Black Tales of White Winter
=================================
Written by: Oneimare
Preread and edited by: Jay Tarrant, Typoglyphic
=================================
A cold wind blew.
The dross dust danced merrily as a door opened, letting its dirge echo throughout the still building. The deprecative screech of rusted hinges heralded the arrival of another countless lost soul, a tiny silhouette against the sickly pale sky. The filly lingered at the entrance, receiving annoyed glances, peering into the near darkness from the depths of her improvised hood until vile curses rang through the acrid air.
With a loud thud, the gates to the frozen hell closed.
Her chipped hooves kept catching fallen tools and corroded remains—the dead; she felt no pain as her black eyes navigated the shadows rustling with weak coughs and delirious prayers. It wasn't the cold so much as the sheer dread driving her forward.
Of becoming just one more condemned shade.
Surrounded by the endless abyss hiding corpses in its ravenous womb, she lost the count of time; just like the blood, it was frozen there, bestowing eternal torment and calm on its victims. She began to vanish in the gloom herself—the slag crunching under her horseshoes promised rest as it sapped strength from her limbs. Mere moments before the filly was ready to fall asleep where she stood, tired of her endless struggle, her eyes reflected something different than ink—the crimson glow of dying fire.
Long forgotten visitors on her mask—a smile and tears reflected the incandescence of that beacon amidst the sea of hoarfrost, the tomb of the nameless. Yet, she still trudged forward agonizingly slowly, stepping over the cairns of shrivelled cloth and graves in the slag. She had been there before and knew there was no sense to hurry—it would only bring the bitter moment sooner.
Not a blaze, just a pile of ash and soot with blood-red embers shining through the cracks in the caked cinder, barely warmer than the ponies strewn on the floor in their peaceful rest. The filly couldn’t ask for more.
She stretched her shivering limbs from the greasy rags serving her as a cloak so close to the fading fire, it almost singed her coat with its final breaths.
The young hooves drew closer still to the embers, even though it wouldn’t help.
The melancholically pulsing coals provided as little light as warmth, though still enough to reveal their closest surroundings.
The filly warily glanced upwards, where a massive kiln hung over her like a giant tumour protruding from the body of darkness. Yet the crushing and grim reminder of her parents’ demise bothered her less than a form barely distinguishable from the impenetrable black—a still and tall mound of tatters emanating a foetor of utter abhorrence; metal bits sticking out of decaying fabric, dimly reflecting the blood-red of the bonfire. An ossuary.
“She is bringing more.”
The insidious croak was like that of the whistling wind, startling the filly, sending her cringing away from the muttering corpse. The fright abated swiftly as another kind of icy grip took hold of her.
Like a moth, she crawled back.
The rags dehisced, a dry tongue moving over toothless gums.
“What is your name?”
A cold wind blew, hissing the last lullaby; beyond the walls rattling with drums of the blizzard it chanted the final marsh. Enchanted by the otherworldly music, the lost children of Canterlot quietly murmured themselves to the realm where they would feel the Sun again.
White for the death, black for the dead—nothing else mattered. Withering and writhing were equal here. No talent, no mark was greater than the other before the endless snow piling higher and higher, before the unstoppable cold creeping deeper and deeper into her very bones.
“Names are all we have left.”
Cracked blue lips parted, revealing chattering teeth.
“Ink Chasm.” Gentler than the sound of a snowflake crushed, she uttered, “Inky.”
“Fume.”
Lightning of emotion cut the gloom, painful and artificial like the newcomer’s eyes.
“I’m Oil Plume!”
The goggles forever welded into a scarred face shone with the aurora of coals crackling in a blazing fury. Smokey-grey tendrils of Oil’s magic dissipated, letting the bucket upturn and vomit gleed upon baked dross in an explosion of specks; they twinkled like stars for mere heartbeats only to be devoured by the blackest of nights.
The young mare slumped near the renewed pyre, guns rattling in the holsters on her shoulders. The char-smeared hooves extended to the fire, exposing to the heat fresh bruises, cuts and burns. It melted away the anaesthetic blessing of cold; searching for a distraction Oil poked Ink’s shoulder:
“Lighten up, kid. There are more coals where those came from.”
Two pools of inscrutable darkness reflected the incandescent white. Ink’s eyelids dropped slowly—a stage curtain. A shuddering breath came out a cloud of glimmering mist.
The next reflection had blemishes in it—sickly yellow.
Though Ink would never need to fear it, she still softly whispered:
“What happens when there are no more coals?”
A cold wind blew.
Fume shifted to the glow, wisps of rime—or ash—following his glacial movement, a wave of strange smell rolling over two younger ponies.
The flames cracked and a rebellious firebrand was outcast into Oil’s direction. By the moment it reached her hooves, the light was snuffed out of it. Scowling, she kicked it back.
“Who cares?”
A deafening plangent moan from beyond the thin walls echoed in marrow with its torment, deep and endless as the void between the stars. Throats, sore from coughing, rasped in answer from the frigid mirk, for they craved for the same thing—to be no more.
Despite the heat yet unbearable, the silent shivering figures pressed themselves closer, embers catching their visages: a filly’s frozen face, Oil’s eyes full of searing coal, the crumbling tatters of Fume.
It was Fume’s rags rustling, “We should share tales.”
“That’s stupid. What next, we sing?”
Somewhere in the dark a shadow wept a weak coronach for its kin just joined the flock of winter.
“Anyway, I go first.”
A hoof struck the floor, raising a cloud of ancient dust to be caught by a frowsy draft. The motes of rust too stubborn to be carried away by the stagnant airs of the decadent underground passages found their way into tender nostrils and under fluttering eyelids.
Yet, the filth billowing out to meet the unexpected visitors did nothing to prevent their incursion, bolstering it instead. Still, the three ponies measured each step. Finding a tunnel appearing to be graced by a living presence for the first time in ages meant the right path was found.
Right—not safe.
Oil Plume’s curious eyes wandered around, following the revealing gaze of a pocket torch frantically striving to cast back the ever oppressing darkness. There wasn’t much hidden under the veil of shadows, however.
As the stifling ink ebbed, the aged walls shewed themselves. The uneven surface reluctantly reflected the cold glow of artificial stars carried deep under Canterlot, deeper than any sane creature would dare to venture; the markings on the walls refusing to let go of the blackness. That strange quality alone was enough to be unnerving, as there was a pattern to the scars marring every inch of the preternatural stone, giving the impression of it bearing a carving once upon a time, indiscernible now.
Oil’s eyes would linger on the mystic imagery, straining to see sense in it. Every time she eventually gave up and diverted her attention elsewhere along with an exposing ray of light, only for her mind to finally be able to complete the puzzle, to connect the faded lines into some eerie picture. But when she whirled back to stare at the inexplicable walls again, they looked starkly different, as if the derelict carving shifted in the dark like a tumultuous sea.
From time to time a gaping maw would appear amidst the indescribable etchings, a straight cut rectangle leading into an impenetrable void, so invitingly breathing with fresh chill air. Those temptations were ignored as detracting from the main passage was equal to perdition in a cursed warren with the way back sealed forever. Still, they called seductively, offering the promise of escape.
No less disturbing was the ceiling, which had yet to be seen—the gloom hid it from curious eyes, denying any attempt to be dispelled, even by the combined efforts of three sources of luminosity. Considering how deep the duct lay and its bottleneck nature disallowing the entire group to traverse it shoulder to shoulder, there was the cogent impression of something fundamental being twisted.
No hoofprints violated the monopoly of the grime hiding the floor, save for those just left by Oil’s entourage. The thick layer of dirt muffled any sounds akin to a lush carpet, insidiously disintegrating on touch and by itself, hanging in the air in a display of pale stars, dead motes able only to shine by stealing the light of lanterns. Thus, the visibility was reduced to that of a snowstorm.
The issues it created not taken into account, the dust itself bothered Oil greatly. It was impossible to avoid inhaling the malevolently glimmering powder and its taste was horrid.
The silt had something vile to it, a rotten quality agitating the entrails, provoking them to turn inside out, imploring them to question the origin of those ashen flakes. Its blight combined with the coppery flavour of ever-present rust created an impression of drinking out of a creek that flowed from a graveyard.
The blazing eye of Oil’s flashlight searched the suffocating shadows and yanked her companions' forms out on the mirk, the members of ‘Two and a half unicorns’ mercenary group.
Grounded with emery, once trademark blue armour refused to shine in reply, yet the aged stallion shot a glance at Oil; sympathy in the steel-grey eyes and a nearly imperceptible nod offering her the support she so desperately craved. Pneumo Alfin, his real name dead with his daughter and career—the full details of his life story evading Oil—marched forward despondently. An old pocket torch and a worn gun levitated by his sides—the Deep Tunnels could easily daunt even the silver-maned former police officer.
The worst part of Canterlot had little to no effect on the mare one step ahead of the broken officer. She stomped onwards, a lantern hanging from her clenched jaws, its swaying making the shadows convulse in a macabre dance. Stub wore her name as proudly as the namesake of her horn even in the darkness of the forgotten subterranean passages.
Steel augmented muscles bulged under her scarred coat when she turned to Oil, icy cold blue eyes reflecting the uncareful ray of the flashlight with annoyance. She met the pink attentive eyes unblemished by wrinkles with a hard evaluating stare.
When Stub’s attention returned to the path ahead, she wasn’t too discontent, yet still barked, “Check the notes.”
Oil dutifully produced a scrap of paper and relying on the guidance of her teammates, read the scribbles again.
Received from an unmistakably senile vagrant at one of the Wells, the instructions seemed a tenuous proposition for a foolhardy dive into the Deep Tunnels. The poor sod who hadn't seen the light of the Sun in decades, if not ever, rambled madly about the artefact sealed in the derelict research facility, possibly even from the pre-war era. On the brink of being thrown out of the greasy food joint, the madpony was noticed by Stub, for his words, insane they might sound, weren’t the only thing he had to present.
From the withered and leprous neck, on a chain of old and sturdy metal, a gem-encrusted key-card hung, swinging in rhythm with ominous ravings.
It was traded for a hot meal without hesitation, and, when every word was recorded, the shell of a pony was finally guided out.
“Thingamajig ‘s able ‘t stop ‘em clocks”, the lunatic whispered to Stub as he walked his last mile. “Nothin’… It burns… cold… but burns… See it an’ kin not take eyes off, s‘good thing I ain’t a-starin’—jest seed ‘em who looked. But it seed I, it see all—it see I naow.” Not realizing his hind hooves would find no purchase the next step, he went on, “Hey, yew, want it take ‘em too? Heh, heh, heh…”
The cackling of the oblivious frenetic faded away as his tatters-wrapped body plummeted into the hungry abyss, leaving Oil to wonder what it would take.
A void, hardly different from the one that claimed the olden secrets, watched the three unicorns threading unnervingly through its hunting ground, and waited patiently.
The vague descriptions promised a door of tarnished, but otherwise intact metal, a sight almost extinct in the corroded reality of Canterlot, save for the vile gleam of the Inner City. Beyond that entrance to be opened only by the inherited key lay something, an object of times long passed, yet still containing an unimaginable arcane potential. According to the phrenetic’s tale, it was out of Equestria, simultaneously from both deeper than any forgotten passage went and the emptiness betwixt the distant fading stars.
Due to a mystery too profound even for the keenest of minds, the Deep Tunnels could have no map, though it was still possible to navigate the chaotic labyrinth. As long as one had a destination in mind and never doubted a road taken, they would arrive at their heart’s desire. The principle was simple, yet out of the sumless creatures who had dared to tempt the malevolent formless darkness few ever found their way back.
That thought dominated Oil’s mind as she couldn’t help but notice a subtle and still grievous change in the adits they surmounted for an hour too many.
The viscous shadows seemed to linger before scattering away from the bright of lanterns now reaching barely farther than two body lengths. The dark hid into the walls. The stone soaked it like a sponge but wasn’t able to hold for long—the ink seeped back, filling out the grooves, revealing grotesque bas-reliefs, now too disturbing to be curious about.
Oil’s ears ached for any sound, save for her nervous breaths and erratic heartbeats. The noises of Alfin’s grating armour and Stub’s anger-fueled stampeding trot were intercepted by the eldritch air. Even the trusty guns on her shoulders refused to clink against the holsters.
She could swear there was somepony—something—out there, watching them from the void with a furtive gaze.
It was when the undeniable presence waxed to the almost unbearable, threatening to seize control of Oil’s reasoning and body, forcing them to flee, the debilitating sensation abated.
Amidst the stone phantasmagorian depictions the bulwark of a metal door loomed over the trio of intruders, the steel ringing with an echo of silent amazement.
So out of place the entrance to the fabled facility was, it seemed to mock those who found it, to taunt with the promise of ancient riches beyond imagination hidden in its dust-coated insides still churning despite the masters or that place turned to ashes centuries ago.
One only needed to slide open the lid of Pandora’s box.
Alfin and Stub faced the smooth steel surface, the rectangle of crystal card hanging from the mare’s jaws set ablaze by the lantern. The soft glow matching that of the Alfin’s horn aura enveloped the key and tugged at it.
Hesitantly, the metal teeth unclamped.
With a soft click the piece of plastic slid into the designated socket and after a defeated sigh—or that of sultry anticipation—the pane of metal, impervious to time, moved with the ominous rustle of a guillotine blade.
At first, Oil was eager to see the mystery hiding beyond the so sought gate, yet as it dehisced, she took a hasty step back.
Through the narrow crack, a light like no other filtered out.
It was of colour ever-shifting, impossible to describe and painful to gaze at. Instead of bringing out of shadows whatever it graced, the surfaces seemed to have their hues sapped, any identity stolen until there was nothing left but pale vestige further dissolving into the pernicious radiance.
If there ever was any doubt in coming to that place being a grave mistake, it crumbled in Oil’s mind at the first glimpse of that otherworldly shining.
Her hooves began to carry her away even before the thought of it formed, yet she forced herself to stop and call the names of her teammates, the intonation of her strangely muffled scream carrying the message alone.
The wide shoulders of her companions hid the source of the calamitous glow from her eyes, yet it still flooded everything in her sight, burning her like acid.
The plea fell on deaf ears—she herself couldn’t hear anything for she suddenly became aware of an undulating droning whine drowning any noise—consuming any sound. There was some kind of chaotic order to it, a distant reminder of a voice—chants becoming more distinct the longer they were paid attention to, but gaining a maddening quality in doing so.
Oil then reached with the pinkish aura of her magic for the tails of Stub and Alfin. Only the old stallion turned, Stub taking a step forward instead, leaving hairs in the arcane grasp.
Breath caught in Oil’s lungs as she met wide eyes crying blood, irises of swirling indiscernible colour devoured by the pitch sclera glimmering with specks of cold white amidst the deep void.
Oil thought she could see numerous discoloured silhouettes behind him moving glacially through the malevolent coruscation, incessantly dissolving into it.
Pneumo Alfin whispered something—a name waiting for him. The stallion smiled rigidly, turned back to the blinding light and walked into it, the lantern and gun falling on the floor soundlessly.
She hesitated, hoping for either him or Stub to change their minds, answer the call that refused to be carried by tainted air.
Only the radiance remained.
The screeching mare galloped through the desolate passageways leaving a tempest of disturbed ashes in her wake. Her mindless rush was abruptly cut short when her hoof caught in the crevice nefariously hidden by the flakes of rot. With a tumble, her body rolled through the blanket of remains until it hit the wall with a hollow thud.
For a long time she lay there, catching her breath. Blood dripped from her muzzle and a quivering hoof wiped it away—it didn’t hurt at all; that must be the adrenaline doing her a favour.
With a great effort she rose and felt tears well in her eyes.
“Not like this…” she whispered to the darkness and was relieved to hear her own voice. “Not alone…”
An unsteady gait carried the shivering body into the shadows, repugnant ashes dancing mockingly around the shambling mare. The dust whispered curses as tired steps crushed the decaying flakes, their rustling echo refusing to fade away from the tomb’s silence.
Turned into molasses, Oil’s thoughts insolently refused to solidify into the singular purpose of escaping the festering vessel of Canterlot’s very heart, the dead core claimed by a disease with no name. Besides the oppressing air of malignity, there was an elusive yet pervasive wrongness of debilitating effect.
The mare waded the sea of festering silt no more. Still as a statue, save for the swivelling of tentative ears, she stood like a lighthouse, the lantern not abandoned by some miracle, searching the void for anything but discoloured motes.
As if her horseshoes had welded themselves into the floor, Oil craned her neck, the brilliant ray slaying the shadows clinging to her tail. She found nothing beyond it but the gaping maw of an endless passage. In her flight she took not a single turn yet there was no trace of the abhorrent irradiance disturbing the thick blackness—gone like a feverish nightmare.
Something remained—an imperceptible sound at the edge of hearing.
“Alfin?” a weak voice afraid of itself asked the nothingness.
There was no reply from the ringing silence, only the muffled taps of blood dripping from Oil’s face to be thirstily drunk by the ancient filth.
“Stub?”
The darkness sullenly glared at the audacious mare.
Shaking profusely, Oil faced the path leading nowhere, hesitating.
She held her breath.
The stillness was so deafening, she could hear the flashlight wheezing out its saving glow, the motes floating despondently in and out of inky shadows; the frantic shimmer of magic, her joints creaking in demand of movement and her heart beating in a near panic.
The blood kept dewing the dust.
Oil wiped her muzzle again, but her numb hooves failed to locate the bleeding on her no less numb face—the collision with the walls of strange stone must have broken her nose or split her skin if not given her a concussion.
The light flickered, Oil nearly jumping as for a heartbeat the darkness claimed her, blinking in confusion. The holy incandescence returned with a noticeable red tinge to it—she wanted to believe it wasn’t the battery dying. Still, the fear of being forever swallowed by those tunnels overcame the dread of the sound she couldn’t discern.
An eddy rose and an echo too distinct for its nature followed the hasty step.
In a whirlwind of pulverized corpses and mad mayhem, Oil whipped the blaze of the pocket torch around, striking the dark. Two gun barrels were pointed at nothing, ready to feed it with lead if it turned out to be something else. Yet nothing shewed itself from the coiling shadows but the disturbed ashes.
She peered into the impenetrable abyss beyond where the light of her lantern reached.
From the void between the stars eyes gazed back at her, young and attentive, of vibrant pink colour.
“I ran like never before,” Oil Plume solemnly finished her story. “The next thing I remember was waking up at that old chap’s workshop. What was his name?”
Ink Chasm readily supplemented in a quiet and tired voice, “Scuff Gear.”
With a resounding crack, an ember died, exposing a tiny pocket of hot coal, the crimson reflecting deeply in the discoloured lenses of Oil’s artificial eyes. Pale and smokey magic picked up the defected firebrands, feeding them back to eternal hunger.
They refused to ignite anew.
The sombre mare shifted uneasily—no other than she would have to make a blind track into the darkness for another ladle of blazing light. Yet, there was time still to fill with another distraction from the encroachment of hoar. She glanced at Ink, but the filly deliberately stared at the cinders, refusing the invitation. Oil’s expressionless gaze stopped at the ragged figure of Fume and for the umpteenth time her muzzle scrunched in utter disgust—the tatters emanated an unbearable odour.
Both Oil and Ink cringed away from the elder as he moved closer to the fire—not as much to bask his ancient bones and ashes in the vestiges of warmth, but to let his gurgling whisper be heard over the malicious hiss of winter song.
A heavy, meaty thud heralded the arrival of another eel on a butcher’s block, the rickety table rattling under its weight. Above the pungent worm-fish a knife rose, a seemingly ruined and useless tool of deeply rusted steel. The dull but viciously jagged edge sawed through the thick crusted slime, through the uneven, deformed dark scales, ulcers and tumours into rancid flesh. Maggot-infested intestines spilt on the floor from the distended gut, adding to the pile of rotting eel carcases. Slabs of sickly pale unevenly chopped fillet found their place on corroded hooks, dripping foetorous blood on the pony below.
Still a blank flank but no longer a colt, matured by an unforgiving sordid life in the Tunnels, Fume grimly carved eel after eel. With deft and practised movements of calloused and bloodstained hooves, he absolved the decaying fish corpses of anything not too repugnant to consume.
That didn’t amount to much, yet it was still considerably more than most of the Canterlot dwellers got in terms of nutrition. Nor was there ever any shortage of fish as long as his brethren returned from the upper levels, bags laden with loot.
Fume only wished the eels didn’t reek so abhorrently.
Caught by the reclusive fishers of the deeper passages, the strange aquatic creatures tended to decay rapidly once their deformed bodies left the stagnant waters. Mayhaps, the rot those abominations fed on was quick to eat them from inside once their miserable existence was brought to a sorry end.
Hard and unpleasant the task of butchery was, Fume never complained, for he knew the alternative was acquiring goods to trade for the putrefying fish. The closer to the shining of Canterlot the musty tunnels lay, the less squalid the possessions of their inhabitants, and the more avariciously they guarded them. Many of the ponies he knew remained in the shadowed corners of the upper levels, muzzle-down in a puddle of blood—a common reward for thievery.
The newcomers were the only salvation for the tiny community struggling on the border betwixt the remains of civilization and the decadent abyss of the Deep Tunnels. Despite the promise of shelter and food, Fume had seen only a few joining the assemblage during his short lifetime.
It wasn’t the rogue nature of his sombre fraternity deterring even the unpicky underground wanderers, nor was it the living conditions of the damp and often collapsed passages leading to the domain of madness and void.
A strange disease plagued the neighbourhood with symptoms horrid, outcome singular, and cure absent.
The distribution of the preternatural blight was puzzling, as only young ponies seemed to develop hideous signs, yet sometimes a colt or a filly could live amongst the sick until silver shewed in their manes without a single manifestation of the malady. And very often it was hard to distinguish the ghastly infection as a steady diet of fish and watery weeds together with the damp and foul air ravaged and twisted the bodies no less abnormally.
Fume shifted, his tired hooves freeing themselves from the muck of eel viscera and filth. It was easier to work until Odd finally lost the battle with the mysterious plague.
The unkind name fit the timid colt fellow unnervingly well even before the onset of the illness. With an expression as black as his flank, he used to wander the moisture-blighted passages in brooding silence. Often he could be seen staring into space, the stubby swivelling ears betraying his attention—yet there was nothing to listen to but the murmur and gurgle of the distant and ever-present flow of water.
The change of Odd’s eyes, always seeming a bit too big for his narrow face, was the first sign of the sickness. Over the weeks they bulged out, gaining a lifeless glassy quality to them. Though it didn’t appear to render the poor colt completely blind, his movements certainly gained a clumsiness to them; mayhaps the swelling of his hooves was to blame.
His coat was the next on the chopping block of the pestilence. Red and balding, it seemed to flake at the slightest motions, revealing dark patches of skin, slick with unhealthy wetness. It coincided with the bizarre behaviour patterns becoming even more pronounced, the long walks carrying sickly limbs further than any ought to go—into the fishers’ grounds.
Though there were rumoured to be even more drastic and disturbing changes, it was the last of the taint’s unmistakable marks Fume was to witness before Odd disappeared from the settlement days ago.
Holding back bile, he deeply bit into an eel’s tail as the slime coating the putrid bodies fought back any gentler kinds of grasp. As the crude and heavy knife whistled through the reek of butchery, Fume shuddered—there was an uncanny resemblance in the expression of the dead fish’s gaze.
Some said the eels were poisonous, yet many a pony ate nought but the foul fish flesh for years without any too dire consequences. Mayhaps hunger won over reason and Odd had eaten something other than the pale jelly-like meat. And even the folks living around agreed on not drinking the murky water where malformed eels churned, no matter if boiled or not.
Fume’s ears flicked, reached by the sound of shambling steps and the dirty knife paused.
His father, the only parent he knew, stood in the doorway, old haunted eyes starting to glow with the same expression visiting them every time the aged stallion looked at his son.
Hatred and fear.
“Fume,” he rambled, his voice grim. “You are old enough to bring fish.”
A bag full of stolen things landed on the floor with a soft clatter, meant to be carried by another denizen of the shunned settlement.
“Where is Iron Twig?”
“Now.”
The young stallion suppressed a heavy sigh—until the ember eyes bore into him no more—and left the room reeking of noxious blood and decomposing fish corpses, grasping the shoulder strap of the bag with his teeth.
For a reason he knew not himself, Fume glanced back and met his father's eyes. There was a suggestion of something different in the fiery depths.
Pity.
Swinging the goods over his shoulder, Fume stomped away.
His despondent march was met with the numerous eyes of his brethren huddling close to the weak fire caged into half-crumbled barrels full of barely burnable refuse. Some of the gazes were of an approving, almost anticipating quality, belonging to those who never shewed any hesitation for the miserable meals served locally. Others loathed him, for the way of community seemed abhorrent to those newcomers. Many followed him vacantly with their narrow faces if at all, the bulging eyes unblinkingly staring at Fume from the dancing shadows.
Dismayingly soon the familiar tracts ceded to the mould of barely visited iters.
Another reason for infrequent visits from the outside world was in how hidden from it the ill-fated community was. Though it didn’t suffer the curse of the Deep, only those who grew up in those semi-flooded, semi-collapsed passages could navigate their maze. With more dead-ends than not, places where one had to wade through viscous gleed for long minutes, tunnels submerged in near-absolute darkness, the traversal was perilous at best.
The weirdest thing of all was the simplest—water. Disturbingly greenish and puzzlingly warm it never trickled from above, but seemed to come from below, claiming tunnel after tunnel as it collapsed sections of the floor into the dark abyss.
Fume’s curious eyes fell on one such adit and caught sight of dark forms shifting in the jade murk—too large to be eels unless the light played tricks on his mind. Steering clear from the ominous recesses, he came to stop before the last flight of stairs belonging to the domain of reason.
Even during the rare playful moments of his solemn colthood, his little hooves never carried him this far, though they explored every passage of this locale. Past the unsuspicious descent lay a network of evershifting roads leading as deep as one dared to venture, but rarely back. He only needed to take a few steps from the slippery stairs and participate in a brief exchange, but the prospect still terrified him.
He knew not a single thing about the fishers.
They were never openly talked about amongst those whose living depended on them; the only bits of knowledge were speculations of ponies who gave the isolated community a wide berth.
There was a persistent rumour of fishers’ preternatural biology as they were said to refuse no part of the eels as a meal, thus mutating their bodies—a common trait for the Deep Tunnels’ dwellers—beyond recognition, gifting them enviable survivability and longevity.
Another speculation was of equinoids who rejected the favour of the Machine Goddess and exiled themselves into the depths so merciless to metal—mayhaps it was why the fishers preferred plastic, metal and glass to be brought to them regularly.
An old ridiculous song came to Fume’s mind, a few words whispered by a passing traveller before she vanished the day after never to be seen again.
“Shoo be Doo! Shoo Shoo!
Call Upon the Sea Ponies!”
Hesitant and uneasy steps carried the young stallion into a barely lit dank tunnel and the first thing that met him was an overwhelming reek of fish impetuously hitting his nostrils; he noted, there was a distinct undertone of salt to the familiar foetor.
The damp passage of indeterminable nature, so deteriorated it was, appeared to be surprisingly short with one end long collapsed, the debris bristling with pale lichen; to the other side the floor was gradually flooded until there was nothing to see under the reflective surface—the plunge to a bottomless abyss waited there.
It also was the only source of light—an eerie radiance of phosphorescent algae cast trembling shadows on the walls overgrown with the strangest things—neither moss nor mushrooms; the bizarre vegetation seemed to be indifferent to where to grow—on moisture-slick stone or submerged.
Every fibre of Fume’s being screamed at him to leave that preternatural place, yet something deep inside guided his hooves closer to the luminous still water.
It soothed his countless itches with its warm embrace, it rippled lazily as he was both bewitched and conflicted, he waded further into the cyan glow until he stopped at the very edge hanging above the unfathomable depth.
A reflection looked at him worryingly.
Ravaged by uneasy life, Fume wasn’t far from having an appearance as forbidding as that of his lost friend Odd. Usually ignorant of it—there weren’t many shining surfaces—he was suddenly faced with an image of utmost repugnancy.
The longer he stared with his wide unblinking eyes into the horrid reflection, the more hideous it seemed to become, transforming into the disgusting physique of an eel, the twisted features became more distinct and sharp with every erratic heartbeat.
The image broke through the water soundlessly.
Water quietly dripped from the veil of long translucent fins plastered to a dark scale body like it was a wet mane. Slow and hypnotizing motions of slender limbs, ending in perpetually expanding and contracting fan-like bony paddles where the hooves should be, held the sleek form afloat along with a hidden in murk frighteningly long and narrow undulating tail. On the smooth surface of an elegant neck, deep crimson gashes gaped in a rhythm with breaths filling the air with the head-spinning stench of fish and something much more distant and deep, belonging to the pelagic gulfs.
Whatever expression the dark lips on the narrow muzzle tried to convey, it was lost in the shadow of abundant razor-sharp little teeth and the eldritch light of a glowing orb hanging from the growth on the slant forehead—a mockery of a unicorn horn.
Large, mire-coloured eyes gazed at Fume serenely, burning with an emotion he knew not—as strong as hate of his father.
She shifted closer to the stallion, her smile if it can be called so, widening slightly.
That broke the spell and the bag full of assorted trinkets splashed into the water to be echoed with frantic splashes of hooves.
The muscle memory alone of those young limbs carried Fume back from the passages abdicating their ground to the malevolent waters and the unholy beings inhabiting them. When the grounds, claimed by diseased and desperation, no longer surrounded the senseless stallion, he didn’t stop, an overwhelming urge to distance himself from the endless depth under Canterlot driving him skywards.
When Fume finally burst out the hatch dividing the yawning Tartarus from the masquerade of civilisation, and the Sun he witnessed for the first time in his miserable existence blinded him, an animalistic scream escaped his throat.
It was cut short by the gavel of justice—a blue-armoured hoof struck his head, awarding a sentence and knocking him out.
Even the impudent tendrils of cold didn’t stop Oil and Ink from cringing away from the fire demanding intimacy. The young mare used it as an excuse to venture into the bowels of the dead furnace for its still boiling blood.
However, his story finished, Fume shifted back from the embers, the pungent odour of fish abating.
As Ink returned to the coals, she heard a whisper almost indistinguishable from the agonal howls of wind:
“Once the winter is over I shall return home. My ma must be still waiting for me.”
The bright fresh embers pulsed amongst the slag, benevolently sharing their warmth as they turned moribund. Three faces reflected that scintillation, though only the youngest paid any attention to it—others paid attention to her.
Ink Chasm basked in the elusive comfort before it was stolen from her for many an hour. Her ears flicked, searching for certain sounds, but heard nothing novel in the ceaseless chorus of frost and misery.
Ultimately, she let out a long sigh and glanced at her companions.
“This is my story…”
A crack like thunder boomed deafeningly when the door dividing the dead of the furnace and the dead of the Edge unceremoniously opened, letting in piercing gusts of wicked wind.
Oil stood up abruptly and in the blink of an eye her rigid form was joined by two submachine guns. The group of ponies who just brazenly pried open the frozen coffin of industry sported an unmistakable colouration of their armours—purposely formless, yet still distinct smudges of tangerine; something Oil missed on the protective vestments of hers.
An impressively massive unicorn ordered his peers armed with shovels and buckets:
“Find the smelter and take all that’s burning; there has to be some.”
“Stop!” Oil yelled, and the members of a gang paused in their tracks, confused. “Where are you taking that coal?”
His gun unsheathed, the stallion barked back, “That is none of your business.”
“Where?” she demanded, the weaponry on her sides moving in preparation.
“To the food storage—it belongs to Orange Grime now.” Undaunted, the unicorn gave Oil an appraising look. “Abandon your pathetic gang and you may join us.”
It wasn’t the young mare who replied to the invitation but her guns.
However, the burst of leaden death missed the intended target, only a few of the bullets finding something other than ice and walls; even those harmlessly ricocheted off the orange-coloured armours.
The shovels fell to the ground with a clatter to be replaced by firearms.
The conversation went on, its language switching to that of death.
Leaden messengers of perdition whistled around, blooming with spurts of blood in bodies too slow to flee, adding two new instruments to the orchestra of doom—drums of gunfire and violins of panicked screams.
A shot exploded in Fume’s tatters, the ancient body crumpling on the floor, noxious ichor hissing against the embers. It went still only for a blink of an eye and then slivered away in the most disturbing worm-like fashion with a speed unnatural for a wretch that decrepit.
Oil shrieked and clutched her shoulder, the rattling of her guns ceasing momentarily. When it began anew, she was already limping and in doing so she grabbed cowering Ink, dragging her into the darkness.
The two of them burst out of the industrial sepulchre to the accompaniment of a door clapping. They hesitated to plunge into the whirlwind of perilous snow, but as raging screams from behind cut through the howling merciless wind, Oil and Ink stumbled into the deep snow.
The blizzard knew no mercy, striving to erase everything with violent torrents of sharp snowflakes. Whatever dared to stand against the ceaseless storm was buried under the ever-growing snowbanks.
Somewhere in that chaos of swirling white other furnaces spasmodically smouldered, saving countless lives of the Junkyard’s prisoners with their dead throes. In that neither night nor day—the endless winter seized the heavens—that part of the Edge was little different from the Deep Tunnels, for only those with the strength of heart to press through the maze of frozen rust until the end wouldn’t meet it as another part of the vast graveyard.
At first, the older pony nearly effortlessly waded through the sea of white, yet soon the filly began to outpace her and eventually she had to stop and return. The wounded mare collapsed into the snow, painting the immaculate canvas with crimson.
Ink held Oil in her hooves as dark glass eyes reflected the starless sky and blue lips dewing the snow with blood blabbered:
“I can… see… it… so cold…but… it burns…”
The filly left the winter to tend the unnamed grave—it had already begun to weave a blanket to gently cover the still body.
The drifts of snow threatened to swallow the tiny form audaciously blemishing the purity of alabaster death. Yet she refused to stop, simply trudging onwards at a stubbornly steady pace. For a single moment, a sturdy dark outline shewed itself amongst the sheets of ice—a promise.
Stiff hooves gave up and Ink fell muzzle first into the deep snow. When she dug herself out of the generously offered grave, the mirage was gone. She clenched her jaw—she could make it this time, she just needed a moment of respite.
The spokes of mechanical god-slaves towered above the shivering filly, leering at Ink as rime devoured the remains of corroded machinery. They proved almost no cover from the rising tide of snow.
A numb hoof readjusted tatters on her chest. When it defeatedly fell, the snow underneath the worn horseshoe was red.
Bullet wounds gaped into the tumultuous sky.
Ink closed her eyes—she hadn’t been so lucky before. They still stung along with a deep cut across her neck, but at least she managed to escape the gang members this time around.
Tears welled, but they were denied leaving warm trails on gaunt cheeks, turning into rims of rime on a lifeless dark muzzle.
She gazed at the roaring sky full of the restless clouds of hoar, those ancient stillborn things threshing in the dead heaven where they were its masters. It was the same frozen void she looked at an eternity ago and prayed to, whimpering words she wanted to take back more than anything.
“I don’t want to die.”
And a cold wind blew.
Author's Note
There is no good objective reason warranting posting this story separately from other Aftersound side stories and some might fairly note that it’s one month late. More than a bit experimental and different in its goal—not as much the expanding Aftersoundverse, but simply existing as is—it deserves to be uploaded aside from the rest. As for the date of posting… it’s the first day of winter here.
If you notice any mistakes sneaked in through the editing, let me know.
Stay awesome.
