There is a city, hidden amongst the mountains so high that pegasi can’t fly over them, that bears the terrible name Necropolis. Yet, despite its name, it is not the fabled city of the living dead but rather one of the dying.
And until recently, nopony knew it even existed. No-one knows how old it is, whence it came from, or by who’s hoof the first stone was laid. Veritably little is known of this city, hidden right within plain sight, including its population.
To uncover the latter, Princess Celestia, fortunately, had the Civil Service.
Red Tape, a freshly minted census taker, 32, male, engaged and with a baby on the way, had been called from his hometown of Littleton to the Capital and was to embark by train to the far-off metropolis. Having received his mission, he left the Castle with a silent vow to his fiancee that he would return intact, body and mind. The first thing he met nearly made him break that promise.
Red Tape had been trotting a cobblestone street, a nearby sign claiming it to be the Hurricanean Way — the road indeed looking as if a hurricane had passed on it — when an inebriated wagon puller suddenly swerved towards him. Red Tape managed to fling himself out of the way just in the nick of time. He landed painfully on the stone curb. The wagon swept past him and continued bouncing on the uneven road, barely not to crashing into anything. Red Tape would never come to know of the puller's sentencing or how the stallion had been run bankrupt and penniless just days before.
He got up, brushed off any dirt on his clothes, made sure his saddlebags were still secured and pressed on.
The sun was shining from on high, glaring, oppressive. Red Tape kept up a brisk pace, every once in a while laying a look at his wristwatch. He kept a close look at his surroundings to avoid straying.
The facades of the buildings — mostly brick tenements and the occasional corner store — were all dulled and browned and in various states of disrepair. The air smelled of propellent and cheap paint, yet Red Tape came across no maintenance being done on any of the buildings on the main road. He didn’t dare venture into the side alleys. Most of the houses were void of ponies. The stores even more often so.
That isn’t to say the houses were completely empty; several of the buildings had broken windows or holes in their walls that Red Tape could easily have peeked through had he so desired. There were sounds within. Namely meowing. He didn’t quite grasp the scale of it until he accidentally walked into a dead-end.
There came a rasp behind him. A guttural cough. Red Tape went stiff and sent a silent prayer to his fiancee as he turned around.
The sight shocked him to the core.
It had three tiny paws and seemed to be having trouble standing. To him, it looked like it had been run through a digestive tract and then regurgitated. Its coat was missing chunks where the skin had been discolored by boils and/or crust. It’s eyes had been inflamed shut, but it had obviously heard him since it had managed to turn in his direction. And it was meowing, definitely, although it was a quiet and a wet sound.
It was then that Red Tape realized he had yet to see one sign for a doctor’s clinic, let alone a veterinarian. He couldn’t recall a pharmacy, a fire station, or a guard outpost, and he had been walking for several dozen city blocks. He could hear sirens, but they were far away — too distant to make out whether it was an ambulance, a patrol wagon, or a security alarm.
Red Tape stepped closer to the kitten. The meowing got slightly louder. When he was on top of the kitten, it rolled into a ball and tried to swipe at him. Red Tape got as close a look as he could without getting scratched. No collar. He couldn't get close enough to lift the feral without either himself or the kitten getting hurt.
Careful of the kitten, Red Tape sidestepped around it and started looking along the road for a guard station or an animal pound. Some blocks off, he came across a grown cat, similarly colored as the kitten, with a litter trailing behind it. When he tried to take a closer look if this one had a collar, the cat raised its haunches, hissed, and tried to claw him until he backed away. Neither did it understand when he tried to get it to follow him.
The watch in his wrist kept ticking. Louder and louder. Red Tape sighed and continued towards the train station.
He came across many more felines and even some dogs. The susurrus from the alleyways spoke of rodents. Very few birds. The ponies he did his best to ignore, keeping only track of them off the corner of his eye and careful not to let them catch him looking. Some of them were walking. Many were lying or sitting down by the curb, with hats or other pieces of clothing in front of them. Some had signs. Some tried to catch his eye, at which point he’d speed up his pace.
As he walked, the brick houses began to thin. In their place came wooden shanties and, eventually, shelters made of seemingly anything somepony had got their hooves on. Far above, Red Tape could see the highest spires, the city's towering skyscrapers at its heart. They shone white when the sun landed on them at just the right angle. He stopped to wonder how far away they looked.
Then Red Tape came to an intersection that had no houses on it, only a small square. The ground had obviously been stomped flat and primed with concrete for building, but was now in desperate need of a gardener. Surrounding the open area were buildings with their walls missing or that were covered in vines and moss. The one closest to him was only a skeleton, a lattice of rusted steel. Whether unfinished or just forgotten, he didn’t know. A filly was playing in the dirt, stomping on chalked squares.
He was supposed to make a right, but he stopped when his eyes landed on his first graffiti. Or his first two, actually: two separate, distinct colour-schemes — logos, perhaps — had taken over the entire square. They were on the beams, on the leftover walls of the ruined buildings, once or twice on the ground. Most often they were on top of one another. He couldn't look away, whether amazed or perhaps revolted, he wasn’t sure. Red Tape kept staring until he realized that there were no other ponies on the square. No sound other than the filly’s giggles.
Like lightning from the clear sky, light flashed in his vision. His ears were bombarded with noises from the depths of Tartarus. Again, Red Tape rolled away and covered his head.
The sound of wagon wheels cut above the rest of the cacophony. Whirring, whizzing, rusted. Something exploded, but the wheels kept on rolling. Running hooves, more explosions. Voices yelling. Obscenities and words he'd never heard before. Red Tape kept his eyes closed and skirted away on his belly.
A small eternity passed before silence returned.
Red Tape opened his eyes. The air was misty with smog and smelled of sulfur: sour and acrid and dry enough to make him sneeze. Past the fog, the outline of the building-frame had now a gaping hole in its lattice. The metal beams glowed a magical purple and blue, but it didn’t look like the structure was in danger of collapsing. Black smoke billowed from the rocks, leftover walls, and the chalked playing field, like from extinguished candles. Red Tape got up, shook himself off all the dust. His ears rang.
The filly wasn’t playing anymore. And suddenly, he was galloping.
Her eyes were scrunched shut. So tight the folds of skin looked like wrinkles. Lips pursed like she’d bit a lemon. She wasn’t speaking. She wasn’t making any sound other than that which came from her squirming in his hooves and her shuddering breath.
One of her legs was a stump. There was no blood — he could have been fooled into thinking that she had just been born with a leg that was half shorter than the others. The point directly on the kneecap, where it usually is the most delicate and tender, the skin had been clean-shaven of any fur and cauterized by the lingering blue aura. Red Tape could almost feel it sizzling.
There were sirens somewhere far, far away. Farther than his voice could carry. The sulfur was in his throat.
Eventually, the filly stilled, and then there were both more ponies on the square than there needed to be, and not enough.
All around him, from inside garbage cans and cardboard boxes, from shanties and hovels, ponies were coming out of their hideyholes. They came to him. It was a violent area, they said, the locals. They took the filly from his hooves, and one even loaned him their doormat, with which he could wipe some of the grit on him. The well had no water in it, so it had to do. They then wrapped the filly in it.
He watched them carry her away. Had it been somewhere else, anyplace else, maybe even elsewhere in the same city, that filly would have been raising her missing forehoof to ask the teacher how to subtract. Red Tape knew that he could be wrong — she could have been older. She had just felt so light in his hooves.
The locals condoled him. Asked him to come in, offered shelter — it was bound to rain eventually. His throat hurt to reply, so most often he just didn’t. He had a job to do, and so Red Tape turned towards the right.
Before he could take even a step forward, a pony approached him with a hoof outstretched, saying he was the filly’s close family. Red Tape reached into his saddlebags, which had gained a generous new coating of dirt, and fished out what spare change he had. He'd planned on buying some snacks for the train ride, but right then he wasn’t feeling very hungry.
Then another pony stepped up, also claiming to be a relative. Red Tape had no more money left to give, so the pony asked for his clothes. Red Tape finally began to notice the mass of ponies converging on him. Red Tape started taking steps. Big steps. Through the skin of his saddlebag, he felt somepony snake their forehoof in, and he had to wrench the bag away. Then he had to yank free his forehoof with his watch. He picked up the pace until he was almost running. Shouting. Exclamations. Red Tape did his best to block it all out, but for all he tried, all of it, he just couldn’t.
Up ahead, a young stallion was waving a forehoof, calling him to follow him left. For a short second, Red Tape felt relieved. Then he realized the pony was pointing in the direction of a dead-end. Somepony else's horn was peeking out from behind the corner, aura ignited. Red Tape closed his eyes and, barreling through the crowd, he galloped right.
The rest of the way, Red Tape steered clear of the alleyways, dead-ends, and hinterlands. He only stuck to main roads, the ones big enough for wagons. Not once did he stop to catch his breath. He kept his eyes down. He reckoned he’d seen enough.
It was then that Red Tape finally reached the train station. There were several train terminals in Canterlot. But while Canterlot was a very large city, the biggest one in the country, really, there had been only one to accept any incoming or outgoing trains to Necropolis — the locals were a superstitious lot.
The train ride was bumpy, and the walk from the station, which was in the middle of nowhere, draining.
The buildings were dulled. Brown or gray. Windows had been boarded or had holes in them. Most houses were empty. Ponies were dying on the streets. On a square, a drunk driver had crashed into a broken wall and the wagon had caught fire. Ponies were busy trying to put it out with dusty blankets because the well was dry. Cats and dogs were everywhere, graffiti in places he didn’t dare venture. Red Tape made a quick roundtrip of his designated part of the city on the first day, and before the week was done, he was back on board the train to the Capital.
To his lifelong grief, Red Tape had to conclude his report to the Princess with the words:
It was a city like any other.
Author's Note
Thank you for reading
