“C’mon, Abby! You forget how to fly or something?”
Abby Overcast grumbled as she dodged and weaved throughout the crowd, deftly avoiding being stepped on with all the grace of an eagle carrying a brick. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she replied, kicking off into the air once she finally came out from underhoof. She squinted, surveying the massive flock of Pegasi that had settled over the expanse of Daisy Fields, and quickly picked out the garishly-bright orange coat of her friend. She glided towards him, settling with a few shaky flutters onto their checkered picnic blanket.
“Where’d you get off to?” a filly beside the colt who had called out questioned her. “We were gonna get started without you.”
“Dewdrops said you probably got distracted chasing a butterfly,” the orange pegasus teased, sending a disarming smirk towards her.
“I did not!”
“Did too!”
“Didn’t!”
“Did!”
“Mooooom!” Dewdrops cried to one of the nearby adults, “Vibrant’s telling lies about me!”
“Star’s sakes, kids, can’t you go five minutes without fighting?”
“Not when Vibrant Hue’s around,” Abby cut in, shooting a challenging glare towards him. “He likes to start trouble.”
“You’re just boring, that’s all.”
The mare rolled her eyes and turned away from them, beginning to rummage through a picnic basket and setting utensils and ingredients out. “A brand new holiday celebrating the return of flight and you three still manage to find a way to make it stressful.” She sighed deeply and ruffled Dewdrops’ blue and green banded mane. “Morning Dew, where do you make these friends of yours?”
“Group projects at school, usually,” the filly casually answered, reaching around her mother and grabbing an apple from the basket. The mare quickly slapped at her hoof and she dropped it, then shuffled over next to Abby. “I’m pretty sure Ms. Featherfaith purposely puts ponies together who she thinks won’t get along. But we sure showed her, didn’t we?”
Vibrant snorted. “We failed that project, Dewdrops.”
“Because we were having fun,” she clarified.
“Well, go have fun somewhere else,” the mother muttered. “We’ve got a lot of work left to do, setting up the tent and getting the cooking all organized. Honestly, an entire kingdom sent out camping. What will Queen Haven think of next?”
“I can help set things up, mom!”
Her mother looked her over with a raised eyebrow.
“Or maybe we’ll go play elsewhere,” she muttered, blushing.
The three of them took off up into the air again. Vibrant immediately took the lead, pulling up higher to get a good view of the entire festival. He was hovering in the air with a thoughtful look on his face when Abby and Dewdrops caught up with him.
“Alright, Vibes, whatcha thinking of now?”
“I dunno why my mom won’t let me help with these things,” Dewdrops muttered to nopony in particular.
“Because Morning Dew drops everything, doesn’t she?”
Dewdrops blushed again with a frown.
“Alright, alright,” Abby interrupted before Dewdrops could respond. “What were you thinking of doing? I know that look, Vibes. You’ve got trouble written all over it.”
“We’re gonna race to that huge stump over there,” he said, pointing next to the massive redwood bridge spanning the nearby gorge.
“Mom and dad told me to stay away from the gorge. Said it was dangerous,” Abby objected.
“Maybe cause you suck at flying, but not for me. Here, watch!” Vibrant barked a laugh and then raced off, a brilliant white contrail being left behind as his mane blurred out behind him.
“H-hey!” Abby shouted, and then again as Dewdrops shot past her as well, laughing. She dived after her two friends, her lilac wings beating hard as she fought to catch up to them. With a smirk she angled sharply down, plummeting towards a huge group of unaware families with her wings spread wide. Her feathers danced in the wind, sending shivers up and down her spine. Her hooves had even begun to tingle, an electric feeling of joy infusing every nerve in her body as she used gravity as a boost.
At the last second she twisted her wings up, feeling a slamming sensation as she collided with the air right over the heads of the crowd. Behind her she heard yelling—some of it laughter, some of it complaints—but she paid it no attention as she weaved up and down, just skimming the group as if it were water.
The tree stump came up fast, and with chagrin Abby noticed Vibrant was already sitting smugly atop it. Above her, Dewdrops was also coming in fast, but her friend’s speed didn’t quite match up with her own. Laughing, Abby stretched out her hooves, and hollered.
“Vibrant! Catch me!”
“Huh? Oof!” Vibrant gasped as Abby sailed into him, pinning his wings together in a bear hug. Together the two of them rolled and bounced along the grass until Abby’s momentum finally came to a stop.
“You didn’t catch me,” Abby said innocently, blinking wide navy-blue eyes at him.
“I guess I deserved that,” Vibrant grumbled as he stood up.
The two of them turned just in time to watch Dewdrops, travelling at a much slower speed, come in for a landing. Her hoof caught a large stone just as she was settling down and she too collapsed and tumbled forward, sliding into Abby’s legs.
“You almost had it that time,” Abby said encouragingly, pulling her up.
“I woulda been fine if that darn rock wasn’t there,” she said. “What now, Vibes?”
Abby turned to the colt. For a moment she felt a tinge of resentment that neither of them asked her what she wanted to do, instead always looking to Vibrant immediately. A deep breath later and the annoyance was forgotten with the wind. She wouldn’t have had a suggestion anyways.
Vibrant looked around behind the two fillies, assessing the masses filling the huge field. “What a sight to see,” he said, frowning. “It’s fun having a whole holiday where we flock together somewhere else, but I don’t like how there’s so many adults, everywhere you go.” He turned around and looked across the makeshift bridge, staring at the distant trees that marked the border of Bridlewood’s forest. “And the nearest place with anything interesting is a whole day’s flight away.”
“Does our fearless leader finally admit he doesn’t know?” Abby asked.
“We could go bug your mom and dad,” Vibrant suggested.
“Oh, no, that’s fine—”
“Ask them to give the story behind your full name,” Dewdrops giggled.
“Definitely no.” Abby thought about it and shuddered. “I hate it. Who wants to be named after their grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s friend? It makes me feel so old hearing it.”
“There is one place without adults,” Vibrant muttered, and Abby turned back to him with her head tilted curiously. “Wanna play chicken with the ground?” he asked, nodding his head in the direction of the gorge beside them.
“Oh no, absolutely not,” Abby protested, already scrambling further back from the edge than she had been. “That’s way too dangerous! You can’t even see the bottom, Vibes! Nobody even knows what’s down there!”
“Did you forget we can fly again?” he asked, flaring his wings. “And you’re right. Nobody knows. We can be the first to find out!”
“I dunno, Vibes,” Dewdrops said as she trotted happily up to the edge and craned her neck over the precipice. “I mean, what if Abby gets to the bottom and can’t fly up out of it?”
“I’ve had just as much practice flying as you have, Dewdrops!” Abby snapped, still staring at the canyon as if it were a snake waiting to bite. “But my parents told me to stay away from it.”
“Yeah, well, my parents told me to be back by sundown for supper and not to do anything that would embarrass them. Yours are boring.”
“Don’t call my parents boring!”
“Well then prove us wrong,” Dewdrops said, leaning into Vibrant. “If you want us to believe your family is fun then do something fun with us! C’mon, Abby, it’ll be fine.”
“Don’t pressure her,” Vibrant said with exaggerated resignation. “If Abby wants to be a flightless chicken, then we as friends should support her in her decisions.”
Abby froze, her blood running hot. “I’m. Not. A. Chicken,” she seethed, anger instantly overriding fear.
“Buk-buk-bugawk!” Dewdrops said, dancing with her wings.
“I’m not a chicken!”
“So you’ll join us? Great!” Vibrant said, wrapping a wing around Abby’s back and leading her towards the cliff.
“Fine, I guess, if it means you’ll leave me alo—”
“You can go first then,” Vibrant said with a pleasant smile, before pushing Abby off the edge.
She shrieked as the dense darkness far below started to race up towards her. The cliff face sped past her like a screaming freight train, and quickly Abby’s vision became a jumbled mess of fog, rock, and the occasional blue blip of the sky far above.
It took far longer than she would have liked to remember that she could, in fact, fly, and she choked off her ceaseless screeching and unfurled her wings, stabilizing herself. She was still plummeting, still facing down into the gorge, yet shockingly despite the considerable length of time it had taken her to stretch her wings out she still couldn’t see the bottom. Chill and damp gripped her body as she sailed into wisps of thick fog, and after slipping beneath one particular patch of mist she noticed a veritable river of cloud oozing through the gorge.
She beat her wings hard then, pounding against the dense air to slow her descent. With an overwhelming sense of relief she paused and caught her breath right above the fog bank, squinting and trying to see any sort of definition below.
Her examination was cut short as Vibrant and Dewdrops plummeted down past her on each side, their shouts of joy interrupted only by Vibrant calling Abby a chicken as he continued down. Abby sighed, rolled her eyes, and then started to gently circle down through the mist, straining for the sight of… well, anything.
A minute or so later she caught the familiar orange sheen of Vibrant’s bright coat, and despite how much he frustrated her a wave of relief flew through her from hock to hoof. A jerk he might be, but he was the closest Abby had to a friend in her school.
“Yeesh, about time you got here. You’re floating slower than a feather.”
“I was just being careful, stupid. What if you had broken a wing, huh? And needed me to fly you back up top?”
“You’re really snappy today, Abby,” Dewdrops said, almost offhandedly as she scuffed the ground with a hoof. “It’s a party. Lighten up.”
Abby sighed in frustration and kicked her hooves up. “I’m just… This is really stupid! Really! Who knows what’s down here? Could be all kinds of ancient monsters just starving for some foals!”
“You’ve been staying up late reading those horror fanfictions again, haven’t you?” Vibrant asked, his voice seemingly dripping in genuine concern. “I’ve told you, you gotta stop reading those. They aren’t real, and you keep having nightmares.”
Abby grimaced. “I haven’t been for a while, but…” She dropped to her butt and let a long, shaky breath out. “Sorry. I’m sorry, okay? But you need to take it easier. That was still stupid!”
“Sure thing, mom,” Dewdrops said. Her attempt at sarcasm was noticeably weak with distraction, and Abby stood up and walked up to her.
“You alright?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, just… Nopony’s been down here in like, centuries, right?”
“Yeah,” Vibrant said, also approaching her. “No pony anyways. Maybe big giant eels or something.”
“Oh, so you do remember something from school?” Abby asked with a sidelong glance.
“No. Shut up. What’s up, Dewdrops?”
“Don’t these markings look like hoofprints?”
The trio looked down together, inspecting the ancient dirt and gravel beneath them. It was mainly rocky, with only small patches of dirt smattered here and there, but clear sections of U-shapes could be made out frequently within them. Abby moved away, still looking, following an apparent trail further into the gorge for several feet before pausing. A sudden chill ran through her coat, her feathers twitching and tensing. An impulse from her wings begged her to take flight, far, far away from the fog and the gravel, but curiosity rooted her to the ground.
“Oh, for hoofness’ sake!” Vibrant shouted, jarring Abby from her trance. “This is horse shit!”
“Hey! Language!” Dewdrops chastised him.
“What’s your problem?” Abby asked him, tearing her gaze away from the ground.
“I was gonna be the first to investigate down here and tell everypony what I saw! But nooooo, some other adult with nothing to do and nobody to tell them what to do got here first!” He stomped and kicked at the ground, scuffing out the prints wherever he could see them. “Stupid parents wouldn’t let me out of the city until today, and when I finally get here, I’ve been beaten to it.”
Vibrant let loose a scream of anger and kicked another rock before collapsing to his haunches, his chest heaving.
“Okay, well, you’re second then. Besides, there’s not even anything down here?” Dewdrops asked, rubbing Vibrant’s back.
“But I don’t want to be second. I wanted to be the first to tell everyone. Even if it was just full of friggin… Dumb rocks!”
With his last cry he snagged a larger, baseball-sized stone from the ground and hurled it forward into the mist, where it immediately disappeared into the ever-present cloud bank around them.
“Let’s just get out of—”
CLANG.
The three of them snapped their heads to the sound of ringing metal. It echoed around them, moving beyond them and back, ricocheting off of all the nooks and crannies and crags of the rock walls. It sounded like a hammer, getting higher pitched with each iteration returned to them, until finally it settled into a strange, distant hum that simply permeated the air around them.
Vibrant looked at Abby, his eyes wide in shock.
Abby simply groaned.
“C’mon, let’s go see, let’s go see!” Vibrant shouted, his excited energy funneling into his wings as he leapt into the air and buzzed off down the canyon.
Suppressing a shudder, Abby looked to Dewdrops and, after earning a shrug in response to her questioning glance, followed after Vibrant. It did not take long to meet up with him as he was, quite literally, a stone’s throw away, but the fog grew thicker with each step and seemed to destroy all sensation of movement. As she caught up with her friend, her stomach twisted, though whether it was from vertigo or fear she couldn’t tell. Possibly, she thought, it was both.
Before the colt was a half-buried sign. Stainless steel construction had miraculously saved the ancient thing from complete destruction by rust, but dust and fog had combined to coat it in a fine layer of mud. Vibrant was already scraping away at it, and a thick black symbol engraved into the steel shone brilliantly out as he cleaned it. Abby frowned. Not a speck of paint was faded or peeling. Outside of the brand new dent Vibrant had placed into it, beneath the dirt was a completely pristine sign.
“That’s a weird symbol,” Dewdrops said, hovering into the air to get a better look at it. “Wings on a thundercloud? And what’s on top of it?”
“Hold on, there’s words above this,” Vibrant said. All of the arrogance in his voice had vanished, forgotten entirely in his excitement. “Let’s see… This mud is kinda stubborn. Okay. There it is.” He wiped off his hooves and stepped back, inspecting the newly-cleaned sign.
“Cloudsdale Weather Corporation,” the three read aloud at the same time.
Abby’s own fear was totally overcome by giddiness. She knew what Cloudsdale was. Adrenaline ripped through her veins, and she bounced into the air to speak.
“Do you know what this is? It’s the Lost City! The Lost Pegasus City!! You guys, we found it, we found Clou—”
It sounded like a train had hit her and felt like a brick wall racing by. A wall of wind furiously funnelled down the cramped canyon and smashed into the filly, ripping the words from her muzzle and flinging her further ahead. She crashed against something cold and hard, rattling her bones and knocking the breath right out of her. Still the torrent of wind continued, roaring like a dragon in her ears. Abby clapped her hooves to her ears, protecting them from the deafening howl.
She held them there even as the plough wind finally settled, her muscles rigid and frozen. Her eyes were clamped shut, at first to keep out the dust but now for a reason she could not explain. Despite all her willpower, she couldn’t seem to lift her lids.
A tap came down against her shoulder and she jumped, though when the touch became a grab and shake she finally managed to relax enough to peek out. Vibrant was there, and for once genuine concern marked his muzzle. He shook Abby again, speaking something she couldn’t hear. Gingerly, the filly pulled her hooves away from her ears.
“I said warn us before you summon a storm next time, alright?” he teased.
Abby managed a shaky laugh as she pulled herself up to her hooves. “Uhm. Right. Sure thing,” she replied, rubbing the back of her head. She hadn’t hit it too hard, thankfully, but it was definitely bruised.
Satisfied she was alright, Vibrant dropped his hoof from her shoulder and looked beyond her. Abby watched as his jaw slowly dropped, his eyes widening too, and then slowly turned around to see what was the source of his shock.
Her jaw dropped too. The wind had cleared away the thickest of the fog, though wisps of mist were already starting to form back above the cold ground. With it cleared away, what was once hidden became visible.
There must have been miles of it. Skyscraper after skyscraper, great gleaming giants of girders and glass, lay half-destroyed and shattered before her. Amongst the tallest of the wrecks were smaller buildings, resting haphazardly upon each other, upended and twisted and piled together. Signs and carts and debris littered the canyon floor wherever there wasn’t a colossal mess of broken glass and metal.
“I don’t like it,” Dewdrops squeaked, taking a step back. “Something feels wrong.”
“Wrong?” Vibrant asked, the colt stepping forward himself. “No duh it feels wrong. This should all be floating in the sky!” He spun around, forehooves planted widely apart as he beamed at the two fillies. “The Lost City! Stuck down here all this time! Just waiting for us.”
Dewdrops shuddered, still shirking back from the ruins. “Yeah, sure Vibes. It’s cool and everything,” she said, her indignant tone betrayed by a shaking voice. “But it feels like we shouldn’t be here.”
“You’d say the same thing about any graveyard,” Abby said softly, still taking it all in. She shivered in the cold air. The tallest of skyscrapers looked like tombstones, marking the resting place for what must have been hundreds or even thousands of Pegasi. Legend—and even school lessons—had told that not every Pegasi had moved to the once-newly built Zephyr Heights before Cloudsdale had vanished.
Something did feel wrong about the sight, more than walking amongst the graves of her ancestors seemed to account for. She puzzled over it, finding her own hooves inching forward as she did.
“Not you too, Abby,” Dewdrops sighed, before taking off into the air and fluttering over towards Vibrant Hue. She landed next to the colt, who was busy scrambling up the closest tower.
The tower he climbed rested diagonally across the gorge, cracked in half at the middle with the lower portion mostly flat on the ground. The top half reached far up the stone wall, disappearing into the reapproaching mist.
“Well?” Vibrant asked, looking at Dewdrops. “What do you think?”
“I think we should leave,” Abby answered for her, kicking some trash aside. An old newspaper, now uncovered, fluttered briefly before picking up into the air and swirling away, far down the corridor of buildings. Before it left, Abby had picked out the faint text reading ‘Princess Celestia decrees…’. She frowned, watching the paper disappear from view.
“You always think that,” Vibrant replied, jumping into the air and hovering towards the higher floors of the building. “But we’re not leaving.”
“We’re not? I mean, uh, yeah! We’re not!” Dewdrops exclaimed, taking off after Vibrant.
Abby opened her mouth to argue, though a movement from the corner of her eye gave her pause. She glanced over, and noticed a large wall of thick, obscure white mist advancing towards her, filling the space back in. Not wanting to be caught in the middle of it, she sighed, and then flew herself over to the other two.
“And why not?” she asked as she caught up with them. Vibrant continued climbing upwards, his eyes locked on something further up the building. For a moment, he didn’t answer her. “Well?” Abby pressed.
“Because this is the weather factory,” he finally responded, distant. “The weather factory. Where we used to make the weather. I am not leaving until I see what that used to look like. Gram Gram used to always say I was destined to make rainbows one day. The stuff to do that is here!”
“There’s no way that a factory is gonna be safe,” Abby argued.
Vibrant paused, his shoulders stiffening up. “Listen, if you’re so worried, you can just get out of here right now, Abby. But I have a calling here. I will not let you take that away from me. Besides, this is the only chance we’ll get. Once the adults come, they’re gonna take away everything fun. Aha,” he added, finally reaching his goal.
Abby said nothing in response. She had a hard enough time making friends. Vibrant might be a jerk at times, but he still let her hang out with him and Dewdrops. It was more than she could say for most of the other foals in her classroom.
She flapped up to meet Vibrant and stared at what he had found. It was a hole in the building, one of the only ones on the higher floors. Abby blinked. This half of the tower had no windows, she realized. She glanced again at the hole. A few crumbs of concrete dropped from the top of it, bouncing off jagged rebar that reached out of it. The metal was bent and snapped outwards, with faint traces of char around the edges.
“Whoah,” Dewdrops gasped, staring down the gaping maw. Abby shuffled over so she could see.
It was dark within, far darker than the bottom of the canyon was. She could see twisted and bent scaffolding, framed with thick veins of metal pipes and rubber cords. The musk of rust and decay seemed to belch out at her, stinging her nose. She wrinkled her muzzle, backing away from a cough.
“You wanna go into that tetanus trap?” she asked Vibrant, though she could tell there was no use to it. He was grinning ear to ear, practically vibrating in excitement.
“I just wanna see like, one machine. Maybe two. Then we can go, alright?” He rolled his eyes, but proceeded within. Several feet down the shaft, he turned back and smiled. “Look, see? Still alive.”
Dewdrops laughed and dove in after him, smacking Abby with a wing as she did so.
Abby swallowed her revulsion at the dank, scummy scent and then entered through the portal as well, watching the world around her get swallowed up by darkness and metal.
“Hold on, let me…” Dewdrops said, pulling out her phone. She tapped at it until a bright, powerful beam of light shone from the back of it. “So Abby doesn’t chicken out.”
“I’m not a chicken!”
“C’mon,” Vibrant said. Abby’s eyes widened. He had passed up the opportunity to make fun of her. He really must be excited, she thought.
They flapped their way down the shaft, passing closed and rust-sealed doors, dodging overhangs of conduit and tubing, the circle of light above them diminishing until it was hardly a speck. Dewdrop’s flashlight cast eerie shadows that landed on bent and busy walls, taking on strange shapes that danced around them. Eventually they came to the end of the walkway, where it branched off to the left and right.
“Keep the left wall on your left,” Abby suggested. Vibrant turned to her, his raised eyebrow hardly visible in the scant light. “Then when we go to leave, we keep the right wall to our right. No getting lost.”
The colt shrugged and then turned to the left. He settled onto the horizontal wall, walking along it to give his wings a break, and the other two followed his lead. This corridor looked much the same as the last one. Abby glanced towards the bottom of the scaffolding, and pulled her head back. That same thick mist from outside was barely visible, resting far beneath where the scaffolding would have been were the building right-side-up.
They carried on this way, walking for what seemed to be forever. Slowly Abby’s nerves settled, the fear tingling her wings giving way to actual boredom. Over and over they passed various doors and rooms, and each one of them was either locked or welded shut by rust. Vibrant began to grumble as they turned ‘left’ once again, taking to wings as they flew up the shaft.
His complaints did not last long, however, and the colt froze, causing Dewdrops to bump into him.
“Quiet!” Vibrant hissed, glaring at the filly. She shrunk back, and he stuck his head out, his ears twisting and turning. “Do you hear that?”
Abby and Dewdrops waited, listening.
Nothing.
“No?” Abby finally answered, looking around.
Vibrant’s ear twitched, and he gawped at her. “You seriously don’t hear that? Listen.”
Abby listened harder.
Still nothing.
“Viiibes,” Dewdrops whined, punching him on his wing as she did so. “This place is creepy enough, you don’t need to start trying to spook us!”
Vibrant sputtered. He glared back at the filly, rubbing his wing.
“Yeah, don’t be a jerk,” Abby said, examining the area around her. Rusty metal and faded rubber surrounded them, the flashlight reflecting off of it and casting a blood-red glow across the foals. “Especially since you forced us into here in the first p—”
“Shut! Up!” Vibrant yelled, holding a hoof up to silence them. Dewdrops opened her muzzle to complain but then froze, the hair on the back of her neck raising.
Abby heard it too. Far, far away, echoing down a million miles of corridor, bouncing off steel and glass, a door screeched open. The tell-tale shriek of rusty hinges was not loud, barely audible at all, but definitely there. It went on for long enough for Abby to be sure.
When silence returned to them Vibrant huffed. “Heard it that time, didn’t you?”
“Do you think somepony’s down here too?” Dewdrops asked, sidling close to the colt.
“Maybe it’s the same pony from those hoofprints we saw.”
Distantly, before either of the other two could respond, a deep hum reached them, resonating through the building. The trio paused again, their ears perked and switching around wildly. Not long after, the rumbling of a gas engine joined the far-off symphony, and Abby began to feel the scaffolding next to her start to shake.
Sparks exploded from a light fixture, narrowly missing Dewdrops and causing Vibrant to scramble backwards from the angled ceiling. The ancient lamp buzzed and sputtered, a dim white glow struggling to form at its core. It sparked again, earning a shriek from the dark-green filly. Abby had froze in response, and she watched as rows of lights behind Vibrant began their own resurrections. Down the corridor more sparks and snaps could be heard, though many of the lights shone brightly for only a moment before shattering or flickering out.
Darkness ebbed and flowed as light fought against it, though shadows took the upper hand in the battle. Soon the shower of electricity began to slow, with only a few surviving, dimly lit lamps to show for it.
“Okay, you know what, maybe it’s time we got out of here,” Vibrant admitted, spinning around with Dewdrops to stare further down the hallway. “Maybe we tripped some emergency power supply or some—”
He froze mid-flap, actually plummeting a short distance before his wings remembered their duty. Abby dashed forward to catch him, curious as to what had happened, when she heard it too.
It was another screech, though this time not of rust and metal but of flesh and blood, rising up from the depths of the factory, duplicated by a hundred, a thousand, a million echoes. At first Abby wanted to explain it away as something, anything else, imagined even, if she could convince herself. The rising volume and persistence of it, dragging on and on, vibrating in their ears until it was all they could hear prevented her from believing otherwise. Somewhere, a mare was shrieking in horrible, horrible pain.
For as gradually as it had come, it stopped suddenly, the echoes cutting short as if absorbed by a sponge. For a minute, none of them moved. None of them breathed. None of them blinked. They simply stared, frozen in flight, hackles raised, up into the wavering darkness above them.
“Vibes we are getting the fuck out of here I don’t care what you say we are leaving and that’s final,” Abby rambled, willing, begging her limbs to remember how to move again. Finally breaking herself out of her shock she snapped forward, grabbed the two other foals by their shoulders, and spun all three of them around to start exiting.
A light flickered down the hallway, highlighting the form of a fully grown pony. It stood directly beneath the lamp, but nothing on it was illuminated. It radiated shadow, sucking away at the light, the air wavering and reflecting around it. It had no face that they could see, but Abby could feel a cold, hateful gaze penetrating straight through to her heart, and once again her muscles locked up.
The light pulsed once, and the shadow was gone.
The light pulsed twice, and the shadow was back.
Inches away from them.
Abby might have screamed. She definitely heard a scream, heard multiple of them even. One of them might have been hers. She couldn’t tell. Dropping her two friends she bolted, though luckily the two had the same idea as her and spun around with her. Somepony was screaming, she was sure of it. She wasn’t paying attention. All she knew was she needed to be gone, far, far away from this place and whatever was in it, and that that ‘whatever’ was standing directly between them and their only known exit.
Maybe it was nothing, she tried to tell herself as she came towards the end of the corridor and turned, following the only route available. Maybe it was one of the adults, come to find them, or whoever had found the place before they did. Or, maybe, she considered, a fucking fully-illuminated shadow had vanished and reappeared before their very eyes. She wasn’t going to stick around and find out.
The hallway she turned down was warped and twisted, the scaffolding rotating around in a spiral as it sunk deep into the inky blackness beyond. Abby took to the air, her hooves scrambling beneath her as she briefly tried to run, until she remembered that it was her wings that needed to do the work. Vibrant and Dewdrops rocketed past her, the filly still screeching, hauled along by the colt’s grip. Not wanting to be left behind Abby beat her wings hard, catching up with them. There was no surge of ecstasy or pleasure shivering up her spine as she flew hard, no sense of satisfaction or ease that normally accompanied her wingflaps. There was only fear.
She hazarded a glance backwards, checking to see if they were pursued by the shadow. Lights continued to flicker on and off, but there was no sign of whatever had appeared anymore. What there was, however, was action: the deep hum vibrating the factory had grown louder, and with it the old building seemed to be shaking itself awake. More sparks flashed and blasted out of long worn and frayed wires. Vapour hissed and spat out of decayed holes in piping, piping that hung unattached to any input or output. Abby slowed, curiosity outweighing her fear. Where was the steam coming from?
As if to answer the question for her the pipe next to her groaned and burst. The blast of superheated water sent her tumbling, singeing away the tips of her feathers and scalding her skin. She yelped, and swam forward in the air, catching up with her friends as tears filled her eyes. She shook her head. There was no time for crying. She could do it later, when she was out of this death trap.
More pipes began to come to life, pipes full of mysterious chemicals and gasses, rattling against their supports as ancient pumps far away began to course blood through the factory’s veins. Like the ceiling lamps from before, these too failed more often than they flowed, cracking or splitting all around the trio. Vibrant led the way, his sensitive ears detecting the creaks and whines of conduits about to break and directing them away from them. They turned left and right, up and down, following the only apparent path in the rusted labyrinth that wasn’t immediately lethal for them.
“There!” Abby shouted as they rounded another corner. She pointed a hoof at a flood of stable light pooling out of a set of double doors midway down the hall. “Maybe we can find shelter in there!”
“Or maybe it’s an exit!” Vibrant responded, ducking his head down and pounding his wings harder, hope giving him the strength to double down his efforts and race ahead. The other two were not far behind him, and they ducked and weaved around sparks and sprays until finally twisting and tumbling into the bathing light from the room.
Abby landed last, skidding to a halt on a cold metallic floor. Dewdrops had tripped as she connected with the ground and went rolling into Vibrant, who despite landing solidly went flying further into the room from the collision. Abby leapt up and turned towards the doors, ready to slam them shut to keep out the chaos.
They were already bolted closed.
“Wh… what?” She muttered, taking a step back. She felt her hoof land on something soft and flinched, before realizing she had stepped on Dewdrops.
“Ouch, watch it!” she replied, pulling herself to her hooves.
“Sorry…” Abby muttered distantly, still staring at the doors. “How did… those…”
“Uh, guys?”
Abby tore her eyes away from the doors at the sound of Vibrant’s voice. She turned slowly, not wanting to leave the mystery unsolved, but gasped when she finally locked eyes on Vibrant.
Not on Vibrant, rather. Behind him.
The colt sat with his back against the base of a massive machine, the metal dented slightly from how hard he had slammed into it. It towered over him, mostly blocky save for the huge flanges and pipes that spread from it like spider’s legs. At the top was a battered and bent hopper, practically oozing damp rust down the sides of the entire machine. Vibrant brought himself to unsteady hooves, the back of his coat sticky with red flakes of metal and grease, and took a clumsy step or two forward towards the fillies.
“You really gotta watch where you’re fucking going, Morning Dew!” he shouted, still rubbing his head.
“...Vibrant—” Dewdrops began, pointing behind him.
“No! None of your crap! I know you think flying is just something fun to do, but you need to learn how to use your stupid wings and land properly!”
“Vibrant!” Abby shouted, taking a step back.
“This place is dangerous enough, and I don’t need you to toss me around it willy-nilly. When we get back home, I’m gonna teach you how to fly, whether you like it or not!”
“Vibrant!” Abby and Dewdrops screamed, scrambling backwards.
Vibrant slowed to a stop, his head leaning back. “Oh, what, now I’m the asshoUAGH—” he shrieked, his head slamming to the floor.
Abby called out to him again, watching in terror as two lengths of chain snaked around Vibrant’s hindlegs. She had watched them slither out from behind the device, lifting up into the air without so much as a rattle or clink. While Vibrant had ranted they had risen above him, posturing like two cobras above a juicy rat, and then finally lunged at him, whipping around his hooves with crushing strength.
The colt scrambled against the chains, kicking and flailing his hindlegs at the heavy steel links to no avail. “Help me! Don’t just stand there! Help me!”
With a jerk Abby broke through her paralysis and dove towards Vibrant. She skidded to a stop near his legs and watched as the chains tightened themselves around his hocks, the hard metal cutting into his fur and forcing blood out around them.
“Okay, okay, don’t panic, let’s just, I’m just gonna…” Abby tried to reassure him as she grabbed the end of one of the chains. She wrenched at it, and then again, grunting at the effort. One link pulled free from his bruised leg but the chain responded by twisting harder, breaking the skin and crushing the muscles. Undeterred Abby pulled at it, over and over again, trying hard to ignore the screams of pain coming from Vibrant.
It was only when the chain snapped taut and the hollow crunch of bone shattering beneath flesh met her ears did Abby let go, stunned. She didn’t know what to do. Whatever it was controlling the chain, it was stronger than her. She looked up and saw Dewdrops still sitting where she had landed, hooves to her mouth, holding back sobs and tears, totally petrified.
The chains reared. Vibrant scrambled at the floor, desperately trying to grasp onto the textured metal, to find any sort of purchase with his hooves, reaching out as far as his shoulders would let him as the floor fell away from him and the chains hauled him into the air.
The huge machine at the back of the room roared as Vibrant was slowly brought towards it. Gears shrieked, pumps banged, and motors growled, the light bulbs and fuse box sparking as the great device woke from its slumber. At the top, Abby could see dull, rusted scythes grind forth from within the hopper, alternating back and forth, picking up speed by the second. The chains hefted Vibrant higher in the air, all the while drawing him back towards the hopper.
“Dewdrops!” Abby screamed. She screamed again, and then ran over and shook the filly until she finally met her eyes. “We need to turn that off!”
“He’s— but they— it’s just—”
Abby slapped Dewdrops, and then tossed her towards the machine before running towards the fuse box. “Find a power cord! Or shut off switch! Something!” she yelled, wrenching the old grey cover off.
She plunged her hoof into the box, grabbing a handful of heavy fuses and ripping them out of the machine. Still it rumbled on. She reached another hoof in before something hot and sticky splattered onto her muzzle. Glancing up while pulling out another set, she saw the flailing shape of Vibrant directly above her. He was almost over the hopper.
“Dewdrops!” Abby screamed even louder, yanking out the last bundle of fuses. Despite it, the device vibrated and growled away. It groaned, a long and low rumbling like an empty stomach, and the chains came to a stop squarely above it.
“I’m trying!” Dewdrops whined back from the other side of the machine. “There’s no power cord! It’s already unplugged!” Abby heard the sound of shattering glass and then grunting from her friend. “And the shut off switch isn’t working!”
Abby kicked off from the machine, racing in the air towards Vibrant. She pinned him in a bear hug and beat her wings hard, trying all she could to pull the colt away from the spinning blades below. The chains fought back, whipping at her with thick links. One length slammed against her wing, sending a jolt of pain all the way up her spine, but she persisted, flapping even harder. Slowly, she felt him inch away from where they held him.
“Dewdrops, help me!”
Another length of chain thrashed her, connecting solidly against her forehead. A blast of light filled her eyes and her limbs went numb, dropping Vibrant as she swayed in the air. She lunged forward again, blind, but found no purchase. The pony was gone.
Vision inched back into her eyes, though she wished it hadn’t. She wished she could have been blind since birth. Wished she could have been born a Unicorn, far away from any gorges or Lost Cities, from any abandoned factories and deadly machines. She wished she hadn’t been born at all.
She wished Vibrant hadn’t been either, if only to prevent the fate she currently watched unfold before her.
The bright-orange colt hadn’t even the time to scream. Already his hindquarters were entirely gone, lost somewhere into the grinding stomach of the device. His torso bounced and jostled about the scythes, as ligaments and muscle and bone and intestines spewed forth from him, gripped by edgeless blades and torn out as they cut and sawed away at him. His head went in last, frozen in an expression of voiceless agony, his eyes wide, wet, until they too were pierced and split by the great blades gnashing away at his body.
He disappeared into that machine in seconds that lasted years too long, vanished entirely, the only memory of his existence the fresh paint of blood that coated the inside of the hopper and a deep, wet sucking sound emanating from somewhere within the machine. Abby held her hooves to her muzzle, though she dropped them almost immediately as bile and vomit raced from her stomach and out of her mouth. She puked hard, half-digested carrots and hay splattering against the slowing blades, and then puked again as her sick mixed with steaming blood.
She could have spent an eternity heaving overtop of the device, but reality soon caught up to the filly’s brain as she realized the two chains were rearing down below, aimed directly at Dewdrops. Without a moment’s hesitation she dived, racing downwards faster than a plummeting stone, and collided with her friend. She wrapped her forelegs around her as she did so, and kicked off the floor into the air again. Behind her, she heard a loud crash as steel pummelled steel. She did not turn to see if they were preparing a second strike.
As the two of them smashed into the double doors, Abby jumped again, springing up just as the lengths of chains sliced through the air beneath her. They bust through the doors and wrapped around the frame, tangled as their links shifted and writhed, desperate to snatch on to another foal. They retreated with a sharp tug, ripping the frame out of the wall and hauling it along the floor.
Abby and Dewdrops did not take a moment to consider the chains’ next move, and fled through the newly-created exit the instant it was large enough to fit them both. Abby had no idea where to go or how to get there, but she knew anywhere away from that cavernous room with the evil machine was better than where she currently was. She would rather face a million shadow ponies than spend one more second within sight of the device.
As they turned down the first corridor and pounded their wings up towards the next, the factory roared, howling like an Ursa Major. The agonizing scream came from all around them, from every nut and bolt, every screw and flange, every door and walkway. It shook with wrath, and before Abby’s eyes she watched the whole thing come to life.
Pipes bent and twisted like tentacles, ripping away from the walls and grasping out like claws. Wires buzzed with electric fury, whipping at the two and snaking towards their legs and hooves. The scaffolding itself began to warble and wave, washing up and down like an angry ocean at high tide. Even the walls themselves seemed to hum with malevolent energy. Abby couldn’t tell if it were the adrenaline or actually happening, but they seemed to inch inwards with every second.
“ABSENTIA!” Dewdrops screeched from behind her. Abby jerked her head backwards.
For a moment, her brain yelled at her to fly, to keep running, to leave her friend to die. She shook her head and skidded to a stop, deftly dodging a jumble of plastic conduit as it swiped at her to soar back to Dewdrops.
The filly was caught by her cannon, which twitched and smoked as electric current from the gripping wires flowed into it. More wires reached out, coiling themselves around her hindlegs. Even as Abby took the situation in she could see the factory hallway behind her crash and crumple together, as if sucked in by some black hole inching down the length of it.
Abby grabbed Dewdrop’s forelegs, dug her hind hooves into the oscillating scaffolding, and pulled.
“Help me! Get it off! I’m sorry! I’m sorry I made you come in here! Just get me out! Get me out!”
“It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna be okay, just breathe—”
For an instant, Dewdrops started to slide out of the rubbery grips of cable. Thick metal tubing burst through the walls then, snaking around Dewdrops loin and squeezing tight, bulging her stomach up around it.
“I can’t… it hurts! Abby, please, help me, help…” Dewdrops words became weaker and weaker as her diaphragm was crushed, her breaths shorter and harder, and tears flowed down the filly’s face. “Don’t leave me,” she begged, as the crumpling hallway reached her hindlegs.
She did not scream in pain, and Abby did not leave her. Harder still she pulled, for what little good it did. She could think of no other option. Her grip slipped on Dewdrop’s forelegs and she repositioned her hooves, doubling down her efforts. The collapsing hallway inched up the filly’s body, the snaps of bone and squelching of flesh muted by the cacophony of shearing and smashing metal yet echoing in Abby’s ears louder than any of it all the same.
“Help… m… me…” Dewdrops squeaked out, the hallway constricting down around her barrel.
Abby tugged hard, as hard as she could, kicking forward with her legs as she leaned backwards herself. She felt her spine might snap from how much effort she put into the pull, and, miraculously, she felt Dewdrops move. First an inch, then another, and then with one mighty kick of her legs the whole pony shot out of the mass of metal and wires and electricity, sending the two of them sailing backwards.
No, not the whole pony.
Half of her.
Abby’s eyes, wide with horror, took in what had happened. She could see, ten feet back, a gory stump of hips and flesh get sucked into the maelstrom of metal, then as it continued to slurp up a length of intestines, the wet and bloody mess dragging along the scaffolding towards it.
Organs and blood filled the gap between Abby and the chaos, and the stench of excrement and iron filled her nostrils. She shook, holding what was left of Dewdrops in her forelegs, and tore her wide-open eyes away from the gore to meet her friend’s.
They were lifeless and grey, her face frozen in an expression of shock. Her muzzle opened and closed, only by a fraction of an inch but all the same she watched it happen, wordless with no way to pass oxygen past her lips. Abby didn’t need to hear what Dewdrop’s final words were were to understand it though. It was one last plea for mercy, her final cry for help, long after anyone could ever save her.
A nanosecond of grieving was one spent too long, however, as a bundle of yellow and black cable stabbed itself into Abby’s left wing, sending a torrent of electric pain through her body and out her hooves. The filly screamed and tossed the remnants of her friend into the encroaching mouth of the factory, scrambling to her hooves. She reached around her back and ripped out the offending wires, and tossed them as hard as she could to the side. She needed to get out. She needed to call for help, to warn the citizens of Zephyr Heights about the horrors of this place. To warn them all to stay away, to tell them of what happened to her friends.
She leapt to the air and fell flat on her stomach, screaming as her left wing hung limp and useless by her side. On hoof it was then, she swallowed, picking herself back up again as the walls began to shatter and crash behind her. She took off then, galloping down the scaffolding, jumping over and ducking under hands of conduit that groped at her.
Abby didn’t know how she did it. Onwards and onwards she ran, sliding around corners and dodging into open doorways, anywhere that looked like a free path for her to follow. The collapsing hallway raced after her, picking up its incremental pace as she fled, always mere feet behind her. She sobbed, wishing now more than ever that she had the capacity to fly once again.
Her lungs burned as she galloped, searing pain flowing down her chest with every breath. They begged her to slow down, to stop and catch her breath, but any instance she was not moving would mean certain death. Her legs complained as well, the muscles aching, her knees throbbing, hooves stinging from pounding against jagged and unsteady metal. She pressed on harder, pushing her body beyond any limits she might have had. She would not die the way her friends had.
It seemed like an eternity of fleeing, like she had turned down a million different crossways and intersections, but finally she rounded a corner and saw the bright glow of mist-laden sunlight flooding in from outside. There was no joy at the sight of it, no modicum of relief. She could see salvation, but was not there yet. She ducked down, trotting faster, even beating her good wing to give herself as much of a boost as possible. Her left wing tingled, numb, and flapped lazily along, giving her another spot of hope. It might just be possible to get out of here eventually.
The factory roared again, sending bolts flying from overstressed fastenings and a rain of dirt and rust to fall from the ceiling. Abby heard the smashing and gnashing behind her gain in volume, gain in intensity, gain in frequency. The building shook in anger again, sending another wave of pipes and wires out to snatch at her from every angle possible. Abby dove through gaps in the chaos, her filly body just barely able to slide through and under. Acrobatics was never her special talent, so she could not tell where this ability was coming from. Pure self-preservation was her only answer she could come up with.
The gaping opening approached rapidly despite the furious assault by the factory. Ten feet away. Five feet. Almost—
Abby launched out of the hole as a rush of dust and shrapnel exploded out behind her. She sailed maybe fifteen feet forward before spinning down, smashing against the concrete facade of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation tower. She rolled and tumbled down the steep face of the building, scraping her knees and chipping her hooves as she scrambled for any sort of purchase to slow her down. Finally, bruised and bloody, she managed to stabilize herself, just as the ground raced up to meet her.
She hit the misty floor of the canyon hard, hearing something in her left hindleg crack with the impact. She wasted no time inspecting if it was broken. She spared only a second to look up at the skyscraper and, certain that the exterior showed no signs of coming to life, bolted off down the street. Her hindleg screamed in pain but did not buckle or fail, which was good enough for the filly. She ran, ran as far as she could into the city of Cloudsdale, ran as far as her beleaguered muscles would take her, as far away from the ancient and angry factory as she could get.
She only stopped when she entered a clearing surrounded by rubble too tall for her to surmount. A regally carved fountain, bone dry for centuries, stood in the centre of the clearing, and Abby hobbled up to it to sit.
Firmly planted onto the granite, she looked around herself, taking in the surroundings. There was only one route out of the square, the one she had taken to enter it. The rest was blocked off by shops and toppled pillars, by huge chunks of lavishly carved stone, and by piles of trash. Thick rivers of mist flowed into the square through cracks and gaps in the barricades and out of storefronts, obscuring the ground from view.
Abby waited, listening, her ears perked up and sharp, for minutes.
Nothing made a sound.
It was then the relief came to her. Adrenaline drained from her body like the color from her face, and she started to shake. Only when wet drops of tears plipped onto her thighs did she realize she was crying. She leaned into it, letting the sorrow wash over her like a cleansing rain. Why had she listened to Vibrant and Dewdrops? Why had she let herself be bullied into coming to this horrible place? And why didn’t she convince them not to go? Was it her fault they were dead?
She sniffed and held herself tight, pushing the thought far away to the back of her brain and locking it behind a door. These were questions that would be answered later. For now, as far as she knew, she was still in danger. She needed to get home.
The filly stood up, her hooves sinking into the opaque mist up to her hocks. She arched her back, flared her wings, and then flapped only once before dropping to her knees. She could move her left wing, but any force against it sent a debilitating fire through her spine. There would be no way she was getting out of here by flight.
She sat back down and pulled out her cellphone, grateful that she hadn’t lost it in all the confusion and running and fighting. She swallowed a mouthful of dread before hitting the unlock button. This far away from Zephyr Heights, in such a low area…
One bar of signal. She almost cried again.
Shaky hooves tapped the emergency number, screwed up, cleared the phone and tried again. She hit the call button, and then lifted the phone to her head.
“Emer…cy… services, how can… elp you?” A mare’s voice came out, broken up by bursts of static.
This time Abby did cry, and she sniffed a glob of snot back up her nose before speaking. “I-I’m at the bottom of Ghastly Gorge. I can’t fly. I need help.”
“Sorry, you—beep beep beep.”
She blunk madly, fumbling with the phone in her hooves before checking the screen. The call had dropped.
She hit the redial button and slammed it back up to her head, sending a wave of mist flying with her movement. Distantly, in the back of her mind, she noticed that it was now up to her shoulders.
“...Heights Emergency services, how can we help you?”
“Please! I’m trapped! I need help.”
“Stay c… ere are you trapped?”
“The bottom of Ghastly Gorge! My friends went down and—”
“Beep beep beep.”
“No! No no no no!” Abby panicked, pounding away at the redial button. She was up to her neck in mist, and she limped on top of the fountain’s edge to bring herself above it. The next call immediately failed, but the one after it connected.
“Emergenc—”
“I’m stuck at the bottom of Ghastly Gorge, outside the festival!” she shouted.
“Are you injured?”
“I am, my wing and leg are… I dunno. I can’t fly. I need help.”
“Please remain calm. You’re cutting in and out. Help will be on its way immediately. You’re outside the festival?”
Sweat ran down Abby’s face as the sea of mist rose above her eyes, blurring everything. She could see nothing, not even the granite she was standing on.
“In Ghastly Gorge! I…”
Something touched her hoof, and she glanced down in terror only to notice that same newspaper from when she first arrived was wrapped around her ankle. She stared at it, remembering her uneasiness from earlier, and finally realized.
This paper had been down here, in the damp, for hundreds and hundreds of years, and yet it was practically still legible. The whole of it, all the city of Cloudsdale, had sat rotting at the bottom of a canyon for eons, but it hadn’t actually rot.
“Hello? Are you there? We’re pinging your location. Stay on the line.”
Abby looked up from the paper, her mouth opening and closing. Shadows had started to appear out of the mist, denser shapes of white manifesting before her eyes.
“...Help,” she whispered, as more and more silhouettes of ponies began to appear. “Help!” she shouted again, backing up further into the fountain until her rump connected with the statue in the middle.
“Units are on their way. Are you… in Ghastly Gorge? Hello?”
“Hurry, you have to hurry… I… there’s so many of them!”
“So ma… f what? Stay on the line. Can y… scribe what’s happening?”
“No, no, get away! Stay away from me! Get your hooves off—No! No! NOOOOO!”
“Ma’am? Are you still with me, ma’am? Help is on the way. Ma’am?”
Silence reigned, save for a building breeze whistling through the gorge.
“Are you… ith me?” the phone’s speaker announced, the words bouncing off of bare stone walls.
There was an ungodly long pause while the operator waited for a response.
“Ma’am?” she said.
There was nothing but the echoes of her words coming back from an empty canyon.
And then finally,
Beep beep beep.
