Equestria’s rail system was a wonder of the world. A carefully-tuned web of wood and steel, it crisscrossed the country so thoroughly that one could reach just about anywhere in the nation from anywhere else within a week. New lines went up so frequently that it seemed like a long-abandoned temple, lost to the mists of time for eons, would have a station up and running mere days after its rediscovery, complete with gift shop. Distant backwaters were connected to urban megacenters flawlessly and even the most complicated trip could be managed for under a hundred bits.
But Equestria was a big place. Connecting far-flung reaches like that often meant laying track across mile after mile after mile of barren wastes where no one and nothing lived, where it would take hours to see any sign of non-railroad-related civilization. Glacial plains, gloomy forests, blasted deserts, frigid mountains, and more, all of this had to be crossed for the most direct routes.
Equestrian rail production prevailed, of course, as it always did. But it didn’t make traveling through those lonesome regions any less depressing.
It was across one of these wastelands that a train streaked, its headlamp piercing through the dark, the thunder of its wheels breaking the stillness. It sped through the foothills of the Unicorn Range, into the mountains, heading north. It was a short train, less than half a dozen cars long, yet its cargo was of utmost importance.
Less than twelve hours ago, the Royal Guard had conducted an emergency raid on a secretive necromantic cult, almost a decade old. The target of the raid: the cult’s founder, two decades dead, five years inanimate. Her remains were preserved in a magic-rich sarcophagus, tethering her to this world until her followers could raise her again. The raid had been aimed at disrupting a ritual that would resurrect the founder and bring the cult into greater power than ever before.
They succeeded, but with heavy losses.
Now, after the commandeering of a train, the sarcophagus was being whisked away from those who would misuse it, away to a safe place, watched over by the survivors of the raid. Time was of the essence, and so the quickest route took the train right through these remote hills, with nothing but frigid air and gnarled trees and rocky hills for leagues.
Just a few guards, a few crew, and one artifact steeped in black magic speeding through the middle of nowhere.
They made the most of it.
Even with the rattling of the carriage, the clinking of the dice across the tabletop was audible. Rye Stalk pushed his helmet up out of his eyes again and grinned at what he saw. “Ha! Yahtzee! Again!”
“Oh, come on!” Grapevine leaned over the table, using her spear to prop herself up “That’s- No way anyone’s that lucky. It’s- It’s the movement of the train, it’s gotta be.” Her wings twitched restlessly. Almost as if to punctuate her words, a bend in the route sent the flickering lamp above them swinging.
“Well, it sure ain’t magic!” Rye waved a hoof above his head to emphasize his lack of a horn. “Yahtzee.”
Snorting, Grapevine collapsed back into her chair and muttered, “I swear, if you weren’t…” Her voice degenerated into angry mutterings as she ran her hoof up and down the spearpoint, still crusted with dried blood.
“But I am! So ha ha,” said Rye, smiling broadly. After sparing a moment to rub his hoof on his golden armor, he jotted down his new score on the note sheet.
“Will you two kiss already?” drawled Osteon, not even looking up from his book. “I’ve been tired of hearing this for the past hour. And believe me, this isn’t an exaggeration. For you see…” With a twist of his magic, he twirled a watch on the end of a chain at them. “…I’ve been keeping track.”
Rye squinted at the symbol on the watch’s lid, an armored pegasus in flight, silhouetted against the moon. “Hey, that’s… Does Lily know you have her watch?”
“Her watch. Right.” Osteon turned a page and smirked. “Not really. If she wants it, she can take it from me.”
“Careful,” said Grapevine. “She might take you up on that offer. Or Tusk might.”
“Heh. I’m counting on it.”
The carriage was old and drafty, but it could hold ponies, and that was what counted. It was an old passenger car, with most of the seats ripped up or pushed aside to make room for cargo. Boxes of supplies were piled up to the ceiling in the front half of the car, blocking out the windows, and more were scattered around the rear half. The open space had just enough room for some chairs and a table. But then, not much room was needed. On the whole train, there were just these three ponies, two more on patrol, and two more responsible for the engine. A skeleton crew if ever there was one. Particularly since they were guarding a near-skeleton.
“Alright,” muttered Grapevine. She scooped the dice into the cup and began rattling them around. “Let’s see if we can’t-”
The door to the rear of the train opened and a short unicorn mare in slightly-too-big armor stumbled in, followed by an earth stallion. “Um, hey,” said the mare, one Black Lily. “Does, has anypony seen my watch? You know, the one with-”
“Osteon’s got it,” Rye said immediately, pointing.
“Way to ruin the fun,” groaned Osteon. He held up the watch by its chain, letting it swing back and forth from the sway of the cars.
Lily opened her mouth, but the stallion, Razor Tusk, practically exploded before she could get a word out. “Are you kidding me?” he yelled. He stomped over to Osteon, his hooves leaving dents in the floor from the impact. “Do you know how long we’ve been searching for that stupid thing?”
Osteon glanced at the watch. “No more than nineteen minutes and thirty-nine, forty, forty-one-”
“Give it back,” Lily said, her voice level. “It’s mine.”
Osteon held the watch out. “Come and get it.”
A hush fell over the group as Osteon and Lily looked at each other, broken up only by the rattle of the train and the whistling wind. Grapevine’s dice-shaking quickly slowed to nothing.
“C’mon, really?” Lily snorted. “You saw how I handled myself during the raid.”
“I did,” said Osteon. “Come get this yourself.” He slowly swung the watch back and forth.
Silence. Everyone was looking at either Osteon or Lily. She slowly moved one of her hooves to the belt around her trunk, where a dagger was stowed. Osteon kept looking forward so intently he had to be pretending to not notice. Rye and Grapevine exchanged glances.
Suddenly, Tusk’s hoof snapped up, faster than one would think possible in his armor, and he decked Osteon across the face. He lost control of his magic and the watch dropped to the floor as he tumbled onto a box; Tusk promptly scooped the watch up and tossed it over to Lily, who snatched it from the air. “I’m sure you’ve been having a swell time,” he growled at Osteon, “but I just spent ages looking for that stupid thing up and down this stupid train and my legs and neck ache. Have your little macho-off when you’re the one suffering for it.”
“Thanks,” Lily said quietly, tucking the watch into a pouch on her armor. She tried tightening her straps some more to get it to fit better, but they were already so tight further efforts didn’t do much. “But I could’ve handled it by myse-”
“No, you couldn’t’ve.” Osteon was already standing back up, not looking remotely inconvenienced by the blow. “By the time you’d psyched yourself up, we’d already be off the train and moving the sarcophagus.”
Lily started reaching for her dagger again. “You wanna bet?” she asked.
“Sure,” said Osteon. “How much? I’m thinking-”
“YAHTZEE!” bellowed Grapevine, making everypony jump.
Rye quickly looked at the table, but didn’t see any dice. He looked up; Grapevine was still holding the cup. He opened his mouth, only for her to cut him off. “It shut everyone up,” she said, shrugging. (Lily and Osteon glared at each other; Lily put everypony else between herself and him.) She rattled the cup, removed her hoof, and sent the dice bouncing across the table.
As she went through the actions of rolling and choosing dice, Rye leaned close to Tusk. “So how’s the sarcophagus doing?”
“Eh…” Tusk wiggled his hoof. “So-so. The ritual took a lot out of it. There’s just enough left to keep the founder alive, but only barely.”
“Hmm.”
“It could go either way, really. We just need some downtime to make sure it falls the way we want it to. And supplies.” Tusk looked around the carriage and winced. “We’ve got barely any implements to work with magic and the sarcophagus is so thaumatically stable… Lily did her best and she couldn’t get the magic levels to move up or down.”
“Hmm.” Rye hadn’t bothered to remember the fine details of the sarcophagus’s construction, something he was now deeply regretting. “But it’s not likely to change before we reach Mill Fork, right?”
“Stop worrying,” said Tusk flatly. “This is, what, the fourth time you’ve asked that? We’ll be fine. Nothing’s happening to that hunk of rock.”
Sighing, Rye collapsed back in his chair. Tusk was right, but he just couldn’t help himself. He and his comrades had expended so much effort to get this far, then nearly lost it all, and now it felt like they were all teetering on a knife’s edge between whether the sarcophagus’s magic would replenish itself and let the cult rise again or just bleed out. Of course he’d be nervous; it was a slim margin between victory and defeat.
He glanced out the window, at the landscape passing by. As they climbed into the mountains, they could see more of the land spread out beneath them, but forests were pretty much the only thing of note. Probably the only civilization all the way to the horizon were earth pony hermits, rejecting the cities to be in tune with the land (Rye sympathized; he wasn’t particularly fond of cities). The moon hung in the sky above them, bright and whi-
Rye sat up and stared. Something had just flashed in front of the moon. Only for a second, but he’d seen a large shadow. It’d been oddly shaped, angular yet almost flowing, and moving quickly. And big, maybe? It was hard to tell the size of something in the air. What was it?
Eh. Probably just a magical bird. Arcane wildlife could get big and weird.
“Gah, sun blast it,” growled Grapevine. She ferociously scribbled something down on her scorepad. “Could’ve had a yahtzee, but noooooo, had to be off by one stupid dice…” Then she grinned. “Still ahead of you, though.”
“Die,” Rye said.
Grapevine rolled her eyes. “Can’t do that until-”
“No, the singular of ‘dice’ is ‘die’. Two dice. One die.” Rye scooped up his multiple copies of a die and began shaking the cup.
“Hah. Can you imagine being a dice nerd?”
“Dice goblin, actually. They’re like dice nerds, but worse.” Rye turned the cup over, letting the dice bounce across the-
Thump.
Rye’s head snapped up, his ears quivering. “Did you hear that?” he asked quietly. The air suddenly felt very cold.
“Hear what?” asked Tusk casually.
“Something landed on the train,” Rye whispered. Something big.
He’d barely escaped the raid with his life. He knew what his enemies were capable of, in their desperation. He’d seen the ways his friends and allies had died. And now, the idea that they were still being followed… He hadn’t imagined that simple idea could hold so much weight for him, but terror sparked his nerves and made his legs jittery.
Unless he was imagining things.
Right?
“Really?” Tusk glanced upwards. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Me, neither,” said Lily.
Right. Rye breathed a sigh of relief.
“No, I think I heard it, too,” said Grapevine slowly.
Scratch that.
“I mean, I thought it was just the wheels at first,” she continued, “but then he mentioned it, and… y-yeah.” Her ears twitched as her eyes flicked upward. “There’s something on here.”
Silence. But where Rye and Grapevine were anxious, Lily and Tusk were shooting each other skeptical looks while Tusk didn’t move from his book. Rye had the distinct feeling of being one of the few people to acknowledge that the ship they were on was sinking. He cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t we do something?”
“Do what?” asked Tusk. “Walk up and down the train again looking for something that probably isn’t even there?”
“Maybe, yeah! We can’t be too careful!”
“Oh, for the love of…”
“Look, if you’re right and I’m wrong, we just do some annoying patrolling and it’s no biggie! But if I’m right and you’re wrong…”
“What could even be on here?”
“I don’t know! Something! It’s always the I-don’t-knows that get you!” Rye didn’t even fully know the magic their opponents were capable of, especially not in these days, when powerful mages seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork. “Remember, just before the raid, we thought-”
Osteon sighed and stretched his legs. “If you’re going to complain about this so much, I’ll take care of it,” he half-groaned. He tossed his book aside, jumped from his chair, and arched his back like a cat.
“You’re sure?” Rye asked. His mind kept conjuring up worse and worse monsters. He knew it was paranoia. That didn’t help. “What if-”
“Hey.” Osteon flicked some imaginary dust from his armor. “I’ll be fine.” His horn shimmered for a moment as he winked at Rye, then he set off towards the front of the train.
Rye and Grapevine looked at each other again. Grapevine pointed after Osteon with a wing. “Should we…?”
“No,” said Lily flatly. “He said he’ll be fine. If he isn’t, oh well.”
“And to be fair, if any of us ran into something bad alone, he’d probably be the one to survive,” conceded Tusk. “Did you see the way he fought during the raid?”
“Yeah,” said Rye quietly, “but…”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Lily, her tone more one of not caring than of confidence. She walked over to a window, sat down on a box, and looked out at the night.
Rye and Grapevine looked at each other, their game forgotten. Grapevine glanced after Osteon and cleared her throat. Under her breath, she said, “Really, though. I, I think he’ll be okay.”
“Maybe, but maybe we oughta go after him anyway,” said Rye.
“Yeah, but you know how he’ll react.” But Grapevine’s words couldn’t sound more hollow. It was simpler than that: she just didn’t want to go out and get her head pulled off. Staying here was safer. She hadn’t signed up for this. None of them had.
“Is avoiding that worth him maybe dying?”
Grapevine bit her lip and looked away.
“Maybe it’s nothing,” said Rye, “but if it is, it-”
Through the far door, something screamed.
Rye was up in an instant, running for the door, awkwardly jinking around crates and seats. The others were close behind him, but he barely noticed them. “Osteon!” he yelled.
Another scream, wet ripping. Rye’s nose twitched, vague scents already tickling his nostrils. Something thudded and Rye thought heard footsteps running away. He muscled his way through the door, his earth pony strength shattering it in an instant.
The smell hit him first.
Rye forced his gallop to slow, even as the others bumped into him. Osteon was slumped against the wall halfway down the car in his own little wreckage, bloody gashes ripped open across his chest, his armor nearly torn apart. He was still alive — Rye could even hear his wet, ragged breathing — but from the amount of blood he’d already lost and was still losing, he wouldn’t be for much longer. Blood pooled around him and continued to flow from his wounds, unevenly, in time with his heartbeat. The smell was awful, like nothing else, almost physically assaulting Rye.
“Osteon!” Rye picked his way around the boxes and was quickly at Osteon’s side. He could hear the others coming up behind him, but his attention was only on one pony. “What, what do you need?” He knew the question was stupid before it’d even left his mouth. Osteon was too far gone.
“They’re… here…” wheezed Osteon. He coughed; globules of bloodstained spit dangled from his lips. “Coming for… founder…” He lifted an unsteady hoof to shakily point towards the front of the train, following a trail of bloody footprints.
Then his hoof dropped to the ground and his head lolled forward.
Grapevine gasped and Tusk cursed under his breath. Rye felt like he was frozen. Two minutes ago, just two minutes, everything was fine. Now, they were already a pony down with something on board, and they didn’t even know what it was. Some kind of monster summoned from beyond, from the looks of Osteon’s wounds. What could they do?
Protect the sarcophagus. They needed to do that, regardless of anything else. But the monster was heading for the engine, so…
Deep breath. “A-alright, here’s the plan,” Rye said, surprised by his own voice. “You two-” He pointed at Tusk and Lily. “You hold back and protect the caboose, keep the… whatever from getting to the sarcophagus. Grapevine and I will keep pushing forward, make this monster pay for killing Osteon, and keep it from taking the engine.”
Lily took a step back and bit her lip. “I’m not sure splitting up is…”
“If we lose the sarcophagus, all this was for nothing,” said Rye. “If it stops the train, there’s nowhere we can go. We can’t put all our eggs in one basket. This is the best way to do it.” He looked at everypony in turn. “Unless one of you has a better idea?”
The only sound was the rattle of the train and the shuffling of hooves.
Rye swore inside. He’d hoped someone would be smarter than him. Well, no turning back now. He waved Tusk and Lily away. “Then get to it.” The pair hesitantly nodded, then exited the rear door.
Grapevine suddenly spoke up. “Wait. What if the… thing doubles back over the roof?”
Rye glanced up. Yes, that was a possibility. “Tusk and Lily could probably handle it,” he said. “But…” A spark had lit up in his mind. “If we take both ways and it tries to go back, whichever way it takes will run into one of us and we can catch it in a pincer movement.” Any advantage they could get.
“Huh. Yeah, that could work,” said Grapevine. She still looked nervous, but she sounded more sure of herself. “Didn’t even think of that. You want the roof or should I take it?”
“You. Wings.”
“Got it.” Grapevine ran to the back door, then Rye could hear the clinks as she climbed up a ladder to the train roof. Satisfied, he turned forward. Towards whatever awaited him.
Alone.
He swallowed, glanced down at the bloody footprints (still glistening, still wet), adjusted his armor, and managed to leave Osteon’s body behind.
He carefully opened the forward door. The car was empty except for rows of seats; flickering light gems swung from the ceiling, letting the blood on the floor stand out all the more and making the shadows twist around. The tracks continued straight on, never deviating from that line. Rye followed, even as he kept glancing at the seats in case something was hiding there.
As he walked through the next car (still empty, still showing wet footprints), Rye tried to imagine just what they were dealing with without going overboard. It could fly, probably. He’d heard it land on the train. Thankfully, it wasn’t so big that it couldn’t fit inside a train car; in fact, going by the size of the footprints, it was probably only a little bit bigger than a pony. And, okay, so Osteon had been sliced up. Claws or spines or something. But Osteon had only had that happen because he’d been surprised, right? Had to be. Rye and Grapevine and all the rest, though, they were ready. This creature wasn’t much bigger than them. They could do this.
Next car. Still empty and dimly lit, but it wasn’t quite as threatening anymore. Step by step, as he turned the facts over, Rye felt ever so slightly more emboldened by his thoughts, until he was ready for anything by the time he’d crossed the car. Besides, he was an earth pony, capable of bucking a carriage a hundred feet into the air. This was nothing. Osteon needed to be avenged.
Next car. Rye realized it was the last one before the engine and grinned to himself as he anticipated meeting the monster face-to-face. Or maybe he ought to wait for Grapevine? Yeah, she might want to get in on the action, too. And a little help wouldn’t go amiss, just in case.
But just as he entered the carriage, he happened to glance down and twitched. No footprints. He turned around and walked to the connection between the cars again. A few specks of blood were clearly visible on the rungs of the ladder leading to the roof.
So. The monster had tried to avoid them after all. Not completely dumb, then. Something to think about. Rye kept that at the front of his mind as he clambered up the ladder.
The second he reached the roof, he got blasted by the wind. All sorts of bits of miniscule debris, caught up in the train’s slipstream, pelted his face, while smoke swirled into his eyes. But he pressed on. Whatever was on the train, he couldn’t let it live. Not after Osteon. He hauled himself to his hooves and immediately spread them a bit wider to brace against the swaying of the train.
Ahead of him, he could spot a roughly pony-sized figure with all sorts of lopsided curves, most of its features obscured by smoke. It was walking — walking — down the train, away from him, towards the caboose. Towards the sarcophagus. Yeah, no. “Hey!” he yelled. “You!”
The figure stopped, turned around. It didn’t move otherwise. Limbs on its sides writhed.
“Yeah, you,” snarled Rye. Confidence surged through him. Osteon had to have been taken by surprise; not so here. Here, the two of them were on equal terms. “What do you think you’re doing?”
No response. The thing was as immobile as a statue.
“Silent treatment, huh?” Rye asked. He pawed at the roof; his blood was already boiling. “That’s fine. I don’t need-”
And suddenly the figure was barreling towards him.
Rye drew his head back in shock and gasped, but before he could do so much as raise a guard, the thing slammed into him, sending the two of them rolling across the train. He tried to control the roll, but the rumble of the train was just enough to throw him off and give the other an advantage. Rye found himself pinned against the roof; acting on instinct, he whipped his head to one side. The figure’s leg pounded the roof right where he’d been, close enough to clamp down on his mane.
Rye snapped his hoof up. The angle was awkward and the thing had an unnaturally hard carapace, but he had the strength of an earth pony, and he drove the figure back just enough to roll out of its grasp. He quickly got to his feet and charged. He was met with a firm guard, the figure throwing all its weight against him, but that was nothing to an earth pony. He pushed; metal screeched as the figure was pushed backwards.
Then the figure reared. Pushing himself forward as he was, Rye found himself now pushing himself up. The figure twisted; Rye was unbalanced and crashed to the roof. He twitched his head to the side again, but this time, he was pounded in the stomach. Something snapped and a vicious, searing pain lanced through his chest. Rye opened his mouth to scream, only to have the breath driven out of him as he was hit again and again and again…
The figure stopped, a leg up; Rye managed to focus enough to see that it was looking towards the front of the train. He realized he could hear… ringing?
Ding ding ding…
The figure ducked and the ringing dopplered past them as an overhanging signal wooshed by. Of all the things to run into out here… But Rye didn’t care. He stumbled onto his hooves, pushed himself up-
Only to be brought right back down again when he was tackled. He had just barely managed to register the oncoming lights when his foe wrapped its legs around him-
Ding ding ding-
-and swung him up right into the path of the next oncoming signal.
-ding DING DI-
Eyes burning, Grapevine squinted through the locomotive smoke atop the train. She wasn’t sure this was the best idea, but she didn’t have any others. She’d done her best to move fast, but the smoke alone had been enough to slow her down, keeping her from meeting up with Rye. She could hear the impacts of a fight ahead of her, but couldn’t make out who was who, much less who was winning. “Rye?” she yelled, and immediately began coughing as the smoke scorched her throat.
She was about to step forward when she heard a piercing dinging in the night. She promptly dropped onto her stomach; a signal whistled past above her. “Rye?” she wheezed. “Are you there?” Still no sight, only a few murky silhouettes. One of them was clearly beating down the other; which one was Rye was impossible to tell.
A brief pause. She heard some more dinging. One of the shadows yanked the other up.
WHUNCK.
Something bounced across the roof past Grapevine. A head, wearing a golden helmet. Rye. Ahead of her, the survivor tossed Rye’s body over the side, then turned to look at her. She couldn’t see anything, but she swore she could feel its gaze boring into her. Her breath caught in her throat and her wings clamped to her sides.
Her wings. She immediately flared them, letting the wind carry her away. Not to run, of course, just to get some air, both in distance and in her lungs. As she took long, gulping breaths to cool her throat, she soared alongside the moonlit train, letting the slipstream carry her along. The figure was still obscured by the smoke, but it seemed to be roughly pony-sized. Maybe pony-shaped, too.
It definitely had a head, though, and that head was definitely looking at her. The figure simply stood in the smoke plume, examining her like she was an interesting bug. Then it turned and galloped for the caboose.
For a brief moment, Grapevine considered fleeing. Two of the ponies on her team were already dead, their killer unharmed; what hope did she have? But that killer had to be going for the sarcophagus, to whisk it away to where it’d never be seen again. If that happened, all the work she’d done, all the brothers and sisters she’d lost, all of that would be for nothing.
A few flicks of her wings twisted her against the wind and carried her back to the train. She landed, hard, on top of one of the train cars, not too far ahead of the figure. It slid to a halt in front of her, as if surprised. Grapevine’s throat still burned, but she could breathe more clearly now, and she took deep breaths as she glared at the figure. It was still too dark to make the thing out clearly.
The figure briefly jinked forward, a clear feint. Grapevine had to fight instinct to keep her wings shut and herself on the train. The carriage rumbled beneath her and she spread her legs to keep steady as the train rounded a bend. Her options for attack were limited, compared to being on the ground; shame how the wind was both a pegasus’s greatest asset and their greatest foe.
She stared at the figure and it stared back. Neither one of them moved or made a sound. Fortunately, Grapevine didn’t need to do anything, just keep the… thing from reaching the caboose and the sarcophagus. And if that involved her standing on the train, in the biting winds, for hours upon hours? So be it. She could handle it.
Neither moved. The train chugged on.
The winds shifted slightly and the stars behind the figure started being swallowed up by shadows. For a second, Grapevine’s blood ran cold; was this some kind of magic she was unfamiliar with? She risked glancing up and was immediately relieved. The edge of the shadow was too sharp and irregular for magic; it was just the peak of a nearby mountain blocking the stars. No strange magic. No problems.
Although, the rumble of the engine also sounded different…
At the change in tone, the figure finally moved, but only to look over its shoulder. It froze, then suddenly plastered itself flat against the carriage roof. Almost too late, Grapevine realized what that meant. She dropped to the roof as well and the train plunged into the mountainside.
The tunnel whistled by less than two feet above her head. Immediately, the din of the train was magnified ten times over as the sound was contained. The slightest rumble in the wheels became a deafening echo and the engine itself sounded like it was working on the wrong side of her eardrums. Even the smoke was compressed into a nauseous, sweltering miasma with nowhere to go. As it scorched her coat, Grapevine squinted forward, trying to make out something, anything.
The tunnel was dark enough that embers in the smoke were still visible, and Grapevine could see them flowing like water over a dark shape just ahead of her, literally less than a yard. Looking at her? Looking towards the engine? It was hard to say, with-
Something cold and hard slammed into her face and her head was jolted up. She yanked it back down at the last second; the rim of her helmet got clipped on the tunnel roof and was ripped off her head. She awkwardly lurched forward, swinging her hoof around in something resembling a punch. It clanged hard off some kind of hard shell.
The back of Grapevine’s mind tickled and she yanked her head back. The figure’s foot zipped past her muzzle in its own punch. She quickly hooked her hooves on a ridge of the roof and pushed back, narrowly avoiding another. The thing dragged itself forward with a screech and swung again; Grapevine pushed herself back again. She didn’t dare push too hard, lest she risk getting too high and losing her head to the tunnel.
The train lurched as it rounded a bend in the dark, and Grapevine slipped a few inches off-center. The train wobbled; she slipped a little more down the slope. Then she kept slipping. Her blunt hooves scrabbled against the roof of the carriage as she desperately searched for purchase, but she couldn’t find anything. Then she went over the edge.
At the last moment, Grapevine hooked her hooves on the rim. She dangled from the edge of the car, plastered against the side, as the wall of the tunnel screamed past her and a compressed slipstream threatened to toss her away. She took a deep breath to gather her thoughts and attempt to still her racing heart. Was there a ridge or something she could brace herself on? Her rear hooves scraped against the carriage wall as she moved them up and down, blindly looking for- There. She planted her hoof against a protruding bolt and pushed herself up a few feet.
Sparks flowed through the smoke in strange ways above her, outlining a silhouette in the black. Somehow, even though she didn’t see anything, Grapevine could make out the large-scale contours of its body. Just enough to tell that it was looking down at her.
Its face barely two feet from hers, the figure cocked its head.
Then it planted a foot against her face and shoved.
As Grapevine slipped, an impact against the tunnel wall sent her tumbling, but she didn’t have time to even feel any pain before she went under the wheels.
Lily huddled against the back of the car, her spear up, her loose armor clanking as she shook with fear. All she had done was sit back here, guarding the caboose, and yet her mind still kept screaming away from her. Gruesome death after gruesome death played in her head, each one bloodier than the last, all starring her. That thing had killed Osteon; just what would it do to her? Her spear felt like not much more than a thick, pointy stick in her grasp.
Tusk, on the other hoof, had absolutely no such issues. He was standing right next to her as the epitome of cool, calm, and collected. His pose was easy but tense, and his eyes and ears were both clearly peeled. He didn’t paw at the ground, even though his tail flicked restlessly. He was the essence of control.
“H-how do you do it?” Lily asked quietly.
Tusk gave her a sidelong glance. “Do what?”
“Stay so… stalwart. Osteon’s… dead, and-”
“Pfft. I never liked him, anyway.”
“Neither did I, but that’s beside the point. He was the best fighter among us, and… you saw him.”
After a moment, Tusk nodded slowly. “I suppose.” He bit his lip. “It’s… Just self-confidence, really. Know that you can take whatever comes at you, and you usually can.”
“Oh.” Even with her armor, it wasn’t easy for Lily to believe that, much less know that.
Tusk glanced at her again. “Hey, come on.” He grinned. “We’ve got each other, haven’t we?”
Lily forced a grin back. Maybe.
Time clicked by. Nothing came. The seconds seemed to stretch forever, but whenever she looked back, Lily couldn’t actually remember them. And all she could do was stand there, waiting for-
Clunk clunk clunk-
Both Lily’s and Tusk’s ears pricked up at the same time. Footsteps on the roof above them. Bypassing them. Lily’s spine chilled; what had happened to Rye and Grapevine?
“I’m going up top. Stay by the door in case it comes down,” Tusk said. He bolted off before Lily could respond.
And she was alone. The car seemed to elongate and darken before her. The air grew thick. Sound bled out from the world. It was only a matter of time before it came for her.
Stay strong, she told herself. Protect the sarcophagus. If she lost that, everything her comrades had died for would be for nothing.
Her spear still shook.
Then she heard galloping above her, heading for the back. Tusk’s voice was just barely audible. “Hey!” he yelled. “Who’re-”
His voice suddenly cut off. Lily could hear impacts and grunts above her as the carriage rattled. When she strained her ears, the sound seemed to move, traveling towards the front of the car, then back towards her. She could hear grunts, gasps of pain, metal grinding against metal-
WHAM.
The impact was immense, shaking the entire car, and Lily jumped in shock. Above her, the ceiling had been bent inward from the force of the blow. Lily wanted to curl into a ball and hide but, although she was shaking down to every bone in her body, she forced herself to stand tall. She swallowed the spit that had congealed in her mouth.
The sounds of the fight had stopped. She strained her ears, but she couldn’t hear anything. No walking, no groans, nothing. She swallowed again and whispered, “T-Tusk?”
Silence.
The roof of the car shattered. Lily shrieked and shielded her face as sawdust and splinters pounded it. She heard something slam into the floor, followed by a piteous moan. She lowered her hoof. Tusk was lying in the debris of the roof, one of his legs clearly broken, covered in cuts and gashes. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth. He moaned as he moved his head around and his eyelids fluttered when he saw Lily. “Help… me…” he rasped weakly. He raised a hoof to reach out-
Something shiny and hard jumped down from the hole, landing right on Tusk’s head. Lily managed to look away before she saw the worst, but she couldn’t block out the wet crunch. Instinct kicked in and she bolted for the rear door. If the figure was chasing her, she didn’t hear it; her heart was pounding too hard to hear.
She stumbled through the door, across the gap between cars, into the caboose, where she ran headlong into the sarcophagus, partly dislodging her armor and knocking her supply pouches open. That was where reality finally hit: she had nowhere left to run. Going further back would mean jumping off the train and letting the sarcophagus fall into the wrong hooves.
And for a moment, she considered it. Forget all the work they’d done to get this far; she needed to save herself.
Then she steeled herself. No. She wouldn’t run. She’d come this far. She’d survived the raid. If she was going down, she was going down swinging. Taking a deep breath, she turned to the door and raised the spear.
Just in time for the door to open.
An brutish, armored batpony, face concealed by a visor, strode into the room, a blade sheathed by her side. The armor was coated with blood. Blood from Lily’s comrades. The pony turned her head towards Lily, and although she couldn’t see any eyes, she could feel their glare.
Lily’s will faltered slightly; she tried taking a breath to steady herself, only to lose more composure when she tasted the blood’s coppery stench. She instinctively backed up, only to bump into the sarcophagus again. Her armor shook and several items fell from her supply pouches.
One of those items was her watch. It bounced off the sarcophagus and skittered across the floor, coming to a stop right at the pony’s hooves. The pony looked down, stiffened; her head snapped back up, her entire body tense. “That’s my brother’s watch,” said the Night Guard.
Memories flashed through Lily’s mind. The raid on her cult. The attempt to take her master away. The fight those goldenrods had put up, so vicious not many of her brothers and sisters were left. The way a certain pegasus kept fighting even as he was beset on all sides, even as she beat his head in with a hammer while others held him down. The armor and watch she’d taken from him as spoils.
The armor had been too large for her. The watch, though? Now she had leverage. “Normal” ponies had these relationships that were nothing more than big old buttons to push. Friendship. Hah.
“Your brother’s?” Lily asked, a smile spreading across her face. She did her best to look psychotic, but facing down against this, it wasn’t easy. “Yeah. I took it from his mangled body.” She ran a tongue across her teeth and grinned again, trying for a psycho look. “Do you want to know how he died?”
“Valiantly,” said the guard, her voice oddly level. “Unlike you.” Her hoof whipped out and a blade flashed.
She didn’t have time to be surprised; Lily yelped and tried to back up, but blood was already dripping from her sliced-open throat. She coughed, doubled over, instinctively put a hoof to her neck-
As she was unbalanced, the guard lunged forward and gave her a shove to roll her onto her back, exposing her belly. And before Lily could do anything, the spear had entered her heart.
Lily might not’ve gotten to Sergeant Lodestar as much as she’d liked, but Lodestar still stabbed the body a few more times. She didn’t make a sound. She didn’t need to. The stabbing was catharsis enough. Maybe that said something about her.
Whatever the case, her role was done. The train cars had been cleared of cultists — obvious ones, anyway. She’d need to look again, in case she’d missed something, but once that was done, she could hole up in the caboose and keep any nefarious ponies who boarded the train from taking the sarcophagus back. The raid had ended in the death of every guard involved, and although their mole had said there wasn’t enough magic left in the sarcophagus for any rituals, you didn’t take chances with something like that. Messages had been sent out and two more teams had been hastily, awkwardly cobbled together: one to take and stop the train, one to take the sarcophagus off the stopped train and hold it until a proper detachment got back from the nearest barracks.
Lodestar had performed her half of Team One’s job quite well. As for the other half… She tapped the side of her helmet, audiomagically connecting her to her partner, hopefully on the other end of the train. “Corporal Wingtip, this is Sergeant Lodestar. Do you copy?”
“Sarge, hey!” said the batpony on the other end of the line. The arcanotech was new, but the sound quality was excellent. “How’re the cultists treating you?”
“They were dying to meet me. I haven’t heard anything from you and I’m assuming no news is good news?”
“Yep. Engine secure. Got the engineer and firemare. Both cultists. Screamed bloody murder at me, but no fighters. Tied ’em up. Working through the manual to find the brakes.”
“And if you can’t find them-”
“Yeah, yeah, douse the fire, I know. We’ll have this stopped at Amber Junction, don’t worry.”
“Good. I’ll do one last sweep of the train, then guard the caboose until then.”
“Copy that.”
“Got your spare signal flares? To notify Team Silver?”
“Holding the reds right now.”
Lodestar let out a long breath of relief as she nodded. “Good. Good. Lodestar out.”
The connection severed, she bent down and scooped up the watch. It’d been in her family for generations, pretty much since pocket watches had been a thing. She’d always loved it, but she hadn’t been the firstborn, so no familial heirloom watch for her. Her brother had loved it even more than her, if such a thing were possible, and had joked that she’d only get it over his dead body.
The carriage felt colder. Lodestar closed her eyes and let out a single sob.
But he’d been in the Royal Guard. He’d expected something like this. And his death had bought the rest of the Guard valuable time. Raising her visor and wiping her face down, Lodestar turned to the front of the caboose, ready to continue making the most of that time.
