Day Eight

The sun rose again. This time it wasn’t as smooth or quick as before, though. It was a slow and aching motion that hauled it into the sky, one that Rose had hovered in front of one of the windows to see. At first she thought it wouldn’t get above the horizon, but once it was firmly in its place her heart settled.

Now they were all sitting around doing nothing. This morning after waking up they passed around the bag of rations again. One less mouth to feed meant their food would stretch on a bit longer. The bread was growing harder though and the haycakes were smelling a bit more ripe.

Lieutenant Golden Star was trotting around the room, the radio in one hoof and raised as high as he could manage. He had been at this since he had gotten the thing to work early this morning and received nothing but static. Being underground meant the signal wasn’t great and that they were hunting for a magical spot down here that might not even exist.

“Can I ask about the horn?” Rose was in Tempest’s little ‘room’, which she found more cozy than her own for some reason. “If not, it’s okay. I get it, you know.” She just needed to talk about something with somepony that wasn’t an argument, that didn’t end in name calling and hoof pointing.

“Ask.” Tempest was sitting with her back against the wall and her eyes closed. “I may answer, I may not.” That was about as nice of a response as Rose was going to get, at least in the public existence they carried out down here.

“I’m going to assume asking how it broke is out of the question?” There was no answer, just the placid features of the unicorn. “Alright…uh…how does it prevent you from actually doing magic?” Rose tried to remember what little anatomy lessons she received from her parents as a filly. “I thought the important bit was actually like…down in your brain, not the tip.” That got Tempest to actually open an eye.

“If I were to duct tape your shut and pinch your nose as tight as I could without closing it completely, could you breathe?” Rose was going to answer but Tempest continued. “Your lungs are the ‘important bit’ so you should be able to breathe, right?”

“Ah…” That simplified things incredibly. “So you just can’t take in whatever it is you use for spells?”

“Yes.” Tempest nodded and closed her eye again. “I can produce sparks if I really try but…it’s unpleasant.”

“Leaves you tired as all get out, too.” Al chimed in from across the room. The old gray stallion was laying flat on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Can’t drink it up so anytime you use it you gotta spend a lot of time recharging.” Rose forgot that Al was even a unicorn as his horn was broken off much closer to the base than Tempest’s. It was less than an inch and could easily be lost in his mane.

“How’d you break yours?” Bulwark, who was sitting by the bug tunnel, asked.

“I was a teenager and forgot to pay somepony on time.” Al didn’t hesitate to answer and he never took his eyes from the spot on the ceiling as he spoke. “Got it sawed right off.” He made a motion with his hoof as if he was sawing it off himself. “Worst day of my whole life…”

“You didn’t report it to the guard or anything? That’s a hate crime in Canterlot.” Rose was horrified that Al had to go through that, but she was even more horrified that he didn’t tell anypony.

“Oh yeah, become a snitch. I’m sure that would’ve ended well for me.” Al sat up on his bed and chewed a lip in thought for a moment. “I knew this one pony, Fence, he snitched to the guards about some stuff and-”

“-Mayor Bay urges all citizens to remain calm and stay in their homes. It’s imperative we think of our neighbors in this time of crisis as friends and not adversaries, no matter what rumors may swirl around the streets”

The radio crackled and sputtered out the words loud enough for everypony to hear. Golden was in a precarious position, balanced on one of his rear hooves with one hoof braced against the wall and the radio held into an outstretched hoof and pushed as high as he could. The sweet spot was apparently one of the corners closest to the entrance and he had actually found it.

In less than a second the other ponies in the dungeon surrounded the stallion to listen in on the reports. Bulwark gladly helped support Golden’s awkward position and rose up to provide another hoof to balance the squawking metal box.

“Once again, remain calm and at home.” The feminine voice came back on over the radio. If they had all heard right, this was a station in Baltimare. “It is imperative that you remain indoors. This is also a reminder that any and all travel in or out of the city is not allowed and violators will be…dealt with.”

“Well it doesn’t sound like complete chaos.” Golden muttered. “Baltimare seems to be safe or the problem is at least dealt with…” He then reached up and fiddled with the dial. Static swept through the signal and fragments of voices broke through it momentarily but faded back into the thick audio fog.

“GET SOMEWHERE SAFE!” The panicked cry was the next thing to solidly break through and spill from the radio’s speakers.”GET INSIDE AND LOCK YOUR DOORS!” It sounded like something was banging on the door of whatever radio station this was coming from. Then the blood curdling howl of a turned unicorn came through the tinny speakers. The pony who had been broadcasting screamed and the wet sound of flesh being torn from bone was heard.

“Manehattan…” Al groaned. “I recognize the station…it’s Manehattan…” The largest city in Equestria had gotten infected then. At least that population was heavily mixed between the three main pony races. It wasn’t as lopsided as Canterlot was. So maybe that meant the non-unicorns would stand more of a chance of survival. Surely it would help that they didn’t have any alicorns around to police the pegasi and keep them contained.

The station flipped again as the only thing coming from Manehattan was dead air. Golden kept fiddling with the knobs until he found another one that wasn’t static. This one was already dead air. There were sounds, distant growls, that could be heard but they were faint. Bulwark informed them that the station was Fillydelphia. Equestria’s fourth largest city joined the infestation.

“This is Cloud Cover from Cloudsdale at Seven, coming to you live with breaking news.” Yet another signal found its way to the dungeons beneath Canterlot. This one didn’t need identification thanks to the broadcaster. “Ponies once again filled the streets of Cloudsdale and rallied against the mandated lockdowns. Local forces helped disperse the ponies, but demonstrators promised to return tomorrow if the lockdowns were not rescinded. This came on the back of the mayor openly denying entry to ponies from other cities, some of which were seen to be visibly injured. Captain Spitfire of the Wonderbolts offered a comment on the unrest, saying: ‘If the mayor doesn’t get this under control, then the Wonderbolts will.’ I think I will let that speak for itself…”

“Spitfire survived?” Rose was the one to speak first. “I…I can’t believe she got away.” She had expected both Wonderbolts to die in Canterlot. If one had successfully escaped, maybe both had. Considering the last she saw of Soarin he was right in the middle of both alicorns, that seemed unlikely.

“Yeah and it sounds like she’s about to do something stupid.” Golden said with a grunt as he set the radio down. Its little speakers sputtered with static until he turned the device off. “Great, so Manehattan and Fillydelphia are both gone. Did we not get travel locked down soon enough? How did this spread so far…”

“Do we really need to worry about that?” Al started to trot back to his cell. “Seems pretty pointless to worry about where you messed up considering we’re already deep in this mess. Better to spend energy on figuring a way out than wondering how we got in.”

“Well maybe if we knew how it spread we could reverse it!” Golden stepped into the middle of the room and puffed out his chest as he spoke. “The Crystal Empire exists and we have the means to get a message to them! If we can figure it out here then maybe they can make a cure or find some way to reverse it!”

“This sounds like a foal’s errand.” Tempest huffed and trotted away. “Are any of you experts in diseases? Biological warfare? Whatever this is?” Nopony answered her. “I thought not.”

“Maybe not, but we were at the epicenter of this.” Golden rebutted. “Canterlot has the most unicorn dense population in all of Equestria. We were right in the middle of it as ponies started to turn. We had to have seen something to give us a clue.” He waited for a moment. “Did anypony see somepony turn into one of those monsters? I was a little preoccupied fighting with one of those things and I didn’t see the others turn.”

“I did.” Rose raised one of her wings. “Picket.” She hadn’t even thought about the poor unicorn in days now, but those memories kept flooding back all at once. “I was in the same room when Picket…yeah.” The sounds of bones cracking and growing and Picket’s cries of pain echoed in her head. A hoof came up to her damaged ear and she grimaced.

“What did you see? What happened before he turned?”

“Well…” Rose poured over that day which now seemed like a lifetime ago. She had woken up to the screams and howls…then she had met Picket outside. “He had a headache.” She remembered that he had complained about it twice, once when they got their weapons and again when they had entered the Carousel. “But…only when he used his magic. It was like it hurt to use.”

“Hey my partner, same thing happened to him.” Al spoke up from his cell. “He was rearranging our warehouse and had to stop because he said he had a really bad migraine. I didn’t see him become one of those things-I was already on my way here through the…uh…usual avenues.”

“That’s why we didn’t turn…” Tempest came back over to the group. “What if it travels through magic? That’s why it only turns unicorns, that’s why it turned Celestia and Luna.” Her skepticism that they could even figure something out vanished in an instant as she rejoined them.

“I don’t know enough about magic to confirm how that would even work.” Golden mused and the rest of the ponies around him joined in that exact sentiment. Nopony here could even use magic, and Al didn’t strike them as a particularly educated stallion. So all the eyes in the room turned to Tempest.

“Don’t look at me.” The unicorn protested. “I lost my horn as a filly, I don’t know a thing about how it works. Once you lose the ability, the mechanics don’t exactly matter anymore.”

“Okay, well it’s our one lead.” Golden said with a deep sigh. “If it was airborne then you two would’ve turned by now, especially you Tempest. We’ll try to get this information to the Empire tomorrow. Today we need to figure out how to get up to that tower. What’s the closest tunnel to it, Al?”

“Where is it?” The old unicorn called out from the comfort of his bed.

“Northeast section of the castle. It’s a big tower with an antenna and a red blinking light.” Rose called back as she recalled where it was. “I think it’s near Princess Twilight’s old tower when she lived here.”

“Ah okay. Hmm.” Al rubbed his chin and mulled it over. “Probably the same one we used last time? Those bugs couldn’t tunnel everywhere, but they sure as shoot tried. Can’t say you’d get any closer.” The problem with that was Princess Luna’s observatory was in the northwest section. The distance between the two was maybe triple the distance between the astronomy tower and the now nonexistent ballista.

“Not ideal.” Bulwark concluded for the group.

“Two ponies covering that much distance is suicide.” The Lieutenant sighed and began to pace again. “Are we closer from here? I think we are. We could go through The Dusties and make a break for it as a group.”

“A bigger group will just make us go slower. You need speed out there, not bulk.” Tempest refuted the plan and then offered an alternative. “I say we split into two groups of two. You and Bulwark go through the upstairs while Rose and I go through the tunnels. That way if one of us gets swarmed then at least the other group still has a chance. If we’re all together then one mistake torpedoes the whole plan.”

“Splitting up means I could lose another pony. Absolutely not.” Lieutenant Golden put his hoof down and glared at the mare. “We do this by the book: take it slow and be careful.”

“I agree.” Bulwark rumbled out. “Gives us a chance to keep an eye on you too.”

“Sir, Tempest is right.” Rose decided to address her superior officer with some of the fire that still burned in her chest. “The book is out of the window right now. If you really want a chance of this working, then we need to have some redundancies in case things go wrong.”

“Why are you on her side, Sergeant?” Golden advanced on the pegasus and affixed his cold eyes upon her. “Need I remind you that I’m still your commanding officer? What I say still goes. We’re all going together, that’s the end of it.”

“With all due respect sir, your judgment hasn’t been good since this started.” Rose puffed up her chest and ruffled her wings as she addressed the stallion and leveled a look of similar intensity right back at him. “If we listened to your plans, then we would be dead up there right now instead of alive. Doctrine is dead, we need to be smart and flexible.”

“Not when it comes to the fate of Equestria, Sergeant.” Golden flared his nostrils and stood up as straight as he could and towered over his subordinate. “If we can get this information into the hooves of ponies that can make a difference, a princess even, then we need to maintain strict order to ensure success. We have a chance now to undo the suffering you just heard on the radio. If you don’t want this to be the reality of every stallion, mare, and foal in Equestria then we do this the right way or we don’t do it at all.” He didn’t give Rose a chance to respond as he trotted right by her. “We move out at sunrise. End of discussion.”

Rose was not ecstatic about the prospect of throwing themselves out there again. Nor was she excited about watching the backs of Golden or Bulwark, both ponies who seemed more and more antagonistic towards her by the day. This couldn’t be about personal feelings, though. This was about faith and duty, not petty squabbles.

Princess Celestia was trapped in the body of a monster. She was suffering and Rose knew it. If there was an opportunity to save the diarch from that grim fate, then she would take it. There was no other choice.

Day Nine

The sun rose again.

This time, however, it would not set.

Author's Note

Short chapter today, sorry.