Hiss.
Amethyst’s eyes shot open. The unicorn groaned as the room spun around her. She clumsily clambered to her hooves as she fought the ever-growing sense of nausea that came with vertigo, the room righting itself again.
“H… hello?”
Her voice was dry and raspy as if she hadn’t drunk anything in days. Her cry for help bounced off the walls around her and promptly died seconds later. Saving her breath, Amethyst staggered over to the edge of the room. A hatch was in the middle of the bright white wall. The wall itself was decorated with various elaborate engravings that only served to exacerbate her migraine. She bit her lip, slowly trotting over to the hatch.
It was circular in shape, a sharp contrast to the cube-like room she found herself in. A singular rod spanned the length of it, with an indentation beneath. She extended a hoof, grasping onto the rod and pulling. It had no give, prompting her to instead turn it. Upon being inverted entirely, she was greeted by the same sound that had awoken her.
Hiss.
Amethyst jumped back at the noise, watching intently as the hatch split in two, opening up into a tube of sorts. One look showed that it was just wide enough to fit a single pony. Inching ever closer to the newly made hole, she peered through to the other side. Another room, the same as her current one, albeit yellow, stared back at her.
“Where in Tartarus am I…?”
With a tentative hoof forward, she lifted herself into the tube and slowly crawled inside. Upon reaching the other side, she plopped down onto her hooves. An audible clunking noise resonated throughout the room as the hatch closed behind her. Her eyes shrunk to pinpricks. In an instant, narrow tubes emerged from the faces of the walls and Amethyst braced for impact.
But no pain came.
Instead, a cold mist doused her from every direction. Her fur slowly began to matte from saturation, and she instinctively shook herself, droplets of the liquid flinging across the room as she did. By the time the devices ceased their spraying and retracted into the walls, Amethyst was entirely soaked.
But alive.
Taking a moment to lift her right hoof up, she took in a whiff of her fur.
“W-water? T-that’s aaaaahhhhh!” Amethyst cried out, a searing hot pain shooting throughout her entire body. Her eyes shot downwards, back to the hoof she had been inspecting, only to find that it was slowly becoming encased in what looked to be a layer of ice. Ever so slowly, the pain began to subside as her nerve endings were frozen.
Unable to even feel herself standing, Amethyst stumbled backward, toppling over. The moment her rump impacted the floor, cracks spider-webbed across her body. Her last waking moments were spent staring idly at the wall of the room as her body split into hundreds of tiny, frozen fragments.
Hiss.
Starlight’s hooves rubbed at the corners of her eyes, wiping away the crusty sleep that had built up. She wasn’t quite sure how long ago she had dozed off, but it definitely hadn’t been in the room she was in now. The bright red walls, rife with some sort of science-fiction looking panelling, had nearly blinded her at first.
Now, having spent a few minutes in this room, everything seemed dull. The many glowing panels had begun to mesh together into a dim red glow. On each of the six walls surrounding the unicorn, there were what appeared to be escape hatches. Starlight considered herself to be a cautious mare, a character trait that she hoped would come in handy right about now.
Her hooves clip-clopped against the panelling as she carefully trotted over to the hatch located in the center of the floor. She extended her hoof outwards, grabbing hold of the rod and twisting it.
Hiss.
The hatch quickly opened up to reveal a circular hole in the floor, leading into what she presumed was another of the same room. Unsure of what possessed her to do so, she turned herself about, making an effort to lower herself into the hatch. Her hooves clasped onto an inner set of rods, aiding the mare in her journey downwards. As she finally made it through to the other side, she was surprised to see that this room was glazed over in a green glow.
“Hm, maybe the different colors mean something?” She pondered. Her words bounced off the walls before fading away, and she released her grip on the inner rods, falling to the floor below. Her eyes narrowed, scanning the room for any abnormalities. Everything about this room, save for the color, was the same as the one above. “... Maybe not.”
Hiss.
Starlight reflexively looked upwards, expecting to see the hatch she’d come through closing, but was surprised to see it still open.
“Then what made that…”
“Ah!”
“AH!” Starlight cried out, comically jumping into the air. The fur on her back was pointing nearly straight upwards now, and she slowly turned heel towards the source of the voice she’d heard. One of the hatches on the side walls was opened, and a pink pony was staring at her through it.
“Oh my gosh!” The pony exclaimed. “If you’re in this room, then that must mean it’s safe! After all, if it wasn’t safe, you wouldn’t have said ‘Ah!’. you would have been all like ‘Blegh, I am dead!’.”
Before Starlight had a chance to respond, the boisterous pony had already bounded into her room and next to her. Turning back to the hatch she’d come through, she called out to… someone.
“Come on in, guys, it’s all safe!”
To Starlight’s shock, three more ponies came in through the hatch, one-by-one. Two unicorns, one white and one a light cyan, and a pegasus, sky blue in color with a rainbow mane, now stood in front of her. The original mare, an earth pony, cleared her throat.
“Ahem. Guys, this is my new friend! We totally just met, but I can already tell we’re going to be best friends! New friend, this is Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Lyra!”
“Charmed,” the white unicorn she now knew as Rarity said. “I take it ‘New Friend’ isn’t your name, though.”
“... Starlight,” she said after a moment. Once again, her eyes darted around the room, checking to see if anyone else was watching. Once she was aptly satisfied, she turned back to the group. “What is this place?”
“Your guess is as good as ours,” Rainbow Dash replied. “We all woke up in the same room a little bit ago. What about you?”
“I just woke up. By myself,” Starlight answered. Suddenly, a thought dawned on her. “Say, what did the pink mare mean when she said this room was ‘safe’?”
“You mean you don’t know?” Lyra asked.
“Just woke up,” Starlight reminded her. “I don’t even know what these rooms are. All I can even remember is my name.”
“Best we can tell you is that some of these rooms are trapped, and some of them aren’t,” Lyra explained. “Lucky for you, this room you just dropped into is safe.”
“And the ones that are trapped? What kind of traps?” Starlight asked.
“Trust us,” Rainbow Dash said, “you don’t want to know.”
“Another pony we met before you trotted into one,” Rarity added. “Next thing we knew, the hatch slammed shut behind him.”
“By the time it opened again,” Lyra continued, stepping towards Starlight, “the room he was in was gone.”
Starlight’s eyebrow raised curiously. “Gone? What do you mean gone? Rooms don’t just vanish, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“It moved,” Rainbow Dash corrected them. “It got replaced by another room, but a different color. We figured that it must have taken him with it when it moved.”
“And? Did you ever find him?”
“Nope!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. “But I’m sure he’s fine, he seemed like a pretty smart cookie!”
Starlight swallowed the lump in her throat, looking up at the room she had woken up in. “I sure hope so.”
“This one’s good,” Lyra said, beckoning for Starlight and the others to enter.
“So how are we supposed to know if these rooms are safe?” Starlight asked, clambering into the hatch. It had been around an hour since she’d been found by Pinkie Pie and the others, yet they seemed nowhere closer to the end of this enormous labyrinth of rooms. “Aside from Lyra saying so, of course.”
Her hooved clacked against the ground as she hopped out of the hatch, an action that she immediately regretted. Holes opened up on each of the other 5 hatches, the passageways now replaced by narrow tubes extending towards the center of the room. The room turned swelteringly hot as plumes of fire burst forth from each one, straight towards Starlight.
A sudden tugging on the nape of her neck was an indication that she’d been grabbed, and she was swiftly pulled back into the hatch from whence she’d come, narrowly avoiding being burnt to a crisp in the process. As she slammed back to the floor, the hatch behind her closed with that same haunting noise.
Hiss.
“You told her it was safe!” Rainbow Dash shouted, releasing her grasp on Starlight’s neck. The pegasus glared daggers at Lyra, who could only stammer out a half-hearted reply.
“B-but the pattern was…”
“Screw your pattern!” Rarity interjected, her usual lady-like nature falling to the wayside. “We almost lost another pony!”
“Don’t yell at her, she’s doing her best!” Pinkie Pie shouted back at the two.
Before Starlight knew it, a full-scale argument had broken out between the four ponies. Deciding it would be best to leave them be for the time being, she turned back to the hatch. Air hissed through the cracks as she turned the rod about, unlatching it yet again.
Hiss.
The fighting came to a halt as the other four’s collective gaze shot over to Starlight, who was leaning halfway into the hatch.
“Starlight, don—”
“Shut. Up,” she coldly replied, not bothering to even look at who had addressed her. “I just had a thought, and all of this yammering is giving me a headache. So please, for the love of Celestia, cut it out.”
“O-okay…”
Starlight sighed, taking another look at what she thought she’d seen earlier. “A… T… Y?”
“What’s an A.T.Y.?” Pinkie Pie piped up, causing Starlight to groan.
“It’s a set of letters. This hatch has them, and there’s another upside down set that says ‘C.R.E.’. I think they’re labels.”
“For?” Lyra asked.
“For the rooms,” Starlight clarified. “I think they’re labeled by their place in the puzzle.”
“Why use letters, though?”
Starlight shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, Rarity. All I know is that these might be an indication as to which rooms are safe, and which ones aren’t.”
“How can you be sure, though?” Rainbow Dash asked. “After all, you saw better than any of us what happened when we thought we had it figured it out. You almost got turned into a roast unicorn.”
“Regardless, a possible pattern is better than no pattern at all,” Starlight said. “Obviously our theory that only yellow rooms were trapped proved incorrect.”
“Hold on, you’re saying we just got lucky this entire time?” Lyra interjected, her voice shaky. “W-we’ve been through like twenty rooms!”
“And it was only a matter of time before that luck ran out,” Rainbow Dash replied. “But… what now?”
Starlight took in the deepest breath she had in quite some time, exhaling slowly. Her eyes shot from hatch to hatch. There were four possibilities now, and it was up to her to guide them safely through.
“Now? Now it’s time for some trial and error…”
“... And if we have an error?” Lyra asked. That question grabbed everyone’s attention, and the realization of just what kind of danger they found themselves in finally began to set in. Looks of doubt spread throughout the group, even Starlight finding herself full of worry.
“Then we won’t be leaving.”
Author's Note
I've never written anything vaguely Sci-Fi or Horror, so this has definitely been a fun experience thus far.
I hope you guys enjoyed these first two chapters, as I'll be making weekly posts to this story every Friday.
