had seen. The smell was...something he wouldn't be able to forget. There'd be news in the town of Mirelight, just a few miles south, before dawn. "Trottingham Rangers Torn To Tids and Tads!" The tiny bird would have chuckled at the stupid headline idea had sound been less of a concern. Right then, he was focused on getting into what was left of the Griffish Isles as fast and quietly as he could. Only a few towns had held out, after all the years, and someone had to get stories for the paper.

And so the night moved on. Cicadas and crickets sang their nightly song as mist draped over all below the clouds. Wind blew gently. Trees, mostly pines, shook in that reverberating chorus they seemed to always sing. The air smelled of salt, as always.

Author's Note

I said I'd be making more bird content.

Well, here I go.

One Tap On The Wall

Seeing all this, I'm beginning to think we should be more focused on ending the war rather than winning it.

A plethora of seagulls were in constant motion around a dingy little motor boat that was skipping along the water and the waves. Periods of calm would be interrupted by brief bumps or skips as the boat would launch a foot or two into the air before smacking back against the sea.

"You two ain't pukin', yet. That's a first," yelled the little yellow unicorn filly who was currently operating the engine and rudder. River Lily, her name was, and she had been hired by her two passengers to take the two-hour route from a shady dock in Manehatten all the way to the town of Mirelight in Trottingham. Her passengers, both griffon mercenaries by the looks of them, had scowled and looked off when she had called the island that. Trottingham, that is. In actuality, that was just the name of a city, but many (mostly ponies) had ceded to calling the entire region just Trottingham.

The feathered mercs hadn't said much since paying, only having briefly stated where they wanted to go and promptly haggling a reasonable price for the venture. River Lily had only been at this gig for two, maybe three, years now, but she had been able to figure out a few things about her current clients just from observation. First off, they seemed to be freelancers, not baring any insignia or marks. That was an obvious detail from the start, when they had approached her in her little shack by the edge of the dock.

That bit led her to her second observation. They chose her over hitching a ride with one of the larger, slower ferries across. That much was enough to know they wanted either discretion or just that they were in a hurry. Likely both. There weren't too many options, really, but there were only a few who would traverse the faster routes. Just as fortune favors the bold, smaller, faster boats with as few passengers as possible was key to successfully avoiding and evading the swarms of hostile seabirds and carnivorous bloodwings.

With little else to do but steer the boat and occasionally glance around at the waters, River Lily found herself inspecting the two griffons every now and then, just looking over their outfits out of curiosity. Maybe their faces too.

They were remarkably similar in color and shape, likely related to one another, and the only differences she could tell were their eyes, the feathers atop their heads, and their beak shapes. Even still, they were close, all things considered. She steered the boat around a sunken fishing barge before pondering why the male, for she was assuming the more masculine-ish one to be a he, was wearing a bright red -- if a little dirtied -- scarf. It was the only real oddity between the two. One was dressed in an armored trench coat and the other a light duster and a scarf. Trenchcoat likely had guns hidden inside, but Scrafy had his slung over his left shoulder and on his right side, facing her. She figured it wasn't done intentionally, probably just out of sitting habit, but it did let her have a gooood long look at it.

It was...definitely a rifle. The barrel didn't extend too far out of the frame of the gun, and the magazine was loaded into the stock...Probably automatic? There were inscriptions and chiselings here and there, but she wasn't able to read any of them from where she sat, in the back of the little boat.

The two had spent most of the ride sitting on their haunches and looking past each other through the fog, eyes peeled for any nasties from either below or above. Scarfy's talons were firmly secured on the grip and bridge of the rifle, a claw just a tap away from the trigger. Trenchcoat had her talons tucked into the opposite sides of inside her coat, either keeping them warm or keeping hold of something. Pistols, maybe. Or knives. She had met a few mercs who used throwing knives, and one who used a weird scrap of metal he called a "boomer-rang." Evidently it was something you threw that came back to you, but he had just thrown it into the head of an irradiated shark and, suffice to say, it didn't come back. Fun times, shark season.

Little else happened during the ride. A few course adjustments every now and then, a few brief stops to recharge the spark engine battery, and the occasional flinch at a nearby splash were all that filled the eerie, wet, salty ride from dock to dock. All things considered, they were lucky it was just a fog and not a hard storm. It was never clear skies, but a day without any rain at all was a blessing. Mentioning that had also drawn sour looks from the birds, so, River Lily did her best to avoid saying much. They were paying in caps AND in goods, so, she really, reeeaaaally didn't want them upset.

They slowly approached the dock without much incident, passing wrecked hulls of old ships along the rocks before approaching the newest established dock. The older one had been washed away in a storm a year or so back, and the new planks had to be imported all the way from Phillydelphia. For whatever reason, logging on the island was a no-no. Given the reputation Trottingham had for monsters, it was easy to believe. Waiting by an oil-fueled lantern was a short, stocky griffon that looked part owl and part bobcat, pacing to and fro with it's eyes locked on the pair River Lily was transporting.

She leaned forward, a little nervous. "You two know him?" she asked, whispering loudly over the buzz and hum of the engine.

"A little. You don't have to worry about him," answered Trenchcoat, who had taken her talons out of her inner coat pockets when they arrived at the dock.

Scarfy leaned over, holding his rifle across his lap with his left talon and offering her a folded scrap of paper. "You'll find the dead-drop stuff if you follow these instructions to the dot. It's got the rest of the payment hidden in...well, it says so on the paper. Don't loose that, y'hear? That's about a month's worth outta me own stash. 'Course it isn't anything too much, so no one'll kill you over it, but, still, do try 'ta keep hush hush about it, yeah?"

River Lily nodded, levitated the note over to herself and checked it, making sure there were actual instructions on it before slipping it away into her greying wool hat. They were right along the docks now, and her customers had already hopped off onto the wooden planks and were discussing something not River Lily's business in hushed tones. She made extra sure to absolutely ignore what they were saying, knowing she probably didn't want any part in it. She ran her little boat service, and that was enough for her. For now.

With business concluded, and the weather clearing up just a tad, River Lily took some extra time to funnel as much of her magic as she could into the boat's spark battery converter before heading back to Manehatten. If it were raining, she'd have probably stayed in town for a day or two, just because, but the air was nice. She wouldn't dilly dally on her way back, of course, but it would be nice to enjoy the ride again.

Two More And Watch Them Fall

If you've got the patience, your own imagination will tell you exactly what you want to hear.

Crux the Seventh was passive-aggressively checking a small stopwatch of his when he heard the sounds of an approaching motor over the waves. It was a cold morning in Mirelight and he had been politely asked by the town's co-sheriff to wait for the expected new arrivals. There wasn't any other expected traffic out over the water for the next week or so, all thanks to the current ghoul attacks causing all sorts of fear and cowardice in all the mainland traders, worried about their current profits and whatnot.

Normally he wouldn't have been so upset over this sort of thing, but having the majority of one's long-distance business partners call back all their caravans was just a wee bit destabilizing. The small walled town had gone from relatively fine to borderline batshit worrisome when the ghoul raids started up in the swamps, chasing out bog farmers and killing plenty in the process. Ponies and whoever else decided it'd be a jolly idea to settle in the middle of the island ran to the towns along the coasts, and all the way to through Trottingham if they wanted to try their luck getting into Ranger territory.

Though, in Trottingham, that wasn't too hard if you were a pony. Trottingham Rangers were a lot less cultish here than in other places, Crux had noticed. More "for the people", really. That was mostly because of all the monsters, but the old trade-bird knew a good few among the local pony traders who thought it was out of a grown connection between the pony populations and the Rangers who had been established in the less eroded parts of the old Ponish city. Tensions between the Steel Rangers and most griffons on the island were always testy, though. Nothing to a conflict level, but clashing ethics and salvage rights were a hotbed between the Ranger contingent and the various griffon companies.

All that led back around to the current issue, and why he was waiting at the docks for two mercs who wouldn't even arrive for another five minutes. The increasing populations of secure-ish population centers coupled with the lack of outside trade was a problem. Things were fine now, but after having been in the trading game for as long as he had, he wasn't looking forward to the next month. Even if the problem, the feral ghoul horde, was resolved that day, Mirelight would still be looking at about two to three weeks of tight rations and low ammo. Even still, two to three weeks would be much better than two to three months. Given the circumstances, word was going around locally about possible solutions, and those who could potentially execute said solutions. Mercenaries were being hired, ammo was being bought up rather quickly, and there was even word that someone from the griffon side of the island was baiting Ranger patrols into areas hot with horde activity. Ethics aside, it was a way of getting the steel-clad group invested in pursuing a permanent solution to everyone's problem. Although, if those rumors carried all the way up to Trottingham, there'd likely be fewer Rangers out in the swamps and more griffons winding up dead in the streets of the city to the north.

He had heard word over the radio from a colleague in Manehatten that two low-profile freelance griffons would be passing through on a private job. He had nearly choked on his whiskey when he heard who they were. A few years back, before the old dock got washed away, the two had taken up stock in the town, saving up enough to buy a safe ride to mainland Equestria. They had come the long way from Griffonstone, as they claimed, and were avoiding going the northern route. The Steel Rangers had settled into the region by then, after having cleared the railway from the mountains to Trottingham. The incursion went rather fast, once the big naval ship arrived to support the ground troops. Their presence in the area stirred up the hornets' nest, so to speak, and most of the island was a mess for a good long while. That mess spilled into the southern end in time, and the two, Oriana and Ovidus if he remembered them right, had stuck around to help beat the mess back into the swamps.

Many did, of course, but they lived through it. Their experience with the island was what he was looking for, and he was aiming to get someone who knew how to handle themselves out in the bogs to, well, investigate, maybe find a way to put a stop to things. He was worried, about plenty of things, but he was worried they'd say no, too, and that stirred him up in a way he didn't like. He snapped his stopwatch closed with a huff and began to pace. He was nervous, and that made him a bit angry. Normally he wouldn't be nervous. He wasn't nervous years ago when the Rangers moved in, and he wasn't nervous when the dock was wrecked. So why was he nervous now?

Author's Note

I rather like this bit, which is something, since I'm not usually happy with what I write.

Three Bottles for Three Featherheads

There is nothing like a good bad mood! Like, fuck the moment, and fuck you too! Ha!

Ovi spat out his whiskey.

"You want us to do what?!" he then yelled.

The three griffons were seated in the back of the town's bar slash inn slash breakfast joint, specifically in the tables section. The layout was simple. Bar on the left side of the room, tables on the right, clear space in the middle, and a few doors on the wall directly across from the entrance, behind both were staircases that led up to the few rooms on the second floor. A sign hung outside with the words "Musty's" burnt into it. They'd settled in there after a little pleading and the mention of extra money on Crux's part. The two "young'uns" were mercenaries. Extra caps were extra caps and caps paid for bullets and armor fixes. Making extra was usually the difference between being around for another month or two, so, they were inclined to at least listen to the offer. Ovidus was, rather obviously, surprised. Oriana was a little more composed, but she still thought the idea was ridiculous.

"What? Is it really too much to ask?" croaked Crux, tapping the table anxiously. His mood had gone from cranky to worried as he explained the situation, and he was doing a slipshod job of hiding his feelings.

"For that little? Of course it is!"

"Seven-fifty is hardly-"

The two would be at it for a while. Oriana cut in.

"Make it a thousand, or we're walking. We're already on a job. You're lucky this is worth considering," she put sharply, tracing a circle into the table with a talon.

Crux sputtered, pushing his rounded glasses back up his beak. "But-"

"Two thousand, five hundred," chirped Ovi, slightly calmer than before.

"You can't expect-" Crux began, trying to get a word in.

"Three th-" Oriana started. She didn't get much further before Crux slumped, banging a fisted claw on the table, rattling the three bottles.

"Alright! Two thousand, five hundred. That's on top of the usual sheriff pay, at any rate." Crux lifted his bottle to his beak, taking a brief swig of the bitter moonshine. He was the town's unofficial resource manager and trade specialist, but that didn't mean he had the caps for the more expensive alcohol.

Ovidus gulped down another swig after wiping the droplets of whiskey off his beak from his spit take. His plume ruffled as it went down. Spicy stuff, he thought.

"What exactly is the 'usual' pay for the sheriff gig? Feels like you skipped that bit," he said, giving Crux's owlish face a squint.

"Free room and board, food, and the discount. Discount's anywhere from twenty to fifteen percent off most common goods. Tends to get a little tighter when trade gets tense."

"Aaaaand from what you've so eloquently explained, things are about to do just that." Ovi pointed at Crux with a talon from the claw he was holding his whiskey with, the squint getting squintier. Crux looked indignant, his face tensing. He'd forgotten for a moment just how irritating Ovidus' voice could get sometimes.

"Alright, well, where exactly is the sheriff?" Oriana asked, leaning forward in her chair, carving another circle into the table next to the first. "Last we were here, he seemed pretty content with the job."

The old bird sighed, taking another swig of his moonshine. "Old Hatty's been dead close to six months now. Snagged by a radigator while crossing the bridge over the inlet. Harbormaster's still trying to figure out how it got through the grates and the netting. Not too long ago, someone new kind of just...settled in, started doing the sheriff's old jobs, helping the townsfolk, that sort of thing. Real quiet, that one. Wears some weird mask all the time. I've never met 'im personally, and he doesn't go around blurting his name. Most just call him 'Sheriff' and tilt their hat, or whatever they've got on their noggins." The twins looked at each other for a moment, before Ori spoke up again.

"And, where is this new sheriff now?"

"Oh! Goodness, right, yes. He ran off up north somewhere when the first mentions of the ghoul raids started. That wasn't too long ago, though I can't remember exactly when he stopped coming back from the marshes. He's often in and our of town, you see. Can't say for sure what's become of him."

"Lovely, lovely. Think we might run into him, sis?" asked Ovidus, rubbing the bridge of his beak. He wasn't going to complain if they had a little competent help at some point, but unknowns easily turned into liabilities. Most of the time. Sometimes.

"Maybe. Hopefully alive. Sounds like an...interesting individual. Though it always sucks hearing about interesting folk just to find a body, surrounded by a lot of other bodies."

"Ah, but those are the best! We hold little funerals after clearing the area. Sometimes we build a pyre, since the ground's usually got the consistency of shit."

"Oi! Shut it! You're not lying...but still. Have a little tact."

Crux pushed his glasses back up, moving to take another sip from his bottle, but stopping. There was still about half left, but he wasn't much of a drinker. He didn't want to slip back into old nervous habits. He pushed his bottle to the center of the table while the other two finished theirs off.

Author's Note

Optimal word count. That is all.