“Some things you don’t forgive. Some things you don’t forget. Sometimes the fate you suffer is so much worse than death…” - Timothy Mcilrath

Just past a clearing of the Everfree forest, at the edge of what was once Ponyville, an armored pegasus stallion and a hooded zebra mare crouched behind the skeleton of the Golden Oak Library. Both of the night time trespassers had their side’s pressed up against the rotting trunk of what only one of them knew as a majestical home of days gone past.

Their invisibility potions had long since worn off in the hour long trek from the hut to the town, leaving the duo to stew in their limited options. It was a miracle nothing had run into them on the trip so far, but the less optimistic of the two knew that all miracles expired regardless of their brilliance.

Zecora turned to press her back against the wall before slowly sliding down the trunk onto her haunches. She absently rotated her spear into the damp soil below as if lost in thought. Less than a spitting distance away from her, Storm stood with his side glued to the wall as if it was his only salvation from the outside’s many dangerous variables and variants. The stallion used his camera device to peek around the library’s corner, giving him a limited but magnified view of the world through a thin purple overlay. He couldn’t make out much in the night vision, but the sets of glowing circles patrolling the town was all he needed to see.

Storm lost count of the total amount of Damned crawling over the shattered walls and destroyed buildings of the Ponyville community when he was somewhere in the two dozens and just gave up, deeming the number as “too fucking many” before turning to Zecora.

He signaled with a foreleg, pointing it towards the furthest buildings in the town from the infested center. Zecora nodded in understanding while getting up and gripping her spear. Storm stored his camera plate before pulling the revolver to his front. With a deep breath, he led the evasive charge as the duo proceeded to sprint further away from the town square.

A few dilapidated buildings and too many creeping moon-cast shadows later, Storm and Zecora had made it past Ponyville and were heading down a winding dirt and leaf-caked path with dead trees dotting the landscape. The lack of cover would have made the stallion’s nerves crack like an inmate meeting the end of their sentence at the clutches of an electric chair, but his distance from the town would ensure that nothing caught a glimpse of him and his striped partner fleeing the scene.

Well, nothing behind them at least.

A gust of wind sent the leaves up into the moonlit sky, momentarily blocking Storm’s view of the large farmhouse looming in the distance. More leaves leapt up from the ground and blew past the stallion’s armored form while a few stuck to his chest and helmet before joining their fleeing brethren. Now that they were gone, Storm had a clear view of the approaching abyssal clusters with vein-like streaks of light sizzling inside. As if on cue, the droplets of rain had arrived alongside the wind picking up tenfold. It scooped up the few remaining leaves, herding them into the town.

The stallion shoved an outstretched foreleg in the direction of the rotted barn, silently deciding on the place of the duo’s momentarily salvation from the elements.

Without any argument, Zecora pushed her smaller frame against the wind and towards the farmhouse-barn building with Storm in tow. As the duo got closer, they began to hear the crackling of lightning in the clouds. Storm happened to look up at the building’s roof just in time to see the rusted apple weather vane get obliterated by a bolt of electricity.

Normally, he would have powered through the flare - especially when the closest thing to a friend he had left was alone in a foreign environment - but his new and suit lacking partner wouldn’t live through even an indirect strike of lightning or a stray piece of rubble kicked up by its accompanying winds. So now their only choice was to wait out the weather and hope the hole-ridden building didn’t attract any perfectly placed strikes or curious blue-eyed creatures.

The barn-like front doors slammed against each other, but neither got very far from the other as a long piece of wood had been crammed into the dual handles. The doors thumped outward as the wind pushed them only to slowly settle back against one another thanks to the makeshift lock and then were shoved a quarter open like something was trying to escape on the inside.

The Hell? That wasn’t there before… Storm thought before raising a foreleg to stop Zecora in her tracks. He couldn’t see much of the zebra’s face in her drenched hood, but a quizzical expression was likely plastered on her face. He pointed to the wedged board and she understood soon after.

A silent agreement to investigate was made between the two then. Storm raised his revolver to line the iron sights with his focused glare before approaching the building. Zecora unsheathed her spear weapon and held it readily. Lightning flashed and thunder roared above, nearly making them jump, but the discovery of this new development was much more crucial to their survival than the already identified threat above their heads.

Storm arrived at the door’s left side. Zecora hugged the right. The two orchestrated their breaching plan silently with mere head and hoof motions. With a sharp intake of breath like a swimmer about to start the race of their life, the stallion activated his blade and slashed the plank in half. He backpedaled with his sidearm raised as the doors flung open fully to reveal the barn’s interior to the outside world. At the same time, Zecora jumped around the corner with the spear raised. Storm squinted to survey the large, mostly barren room, to find that nothing had been trying to get out or locked in here for that matter.

The duo slowly entered on their respective sides. Zecora stalked around a set of dried up hay bales while Storm searched around a group of waist-high empty barrels. For a second time, the place was dubbed as clear for the time being. So Storm and Zecora went back to the entrance where each of them grabbed a door handle and pulled back with all their might against the flare’s own strength outside. When the doors were side by side, Storm used his other foreleg to grab a hold of Zecora’s handle while planting his hindlegs into the wooden floor firmly.

“Get something to hold them! I’ve got th-” Storm began until the striped mare swiftly stuck her spear into the handle gaps before he could finish his sentence. “That works too.” He muttered before letting go of the doors, allowing them to resume their loose, albeit reduced thumping.

Zecora was the first to move away from the closed entrance and to the room’s center. She removed her hood and twisted it up before wringing the water out onto the ground. Then she placed the cloth back on her neck before tying it.

“Never have I seen a storm so foul.” She said as the pegasus of the same name arrived at the center. “What is the next move? The longer we wait, the more of those beasts will be on the prowl.”

“You didn’t have to come.” Storm deadpanned. “I don’t know why anypony would leave their shelter without a suit or follow a stranger in the first place.” He said it like a parent mumbling to themselves about their colt or filly’s unwise choice to break a household rule.

“I prefer myself to be at maximum mobility. Extra weight is not good for agility.” She replied, ignoring the not-so-subtle uncouth method of prying. “I understand that your haste is justified, but my help is something that you ratified.”

“I know, I know” Storm sighed, retracting his helmet and using the side of his revolver to brush his sweat-drenched mane out of his eyes. “Sorry. I’ve been told I’m an asshole when urgent situations fall into my hooves. I just want to get there as soon as possible.”

“I understand. Stressful emotions are not an action which I feel the need to reprimand.”

After the quick apology, the barn became silent except for the ravaging flare overhead. Zecora had resigned to sitting on an old apple barrel while her male companion paced the room and looked out the boarded windows occasionally. Wait… boarded windows? Those were destroyed during his and Dash’s escape from Ponyville…

Storm approached one of the windows and attempted to examine it but couldn’t due to the darkness. Not wanting to wait for a flash of lighting, the pegasus reactivated his helmet for the night vision visor and looked again. What he thought would have been nails or pieces of scrap holding the boards back in place was actually shards of white material-

Bone fragments.

Storm felt his teeth grit subconsciously at the discovery. What the fuck does it want with a rotted barn’s windows? They had just practically torn this place apart to get to him and Dash last time they were here so what gives now?

“Is something the matter?” Zecora asked from behind.

Storm didn’t respond. His action wasn’t out of spite, but putting the pieces to the impossible puzzle together in his mind was deemed more important. Additionally, he wasn’t sure if uttering a single word about the newest development wouldn’t suddenly set off some alarm to summon whatever decided to take up a fucking bone nail gun.

Then he saw the next clue.

Blood.

It was faint, but the crimson splotched stains on the wall leading down to the wooden floor were clearly blood. It was arguably the most familiar liquid the stallion had been around with only water becoming a close second. Storm followed the growingly scarce droplets of blood until he was back at the barn’s furthest wall where the trail suddenly disappeared.

SNAP! CRUNCH!

Storm stopped moving his body. Only his eyes swept the room now. His breath froze in his throat alongside the majority of his body. The raging storm outside clouded his sense of judgment for this new sound’s origin.

He listened further, waiting to hear the sounds continue but they never did. The stallion gently pushed his hoof down against the wooden floor harder, trying to replicate and confirm the sound’s origin. Sure enough, the floorboards creaked but they didn’t share the same intense snapping of what he had heard.

“Is everything okay?” Zecora’s voice from the room’s center made him jump out of his skin and almost flash the revolver at her face. Storm finally allowed his lungs to continue their primary function while keeping his weapon steady.

Storm put a feathered tip up to where his lips would be to hush her right as the sound started up again. It returned in a more faint manner this time. He couldn’t identify it’s position as it sounded like it was coming from through the wall, behind, above, underneath - and wait! Underneath-

SNAP! CRACK! SNAP! CRACK! SNAP! CRACK! SNAP! CRACK!

Suddenly, the sound ramped up to full tune in a rapid pattern now. Through his visor, Storm and Zecora locked eyes for a brief moment until the two began to sprint for the barn’s exit. Being the more weighted one of the two, Storm was able to feel the floor become absently loose and sink a little bit as a chorus of breaking boards rang out.

He only had enough reaction time to shove Zecora away, causing the mare to fall back into a gutter section of the barn before the central floor fell through with the pegasus on top of it all. Storm attempted to find his footing to escape, but every single board within reach had seemingly been disconnected from the building’s foundation for the sole purpose of swallowing him whole.

Somepony screamed. Storm wasn’t sure if it was him or Zecora, but the next thing he knew, the zebra with an outstretched foreleg was a distant silhouette growing smaller by the millisecond. Storm’s view of the faint moonlight in the cracks above was taken away in an instant when his helmet slammed into what felt like an uneven rough wall that sent dirt and dust up around him.

Thinking fast, the stallion activated his hoof blade and jabbed it into the dirt wall, which felt like it was going to take his whole foreleg off but it did slow the descent a little. He could no longer feel the wood against his back, but he didn’t feel any ground either-

“UMPH!” Storm crashed onto a solid surface, ripping his blade out of the wall, and sending him tumbling. Jolt after jolt of pain shot through Storm’s body before he finally put the brakes on and landed on his stomach with his limbs splayed out.

He had no time to sit and lick his wounds before the panic set in. Storm forced his throttled limbs to shove his frame up to a standing position. Luckily, he had kept his mind concentrated enough to keep a tethered hold on his pistol throughout the entire fall. He brought the weapon up to his visor to examine it for damage but there was none. Same went for his blade miraculously. Looking back into the hole, no… tunnel, he had come from, Storm attempted to judge how far he was from the surface, but only the twisting path of packed dirt blocked his view.

Then the realization finally forced its way out of his mental barrier to hit him.

His new location. Except it wasn’t even his.

It was theirs.

Their home…

Zecora stared at the seemingly bottomless pit before her in disbelief. She blinked a few times as if expecting the long gone boards and stallion to suddenly materialize back in front of her. Only the crackling of lighting and thunder outside broke her out the hopeless trance.

The striped mare tried to get a decent look at the depth of this hole, but only saw darkness. She had no idea if Storm was even alive or how far down he had gone. All Zecora knew was that she had to try something. Zecora quickly got to work removing her hood and cloak before levitating a sharp piece of debris in front of her to slice halfway done the cloak to make it as long as possible.

She set the now thin, long cloth down on the barn’s floor - the intact part that is - to get a visual representation of its total length. Now fully splayed out, the makeshift rope was almost three-fourths the floor’s length. The zebra balled the rope up, approached the hole and started to feed it down into its depths.

Zecora tied her end of the cloth rope to the sturdiest of the wooden support beams and gave it four rough tugs to ensure it would stay. She was about to call down into the darkness with a shred of hope that he could hear her, when something suddenly slammed into the sealed doors behind her.

THUNK!

Then it came again.

THUNK!

And again - this time there were two sets.

THUNK! THUNK!

Zecora felt her blood stiffen before it started rushing alongside adrenaline. The twin barn doors started to push back inward, which shouldn’t have been possible unless something or someone really strong forced them. A few crackling sounds joined the thudding - a sign the wooden frame around the doors was beginning to splinter.

Something was coming.

It would get in whether she liked it or not. The doors would be broken down unless Zecora could get the drop on whatever was on the other side first.

She didn’t have a choice.

It was strike or be struck down.

Zecora tried to get a look at the culprit through the cracks in the doors as they were momentarily pushed aside only to get slammed back together thanks to her spear-wedging work. Wait, the spear!

Zecora had an idea. Activating her telekinetic appendage, the zebra braced herself beside the doors and waited for the right moment when she guesstimated that the doors would be about to get pushed, then she sprung into action. In a flash, Zecora yanked her spear from the slot, causing the doors to smash inward and hang loosely off their hinges in the wind.

With spear in tethered hand, Zecora leapt into the doorway and swung only to connect with nothing. Nothing was there. Just the wind, rain, and slowly growing distant flashes of lightning. Zecora quickly checked the corners around the doors outside the barn before swiftly retreating back into the building once the threat was deemed to be in her mind or gone.

Now trying to push the creeping feeling in the back of her head, Zecora returned to the rope and knelt down to try and reach further with her voice. She checked over her shoulder twice before finally parting her lips to say something.

A piercing sting slammed into her hindleg.

Zecora shot a glance down at her limb, which now had two sharpened white fragments stuck inside of it. There was no grace period before something blunt and rough smacked the back of her head and knocked the zebra unconscious in an instant.

She fell to the ground right beside the hole as her spear clanged loudly beside her. Behind her downed form, two Hunters uncloaked themselves. One of the two now had a crimson stain on it’s sharpened tail from the sneak attack. Each beast jerked their rotten and crusted bodies to stand over Zecora’s body.

Storm’s vision stopped splitting just in time for the makeshift rope to land at the base of the steep slope which he had just fallen down. He heard something metallic clang from above, which reverberated down into the tunnel. Then a dragging sound replaced it soon after.

He stood stock still with both ears perked up. He forced his breath to hilt in his throat and his heart to stop for as long as possible to heightened his auditory sense. A few headache-inducing seconds later, the stallion’s attentative efforts paid off.

Something was coming.

Wait, not just one.

Two sets of hoovesteps - scraping against the packed dirt and sediment. Storm knew regular hooves didn’t scrape against anything like that. Not even a working class Earth Pony stallion’s fetlocks being dragged on concrete could make such a sound. Most of the Damned had bone-like parts but the nimble and barely audible nature of these told him that these were Hunters.

Storm wrestled his composure to survey his surroundings with lighting speed and hopefully precision to match. He was indeed in a tunnel - a very fucking dark tunnel at that - which his night vision could barely pierce further than a stone’s throw away. Directly at his side was the sloped hole, tunnel, trap - fuck, he didn’t know - whatever it was supposed to be, it led to the surface and the descending Hunters. In front of him was a curved passage with no clear indication of what it led to. A quick glance behind revealed another, less steep slope that fed into a straight passage.

Another development that Storm noticed was that the tunnel he was in had crude beams of wood, steel, and bone matter placed in an arching fashion like support beams to the ancient mine shafts he had seen in history books. Some of the beam placements were slim while others were made of thick blocks of wood or steel - likely from a building. One of the larger beams was wedged into the cave wall facing the shorter sloped path. The stallion ducked behind the beam, balancing himself on his hindlegs and rearing up to place his forelegs against the wall to make himself as vertically slim as possible.

He positioned himself to have a small crack in the beam, like a peep hole, which allowed him to view the two blue glows crawling down the slope before their monstrous owners followed closely behind. He could now confirm the creatures were only a pair of two and that both were Hunters, but his precise estimate wasn’t on the stallion’s mind.

Who was on their back of one of the Hunters stole that attention.

Zecora.

The zebra was dangled over its back like a wet towel slung around a fence post to be taken by the elements. However, to ensure that the mare wouldn’t escape like a towel in the wind, the Hunter’s spike tipped tail was wrapped around her midsection to secure her body against its back. Neither creature grumbled or diverted as they carried their prey down the curved tunnel opposite of Storm’s hiding spot.

On their way, one of the Hunters used it’s unoccupied tail to yank the makeshift rope down to the tunnel floor.

On one hoof, Storm was relieved that his cover and fate hadn’t been shredded in an instant. On the other, he now had no guaranteed way out and also a decision to make on top of it all. They had Zecora. He couldn’t tell if she was dead or unconscious but assuming the worst was his go-to resolve. If she was gone then there would be no point in going after her and get them both killed. He only needed her if things got hairy in Appleloosa but if she was already a corpse then what was the point?

But what if she wasn’t? Sure it was dark in there, but there were no signs of dismemberment to confirm that. Damned didn’t mess around with converting new members. They would hack off any limbs to avoid any last minute attempts of struggle and grow their own new ones before preserving a corpse perfectly. They all turned into bone and blue-whatever-the-fuck flesh subtance beings in the end anyway.

But with that hope came uncertain clarity. Why would the Warden or it’s corpse puppets need anyone alive? It had thousands, if not millions of these things, and a never ending roster of variants to experiment with, so why leave one potential host breathing? The Warden had tried to leave Storm alive to spread its message, but when it didn’t like his answer immediately resolved to trying to remove his head.

What the fuck did it want with one zebra?

Storm had to find out. Not just find out the explanation for the mystery, but he also had to confirm that Zecora was either dead or alive. The stallion glanced over to the cloth rope which had been ignored or missed by the Hunters. His freedom was just a simple dash away. He could be in Appleloosa by morning if he just forgot about all this.

A faint rumbling of pebbles caused Storm to snap his neck towards the tunnel which the creatures had disappeared into. He nearly opened fire on the equine-like silhouette right then and there but when he saw the rusted gold armor and green-blue visor it put half of his alarm bells at ease while setting off the remainder.

It was back.

The same armored figure from Sweet Apple Acres and Ponyville. The one that led him to a box of shells and eventually Planning Period. What the fuck was it doing here?! Cadence’s wall should have made his head a clean slate to avoid this.

Regardless of his reluctance to pull the trigger, Storm kept his revolver trained on the armor. The masked wearer refused to flinch as it just stared at him. As Storm stared at it, his head started to pound even more than from the fall. If he was lucky, it was just a concussion, but in the back of his mind - the same place that spawned this reminder - it likely wasn’t.

The figure finally moved. It turned its head from Storm then promptly disappeared around the passage corner. Before he could contemplate the appearance and disappearance, Storm heard a new noise interrupt the fray.

CLANG! CLINK!

Storm tensed. His ears perked up higher than he thought imaginable before he spun around in the direction of the tunnel he was facing. Two pinpricks of cyan bobbed up and down nearly twice his own height off the ground.

CLANK! CLINK! CLINK!

The dual glows accompanied the noise, which sounded like chains banging against the stone or possibly other metallic links.

With his revolver leading the way, Storm’s head swung like a pendulum as his decision between making a break for the surface and descending into the smaller sloped path behind him to avoid this approaching threat and possible find Zecora weighed in his mind.

Whether his curiosity or consciousness won over his rationality, Storm cursed himself before testing the slope with a hoof. Then he carefully slid down it and took off sprinting past uneven support beams that jutted out like unidentified Damned reaching out to grab him. The word “fuck” was playing over and over again in his head like the lyrics to a catchy song that dug it’s claws inside his mind and refused to be shaken loose by movement alone. As he sprinted, Storm had to constantly dodge supports that seemed to spring from the dark - all of which were of different materials, shapes, and sizes - their inconsistencies made it hard to prepare for which direction he would have to duck under or squeeze beside to avoid making more noise than his hooves currently were.

After what felt like a minute, Storm arrived at a much larger area. This one was hollowed out to be roughly the size of a two story cottage. Strangely enough, there was nothing special in this chamber. It was just an uneven cave with roughly cut walls. Despite not being able to see more than a foreleg in front of his face, Storm prayed that there was another passage or exit somewhere inside.

His ears remained high in the air as he held his breath and listened for whatever had appeared in the last tunnel, but nothing could be heard. Nothing except his own climbing heartbeat.

Another mental push later, the stallion started walking through the chamber. Time once again felt like it was jumping to a random point with every step that echoed across the cave’s hollowed out interior. Storm found himself forgetting to breathe. He had been holding his breath with every step as if it would diminish the sounds of his steps.

CLANG! CLINK! CLANG!

The sound returned. It was distant at least for now.

CLANG! CLINK! CLINK!

He needed to keep moving! As he walked, the pegasus scanned every wall looking for an exit, but all he saw were the rocky cave walls that started to look like monsters thanks to the vague outline given by his visor.

CLANG! CLANG! CLINK!

Storm had finally circled the whole chamber. It was a dead end. He had combed the roughly cut rocky walls only to end up at the chamber’s entrance where he saw the blue glow appear at the bottom of the slope. With seemingly no other immediate option, Storm found one of the few natural boulders in the cave to hide behind.

CLANG! CLINK!

It was here.

CLANG! CLINK!

Whatever it was started moving even closer. A few steps from his boulder.

CLIN-

The sound suddenly stopped with only a faint metallic jingle fading into silence. All the noise in the area ceased with it. Storm could feel the tightness in his chest due to lack of oxygen, but he held his ground in the only way possible right now.

A faint trace of the blue glow swept along the wall that he had squeezed himself in front of with the boulder being the only thing giving him cover. The glow vanished after a casual sweep and didn’t return for a second glance.

Storm contemplated using his camera to peek around the corner, but quickly decided against it. Safety was more important than curiosity. Curiosity killed the crazy. So he did nothing. Just waited.

And waited…

And waited more…

Thirty seconds went by with nothing happening. No more sounds except for his faint now struggling for air breathing. Storm had caved, finally allowing his lungs to do their job, and fully expected to get jumped the second he opened his mouth only to have nothing happen. The helmet was much hotter than it should have been allowed to be even inside the frigid cave.

One minute. A minute and thirty seconds. A minute and forty seconds. Two minutes passed. Nothing else made a sound. The stallion had an absent shaking in his hooves from what he assumed was either standing still for half an hour or just his adrenaline wearing off and being replaced with raw dread.

It came to the point where Storm finally decided to look for a way out within his limited vision. Naturally, he found nothing immediately nearby, meaning he would have to move eventually or rot in here until they found him.

Storm slumped down on his haunches with his back to the boulder. He placed the revolver in his hoof to give his aching head a break from telekinetically holding the thing. Once more, he began to weigh the options in his head.

After a moment of thought, he came to a conclusion. It was a stupid idea, but so was waiting like a wrapped gift basket in this cave. The stallion grit his teeth, put the revolver back in his tethered appendage, placed himself against the wall while standing now…

Then he swung around the corner ready to shoot at whatever was toying with him.

Crouching directly in front of him was a hulking canine-like creature. It’s greyed out skin and even paler bone nearly made it blend in with the cave walls, leaving the cracked distinctive Diamond Dog armor to discern the beast’s form in the darkness. The thing was standing motionless with it’s razor sharp appendages laying on the ground at its side. Storm stared into it’s hollowed out eye sockets, fully expecting to see at least two blue dots staring back at him.

There were none.

The creature didn’t charge at him or sound the alarm. It continued to just stand motionless and stare in his direction. Storm hadn’t noticed this and was too busy darting his eyes from limb to limb in an attempt to locate the behemoth’s weak spots.

They weren’t there.

Storm checked again. Then triple checked just to be sure. The stationary beast had no Plexers whatsoever. It was just a bone and rotten flesh statue facing him.

But that was impossible. He had just heard and seen this fucker stomping around less than a minute ago! Storm wanted answers but he would be the biggest dumbass - or at least bigger than he was - to get any closer to the monster just in case the insects were able to ‘turn off’ their signature glow or some shit. Whether they really knew he was there and were playing a game or if he had actually just found something new related to the creatures, it was a call for documentation. Storm finally decided to snap a picture of the strange behavior with his camera instead in the event he made it out of this nightmare and could find time to analyze whatever this was.

Best case scenario, he got intel and a mere couple of seconds of distraction from his predicament. Worse case scenario - his usual case - the canine thing would spring to life as the glows appear somewhere on or inside and then the whole cave joins the party. It was a gamble, but what in the stallion’s life wasn’t at this point? Swallowing his fear, Storm finally snapped the picture.

Unfortunately, the pegasus’ already preoccupied mind forgot about the camera’s flash - still left on from the Mimic encounter - which caused a brief explosion of light which engulfed the whole chamber. Storm felt a jolt go through his entire body upon realizing what he had just discovered. The flash would have been enough to give him a heart attack, but what the brief light revealed made his heart jump out of his throat.

More of them.

Over four dozen ofthem. Most likely more. All circling the room and all in the same stationary state without Plexers and looking just like the huge dog beast. They were the rough cut rocky walls which he could barely make out prior! Storm swung around, now able to more clearly make out that he had been crouching inches from three more of those dog things - all of which remained frozen in various positions - standing against the wall like twisted Nightmare Night decorations.

Storm looked like a puppy chasing his tail with how many times he must have rotated himself to aim his weapon at every corner and crevice in the event that he had awoken one of the bastards. He had no idea if Damned slept, but if the Warden’s speech about them just being “recycled soldiers” were true, then they shouldn’t need to sleep! So why the fuck was there a storage closet - er, cave of these huge variants?! Whatever the reason, his flaring heart was thankful they didn’t immediately all spring to life and attack at this moment.

By a miracle, none of the creatures had noticed the flash or the stallions near panicked state. Not a single one of the corpses or their absent insect-like pilots made a move as Storm reluctantly crept his way around the behemoth with his breath held as if it would turn him invisible once more while tiptoeing back out into the tunnel he had come in from.

Breathe, dumbass, breathe!

Storm finally commanded his breathing to return to the usual calm - albeit spaced - rhythm that kept him focused as his practical sense took over his nerves. If those fuckers wanted to huddle in a dark corner and act like stone gargoyles then he would let them. Anything as long as they weren’t between him and wherever this blasted exit was!

The armored stallion headed back up to the sloped tunnel where he checked to make sure no more stragglers had followed the dog thing. When he deemed it clear, Storm climbed up the steep dirt and stone slope to find himself in-

His living room.

Not the living room of the lighthouse that his late family had survived in, but his actual house. His foalhood home.

The surprise managed to beat the fear in his head as Storm looked from side to side expecting to see the cave walls and brooding darkness, but all he saw was the chipped yellow-beige walls of an actual building. Everything else was the same too. The couch with the mismatching cushions, the cracked television, the bottles scattered on the coffee table next to it all.

As his heart rate started to bounce like the needle on a kitchen timer, Storm looked onward to where the other tunnel should have been but instead a short hallway leading to his kitchen was there instead.

This was impossible! How could the Warden know he was here?! It hadn’t seen him since Fillydelphia and just let him live through a room full of hulking stationary monsters! Why wait for this?!

No, no, no, not again! Storm repeated to himself. It’s not real! It's in your head!

He squeezed his eyes shut tight and then reopened them, hoping this vision or hallucination or whatever the hell it was would go away.

C’mon, c’mon dammit!

He tapped a foreleg against his helmet repeatedly like it would snap him back to his senses.

It didn’t.

Option number one was a bust. Now it was time for option two. Storm pulled his legs from the nonexistent molasses underneath to approach the table. He inhaled a breath of the thin, filtered air before wrapping a hoof around one of the empty bottles and-

He felt it.

The bottle was solid. The bottle was real.

The weight of the object, the muffled texture through his suit cloth, even the faint trace of liquid still inside swayed with the motion of removing the bottle from the floor.

The stallion heard the shattering of glass before he even registered that it had left his grasp and he flew through the air to roughly tumble onto his back. Before his pounding head could form a clear picture of his assailant, Storm felt a pair of hooves forcefully clamp down around his throat. Either the sudden jolt of concentrated pain or the adrenaline pouring into his body allowed the pegasus a brief glimpse at who was on top of him.

His father.

Iron Sight had the same expression as always. Misleading indifference. The elder stallion looked as if he was uncaring, unflinching - like all guard members did - but in reality, his demeanor could lash out at any direction that seemed fit for his mind. The stoick expression gradually turned to one that Storm had long since become accustomed to.

Disappointment.

Not the average disappointment many children faced when getting a bad grade or making a poor decision, but a look of genuine pity and disgust. Resentment itself could have been personified with a camera snapshot of Iron’s face as he continued to strangle his grown colt.

Storm had felt the tears begin to build up in the corners of his eyes long before the look became clear to him. Whether they were from the oxygen-lacking pain or his own anger, the stallion wouldn’t have been able to identify with his blurring thoughts.

“What did I tell you about touching those bottles, Windstorm?!” Iron seethed as drool fell from his lisping lips and onto the purple visor. His tone made it clear he was in a half sober state at best. Despite this, his strength seemed unaffected in the slightest.

Storm visually searched for his gun but couldn’t locate the weapon or even summon his tethered appendage with how much pressure his oxygen-starved mind was under right now. He attempted to move his head around to manually locate the revolver, only to receive an even tighter squeeze somehow.

“How many times have we gone over this?! You will look me in the eye when I am speaking to you!” Iron shook his own head. “With my folks that wasn’t even a line that needed saying! I didn’t even get a free explanation of what I was doing wrong, Windstorm! It was just a slap to the muzzle and I took my licks until I understood what was disrespectful!”

Trying his best to ignore the suffocation, Storm finally found his weapon lying barely out of reach. Iron Sight seemed to notice this too, for he removed a hoof from his son’s throat and plucked the sidearm up. Iron waved the revolver around in the air like a toy for a dog to fetch.

“They say the years are supposed to wisen you up.” He slurred. “But here you are going for the same resolution that you did when you were a colt! At least this time, my Delilah isn’t here to suffer the wrath of your mistakes!”

Storm felt something inside of him snap. If he was lucky, it wasn’t the tube in his neck or his spine, but somehow he felt it wasn’t a corporeal part of his being.

“We had everything before you! I had a fucking career, a life, and your mother - no, you took that away from me the day you were born! I tried doing it all, Windstorm! I fucking tried! Balancing work and raising a foal I never wanted cost me my job! I was the first failure in the guard of my family because of the stress you caused! I snapped at my superior and lost it all! Dishonorable discharge and a walk of shame just to come home to what? A failure of a son and even bigger disappointment of a stallion!”

Iron tossed the gun aside, far out of either stallion’s reach as he took a swig of one of the floor bottles. He made a noise that sounded like a mixture of a pained grunt and a hiccup before wiping his muzzle and discarding the bottle.

“And you know what the worst part is?! I couldn’t even find comfort in my own Celestia-damned castle! My wife had left to support another mouth to feed and that mouth wouldn’t shut the fuck up to let me have a minute to myself! It was like a busted alarm clock that you hit every morning but instead of finally shattering, this clock kept coming back to ruin my mornings!” He had tears in his eyes as he pulled Storm’s helmeted head up to face his own unarmored one. “You have no idea how much solace it brings me to know that you got what was coming to you after all these years! I lost everything because of you and now you lose everything as well - but it's not anypony else's fault this time! It's only you to blame for your friends, the mare with the kids, and soon the rainbow-maned dyk-”

Iron was unable to finish his sentence as a blade went through the side of his abdomen. The elder stallion’s grip weakened, allowing Storm to shove Iron’s back against the cavern wall while getting himself up in the process. Iron struggled to get up before his son slammed a hoof into his gut. Then into his jaw. Iron slumped down the wall until Storm held him to it by the throat.

Storm retracted his helmet to reveal his psychotic purple eyes. They were faintly red from the lack of oxygen prior, but their unblinking resolve more than distracted from that. He jammed his hoof blade into Iron’s abdomen while looking his father dead in the eyes.

Iron smiled as blood started to slip from his grinning lips. He looked as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t. Storm started to twist his blade until an explosively painful sensation filled his own lower half. He winced in pain as a jolt of needles filled up his body, causing him to blink. In the fraction of a second it took to close his eyes, Iron sight had vanished along with the apartment room. Now the grey pegasus was lying back-down in the tunnel.

The first thing Storm realized was that his own bladed forehoof was halfway sticking out of his own abdomen where a slim crimson trail had begun to trickle down from. The next thing was that his bladeless limb was pressed against his neck where one of Iron’s hooves had been prior and where his own hoof had been to the latter’s throat after. Though it wasn’t on his mind at the moment, a few scattered stones made up the area of the wood floor - er, stone floor - where the bottles had been.

After catching his breath, the stallion eyed the blade in his wound momentarily, mentally preparing himself for what would come next. He clenched his teeth together and began to slowly pull the steel tip from his flesh. The blade came out with no spurts of blood or any more severe pain than he was already experiencing - which he took as a good sign. Storm then got to his hooves and examined the rate of his blood loss.

The wound was superficial as the blade’s previously submerged length was less than half. Additionally, the lack of sharpening lessened the blow, but the risk of infection was practically guaranteed with how much shit the weapon had been exposed to in the past day alone. Most of the stream itself had already seeped out during whatever trance he had just been in, leaving only a faint trickle of blood in its wake.

If they don’t know I’m here yet, they will soon… Storm grumbled. Shit’s like a neon bread crumb trail... He then slapped his last bandage on the real wound while refusing to acknowledge the mental one prior.

Storm had no idea where to go from here. Zecora was still in their grasp. He was unsure whether or not she was even alive after the detour or even if his intrusion had been made by the Warden and it’s posse, but judging by the lack of roaring and charging hoovesteps, luck might have decided to favor his side for its own amusement later on. Nevertheless, the stallion picked himself up mentally to match his physical state before continuing on down the abyssal passage.

The tunnel was surprisingly short and empty - except for the support structures - with no other side passages. Every now and then, however, a large tendril carrying blue liquid would appear out of the wall, ceiling, or ground like a stray electronic cord. Beyond that, there was one even stranger instance with another Diamond Dog creature which made Storm jump out of skin, suit, and all until he realized the beast was also Plexerless and just standing motionlessly in the only other tunnel passage besides the main one.

The creature stood motionless like a powered down robot with its head and bladed appendages hung low. Storm didn’t dare to get close enough to inspect the thing or snap another picture but he was able to make out the change in color on the canine’s bladed arms. They were covered in a darker substance that could either have been dirt and mud or blood. Probably a mixture of all three if he knew any better.

Storm sidestepped the unresponsive cave-dweller to continue down the main passage for about a minute when a light became visible from a large opening. The light was blue, but it was too solid and stationary to be an approaching threat - the stallion made sure of that long before advancing towards it - so he worked up the resolve to reach what he thought was just the glow of the more recently appearing blue tubes.

What he saw made him immediately slam himself into cover behind one of the supports.

There were thousands of them.

Maybe millions.

He had only caught a glimpse but the literal ocean of blue glows was enough of an answer. Storm’s instincts kicked in before his fear, thankfully, allowing him to detach the camera and levitate it around the support beam and into the biggest cave chamber he had ever seen.

A colossal rectangular strip of the cavern had been hollowed out into one straight line that diverged a mile down the line - which Storm could tell with his camera’s zoom function - resembling an intersection of the Los Pegasus streets. The path he was in right now led to a catwalk-like bridge that served as an overpass for the majority of the chamber. Canterlot’s castle paled in comparison to this chamber in terms of scope - in fact, Storm was sure the princess’ castle could have fit in the fucking ravine dug by these things! Speaking of those things, various Damned of all shapes, classes, and sizes were stumbling, shambling, or crawling across the underground highway of sorts and heading to an unknown destination.

Storm had been turned around so many times in the passages before that he had no idea what cardinal direction he was currently facing, but he could at least tell that over ninety percent of the creatures were all headed in the same direction. Slicers soared on their mangled wings above the rest while the ground class Damned lazily milled about towards their destination. This road was so jam packed that some of the smaller variants were riding on the larger ones! One of the huge brutes that he had seen in Ponyville was carrying a trio of Hunters - that all dangled themselves across its back like a string of limp ragdolls.

If he wasn’t invested in the process of trying not to piss his suit, Storm would have noticed that he would need at least seven full sized sketchbooks just to catalog the amount of variants within his camera’s visible range alone. Every so often, a flash of blue seemed to look up directly at Storm’s peeping device - or so he thought - only to have it return to the ground level of the path in order to avoid collision. The cave echoed every scrap of bone or sickening slap of flesh below and the chittering made from the blue pilots burrowed into Storm’s head like an irritating white noise of a busted ceiling fan.

“Remove your claws before I take you to meet death’s jaws!” It was then that he heard a familiar, rhythmic voice threatening in a trembling manner. The sound originated from at the very end of the overpass, which is where the camera was then pointed, to reveal the two Hunters with a restrained, but conscious and struggling Zecora on one of their backs. Beside the duo and their reluctantly consenting guest, one of the canine creatures - a live one this time - was using its bulky bladed arms to hold pieces of stone and wood in place before firing a bone projectile from its tail to nail the scrap to a support stalk on the opposite end of the overpass.

Storm realized that the two Hunters had been stalled because their behemoth brethren had been working on a part of the tunnel, forcing them to wait before entering the adjacent tunnel on this level. The Hunters ignored the empty threat and struggling zebra while standing completely still as the Diamond Dog secured the final nails into the stone wall. Finally, one of the Hunters used its tail to coil around Zecora’s still swearing neck before tightening its grip.

The stallion waited with baited breath and a clenched jaw for the sickening crunch, but he only heard the zebra’s cries turn into whispers before she was out again. Her return to slumber happened just in time as the Hunters began to move again. They passed the short few steps across the newly assembled supports and disappeared around the corner of the tunnel passage.

Storm knew he was muzzle-deep in the shit now. He had to cross an either newly built or repaired overpass, sneak past a new variant with no cover, and not get spotted by a single pair of bug-like monitors below otherwise it would be all over. Oh, and get a wounded, probably concussed zebra out of a cave system of hive mind monsters.

Even in the heated moment of his mind trying to balance survival and savior mode, Storm still managed to divert a moment to scoff at fate for treating him like a set of rusted pipes that had been neglected for years as they waited to burst under the pressure of it all-

Wait a minute…

Holy shit. That just might work. The stallion eyed the glowing blue tendril-thing sticking out of the wall beside him.

It would be perfect...

Let’s one-up the list of suicidal stupidity... He thought with a faint spark of adrenalized inspiration while eying a blue tube behind him before turning to the canine facing away from his direction.

Zecora’s vision began to return in a haze. The grayscaled world around her faded in and out like a faintly pulsing heartbeat. In her limited sight, the zebra was able to identify that she was still being towed around by that horrible thing and it’s twin. Neither of them were facing her, allowing the striped mare to look around just in time for her groggy vision to return in full.

She was in a thin, dimly lit tunnel - that was only illuminated by blue tendrils poking out of the wall - where every sound seemed to echo as it was carried down the passage much like herself. At first, she was only able to focus on the uneven dragging of the Hunter’s hoovesteps until newer, louder sounds took over.

Screaming.

Scraping.

Squelching.

Those were the made three she could pick out amongst the auditory suffering coming from wherever these things were taking her. The screams sounded to all be feminie but it was hard to tell as a crushing thunking sound followed a combination of squelching liquids and metallic scraping soon overpowered everything before the process started over.

This happened two more times.

“NO! NO! NO! NO!” Someone howled.

The panicked begging was soon followed by blood-curdling screaming. Then the thunking sound. Then the sickening liquidy one. And finally the dragging of something so sharp it made the zebra’s ears flatten in an attempt to shield herself from it’s auditory assault. Her efforts to do so were fruitless inside the sound-carrying passage and the scraping pushed past her ears and into her soul.

The screaming had stopped.

It was replaced with choked sobbing.

The scraping sound returned but it was longer and less forceful this time, like something was causally dragging a piece of chalk along a board. Zecora was close enough now that she could hear as four fleshy thumps resounded throughout the room - which she still couldn’t see from her restrained position.

However, the zebra was able to discern that her escorts had just exited the tunnel as shown by the massive expansion of the ceiling in whatever chamber they had just arrived in. The sobbing was also extremely close now. It was literally a spitting distance away but the source of it was still unknown.

And that shook Zecora to her very core.

The horrific nature of her journey was suddenly interrupted when Zecora felt the creature’s tail start to loosen its grasp on her body. She quickly composed herself in time to manage a steady breathing rate and slammed her eyes shut, giving off the illusion that she was still out cold. Through the smallest crack in her eyelids, she prepared herself as the Hunter shook her off of its back and onto the cold - and viciously sticky - stone ground below.

Zecora had no doubt in her mind that she was laying in blood. No other substance besides sun-baked honey had this texture or thickness. The female sobbing was now right above her, given a few steps behind, allowing Zecora the unpleasant experience of hearing whoever it was start to choke in a muffled manner as if something was being forced down her throat.

The choking turned into gurgling as a liquid was hypothesized to be involved with whatever was going on above the striped equine. Zecora’s muzzle scrunched up as she felt a sudden liquid trail land on her nose and start to slide down onto the stone.

The sobbing had stopped.

Only muffled wheezing replaced it.

A chittering mumble rang out from above as two large, sharp objects were scraped together in the direction of the chittering’s source. That was all Zecora got to hear before the Hunter’s used their tails to each grab a hindleg and hoist her up. She felt something tying her legs together shortly after. Now suspended in the air, and the blood rushing to her head, the zebra struggled to make out what had been going on all this time.

Her adrenaline briefly overpowered the dizziness, allowing her to see the aftermath of it all. The presumed mare or previously living female creature was nowhere in sight now. All that remained was a flat stone cutout caked in a crimson spread with various body parts and bones lying in around the table like the barber shop floor after getting a mane cut. These parts were then grabbed by various hand-like appendages which tossed them in a direction out of the restrained zebra’s sight.

Zecora didn’t register that her eyes had gone wide with panic and shock at the gruesome sight until she realized that her teal ones had locked with a much brighter set of blue eyes. What she stared back at made the mare lose any shred of hope that she would leave this place alive.

Or even in one piece for that matter.

She stared into the squirming lenses of death.

They stared back.

Author's Note

I'm not dead yet! Though the transition from graduating high school and moving on to adulthood almost makes me wish I was. Job searching combined with college research priorities caused this chapter to be way later than expected, so for that I apologize. Hopefully the brooding mystery and excitement of this one makes up for it somewhat. Storm and Zecora are one of the first - and most unlucky - survivors to witness goes on behind the Warden's rotten and boney curtain. I took the advice to return these chapters to their 10,000 word limits to make them more bearable and hopefully have important plot information and character development not lost in the bulk of the longer chapters.

But don't worry about Rainbow Dash. She hasn't been forgotten either. In fact, next chapter is dedicated to her reluctance exploration of the new world around her with some high stakes thrown her way. Lets just say nopony is safe in this world regardless of being in a populated town or in a monster-infested tunnel system.

Until next time!