The Wanderer

The air is naught but pure frost, yet your lungs catch fire with every ragged breath. Your legs, alight with agony, extend and retract on pure instinct.

An otherworldly force bids you flee with everything you have, and then some. Across the midnight haze, through the frost, sinking almost shin-deep into white death with every step.

Your shoulder throbs with every down-beat of your gait, and every swing of your arm wrenches staggering pain from a well of prickling numbness. For a stint, you followed the distant lights of the mecca. Now, in the midst of a furious winter storm, you can only follow your friends, carrying on in the same vague direction.

How long you’ve been on the run is nebulous - whether it’s been five minutes or five hours, it’s felt like eternity either way. The wind, having picked up tremendously since your hasty departure, whips at your exposed skin like pins and needles. You squint over at Pal, his enchanted bones having a somewhat easier time trudging through the unending dunes of snow.

On his back, Hearth still slumbers, oblivious to your dire circumstances. Even now, in the midst of the tundra’s assault on your senses, you worry for her; Virtue’s spell must have been dangerously potent to render her unconscious for so long. You inwardly wonder whether or not it would be better to be awake for the harrowing jaunt into the city.

Before you can distract yourself with another train of thought, though, your foot gets caught on a particularly solid patch of snow, sending you tumbling forward. You catch yourself on both hands, the impact riveting up your arms and through your shoulders, another jolt of suffering radiating from your wound. A hoarse groan escapes your lungs, already thirsting for more frigid air before it even leaves you. Subconscious anger swells in your chest as you ball your fists, lamenting the loss of your feverish pace.

“Damn!” Pal swears, doubling back to check on you. “Y’alright, big guy?”

Two skeletal feet appear in the snow in front of you as a bony, four-fingered hand plants itself firmly on your good shoulder. You look up into the endless dark of Pal’s eye sockets, beset with green light.

“M’fine.”

The deep crimson staining of your clothes around your shoulder begs to differ. Pal’s pinpoint stare scans you for a few moments as he helps you to your feet.

“Ain’t much further now,” he says, pointing toward the city with his free hand. “We gotta get the hell outta this wind, ‘fore it gets even worse. C’mon!”

As he sets off once more, so do you, ignoring the worsening torture of cloth on exposed flesh. In just the short amount of time that you had taken to recover, the snowfall further worsened. Your face stings as the frost nips at your skin. Pal leads the way, pushing further into the white noise.

The only other thing that starts to jut out from the haze is a vast wall stretching into obscurity, which all three of you close in on after a few more minutes of perseverance. Pal presses against it and looks tentatively in both directions that it continues in, switching Hearth into a front-carry position to better shield her against the elements.

“Stick close ta me,” Pal commands. “The storm should cover us from the guards up on the walls. With any luck, they ain’t sealed up the old tunnels.”

Old, musty passageways with an open wound? Wonderful.

“Tunnels…?”

“They’re technically ‘auxiliary exits,’ but we all just call ‘em tunnels. I dunno how close we are ta one, but there were plenty of ‘em, so hopefully we won’t be out here much longer.”

The sooner, the better; the tips of your fingers are beginning to lose feeling. You file in behind Pal as he shimmies along the wall, his free hand feeling for something along the rough stone.

Forever and a half passes as all three of your trudge forward. Numbness steadily creeps up your digits. You blow hot breath on them to preserve some level of warmth, but it brings back nothing more than static.

Shivering uncontrollably, you shove your hands under your armpits, desperate to prevent any significant consequences from prolonged exposure. Eventually - mercifully - Pal stops in his tracks, his bony fingers working a divot in the otherwise featureless wall.

“C’mon, you sonuva-”

Over the roaring wind, stone sliding on stone rings out.

Pal’s head rears up at the sound and he fidgets harder, fighting for any grip at all. Finally, he finds it, and a small, rectangle-esque section of the wall begins to slide outward. It moves an inch every million years, even as strong as Pal appears to be.

Impatient, you spring forward in assistance and find your own diminished grip, settling for the friction along your fingertips when an edge fails to present itself to you. All the same, you pull as hard as you can, the rough stone registering as no more than a hefty force on your weary bones.

Spending energy you can’t afford to part with, the hidden door inches along ever so slightly faster, building up snow in the wake of its arc. Your footing falters, almost sending you tumbling over again, but your meager grip on the heavy slab somehow manages to keep you up right. The added leverage is enough to wrench it ajar just enough for someone to slip through.

You release the door with a slight stumble backwards, ragged breaths producing a worrying ache in your chest.

“You first,” Pal instructs. “Can’t fit both’a us with Hearth like this.”

Your body adheres to his request before your brain does. Shimmying into the diminutive opening, you’re met with a strikingly narrow passageway lined with cobwebs and dust.

The architecture itself is staggeringly simple - the walls, floor, and ceiling are all carved out of the stone wall itself, decidedly utilitarian in finish. Beyond the entrance, it’s strikingly dark. Thanks to the dim light bleeding in from the outside, though, you can just barely make out a room in the distance that connects with other carved-out hallways. As you shuffle in, blowing through your mouth at the occasional web caressing your face, the violent cold of the elements is replaced with an infinitely preferable stagnant chill. It must be the same temperature here, but without the howling wind, it’s much more bearable. Your body, however, struggles to tell the difference; you shiver with the exact same ferocity, despite the welcomed change in circumstance.

As you tread deeper into the derelict hovel, you hear Pal slip in behind you, grunting as he figures out how to share the minimal space with Hearth’s sleeping form.

Before long, the cramped hall opens up into the room you glimpsed at the entrance. You almost fall into it, steadying yourself at the last second as you make room for Pal to crawl through. You swipe at your face, clearing away the cobwebs tickling your taut skin. Once they’re gone, you scan your immediate environment, trust in your isolation a fleeting prospect.

Amid the oppressive darkness of the room, you can just barely make out some sparse “living” arrangements; a shoddy cot, several unlit lanterns, a hanging wooden table affixed to the wall, and a chest of drawers. Aside from that, the room is littered with crates of glass bottles, some of them still full of some unknown liquid. Dust coats everything, a topping that gives away the room’s age.

You make a beeline for the end of the bed, cautiously planting your sore ass onto the rigid mattress. You half-expect a den of spiders to come flooding out.

It hardly gives, even under your full weight; whoever bought this thing was definitely scammed. As you lean back into the frigid stone wall, the excruciating throbbing of your shoulder that you had shoved from your mind makes its startling return. Every fervent beat of your heart sends a new wave of stinging pain through the afflicted area. You try to steady your breathing, but to no avail - your lungs hunger, and you cannot deny them a meal.

Shuffling slightly to rest your back against the wall, Pal finally sidesteps in, no more exhausted than he was at the start of your escape.

“Sweet, merciful shit,” he cries, stumbling over to you, Hearth still cradled in his arms. “It’s gotta be close to midwinter or somethin’.”

The gentle glow of his eyes illuminates the space in front of him as he lumbers over to the bed, setting her down on her side next to you. With haste, he turns and makes for the drawers, throwing one open and pulling out a set of thick, woolen blankets. He tosses one at you, and it lands in your lap.

“Get that around ya, nice an’ tight,” he says.

He doesn’t need to tell you twice. As he works the second blanket around Hearth, you unravel yours, desperate for its shelter. You just barely feel its coarseness under your fingertips - a distant, muted sensation, but proof that they still belong to you.

An unsteady flourish rests the covering around your shoulders. You scoot backwards on the bed and bring your legs up, wrapping the blanket across them to form a pitiful sauna. It quakes as your tremors continue, uncaring.

“How’s the shoulder?” Pal asks as he finishes cocooning Hearth.

A particularly agonizing wave of searing torment surges through your wound, and you wince as your tortured voice fills the air. Your voice quivers as you deign to speak.

“P-pretty fucking s-shit, man.”

Your breath billows out in fog, lilting away from you.

“Lemme get a good look at it,” he says, focusing his attention on you.

Slowly, you slide the blanket off of your shoulder, exposing your scalding wound to the open air. What little heat you’ve gathered threatens to leave. Pal eyes it, grimacing as he surveys the damage.

“Hell of a flesh wound, but you’ll be fine. Guess the half-pint was tryin’ ta kill ya after all.”

He looks around for a moment before returning his gaze to you.

“There should be some bandages n’ a medical kit ‘round ‘ere somewhere, lemme see if I can find ‘em. Just stay put and get warm, alright?”

He rushes off, ducking into a hallway to your right. Apart from Hearth and her slow, steady breathing, you’re alone for the first time since all of this started. You pull the blanket tight against you once more, watching each shaky breath manifest in front of you as they dance in the dismal light from outside.

…

What the hell are you going to do?

You fight with all of your might against the oncoming dread, but you’re already awash in its surf. You still have no idea where you are, no idea where you’re going, and no idea how far away Equestria is, or what direction it’s even in. Even in the farthest reaches of your unconscious mind, you fail to liken this place to anywhere that you’ve learned of during your decidedly minimal time in Equestria. It’s like some sort of frozen hell, chosen especially for you.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, you’re no doubt going to be hunted soon, too. The way Ambrosia eyed you like a starving animal, it might as well be guaranteed. Will you even be able to survive long enough to be rescued in the first place?

Is rescue even coming?

Fear renders you rigid; even minimal movement incites a groaning within your bones that dissipates after a quarter of a second or so. How the hell are you going to get out of this…?

Before you can spiral further, the return of Pal’s cloven steps ringing from down the hallway to your left brings you out of your stupor. What’s more, a flickering yellow light accompanies it, and as he rounds the corner, you register its dismal source; a weathered lantern, just barely clinging to life.

“Got one,” Pal greets you cheerily, setting his lantern down on the table. “Found some oil and a lighter, too. Looks like they ain’t cracked down on this particular den just yet.”

He treads down the hallway again and shuts the door with great effort before returning to you again and kneeling, the medical bag in one of his hands.

“Think ya can get your shirt off?”

You nod, reluctantly dropping your blanket around your sides. It takes some finagling, as well as no shortage of blunt, throbbing pain, but you manage to remove it along with your sweater. Pal reaches into his bag and pulls out a nondescript bottle of… something.

“Alright, I gotta pour this stuff over the wound. It’s fixin’ to hurt like hell, buddy, so I’ll count to three, yeah?”

You seat a breath deep within your shaky lungs.

“Do it.”

He nods, uncorking the bottle and hovering it above your shoulder.

“Alright… One.”

He tips the bottle, showering your shredded flesh in the frigid liquid.

You cry out behind tightly clamped lips as the wound foams over with a strangely sweet-smelling froth, nearly becoming nauseous from the horrible, stinging pain. Your lungs work overtime to parse the pain as you shoot him an irritated glare. Pal pays no mind, immediately setting upon the area with bandages.

“What the hell was that…?” you mutter.

“Topical healin’ solution,” he explains. “Made right in town. Works pretty good for stuff that ain’t too severe.”

You lift your arm so he can get a better angle with the wrappings.

“No complaints,” you say. “Just… actually count down next time, will you?”

“Ha! If ya say so, bud.”

The next few moments pass in silence as he shrouds your shoulder and surrounding flesh in beige gauze, the beginnings of crimson coloration peeking through as it presses against you. He pats your back as he finishes, the wrappings pulling taut over your shoulder as you let your arm fall slack. You pick your shirt back up and slip it on, the crimson-line hole in the shoulder now contrasting against the bandages.

“Found some food in there, too, but I dunno if it’s still good or not,” Pal says as he takes a seat against the far wall. “Guess this hole hasn’t been used in a good while.”

You bring the blanket back over your shoulders, restoring your cocoon and shivering against the sudden change.

“W-What is this place, anyway?”

“It’s an old maintenance tunnel,” he replies. “Engineers come ‘n do work on the innards o’ the wall durin’ the hot season. Mostly abandoned in winter, though, which works well for us. The only people comin’ in and out o’ here right now’re usually smugglers, or the homeless.”

…Well, that’s great.

“Any chance of law enforcement busting in?”

“Nah. Tunnel network’s too complex to comb the whole thing over, so ‘less they really want someone, they’ll just let ‘em brave the elements. Comin’ in here without gettin’ properly ready is about the same as headin’ outside the wall, honestly.”

…

“…You know the way out, right?” you ask.

He laughs, filling the stale air.

“Sure do, big guy.”

You release a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

“Did you work here before, or something?”

His skull morphs into a disappointed frown as he leans his own head (or is it his horns?) back against the wall.

“What, ya didn’t pay attention back in the prison? That’s pretty rude o’ ya, Anon.”

“Forgive me, but today’s been pretty fucking stressful, man. Half the shit that happened back there feels like a dream at this point.”

He rolls his… eyes? Magic? Peepers? He rolls his magic eye-things at you; you’ll decide on a technical name for them later.

“Fine, fine. I guess I’ll let ya slide fer now.”

He leans forward again, hanging his elbows off of his knees as his arms dangle in front of him.

“I own a lil’ restaurant in the industrial ring with my wife n’ kids. Used ta be a pub, back ‘fore they outlawed nectar of any kind.”

“Nectar…?”

A bony indentation forms and elevates above his eye socket - a skeletal imitation of a raised eyebrow. It holds for a moment before he shakes his head.

“Sorry, forgot ya ain’t from here. Used to be a delicacy ‘round these parts, ‘specially in the inner rings. You drink it and ya just…” He throws his arms outward to encompass the entirety of your mutual surroundings.

“Feel more connected with everything around you, ya know what I mean?”

So… alcohol.

“I think so. Go on, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

He nods before continuing on.

“Anyway, I didn’t take too kindly to those cult freaks cuttin’ my business clean in two. Mix that with the tight curfew they started enforcin’, and we were ‘bout to go clean under! We ended up just changin’ over to a no-nonsense restaurant, which kept us afloat for a bit.”

Reminiscence flashes both literally and metaphorically through the viridian glow of his sight.

“We didn’t take it lyin’ down, though… turns out nectar’s worth a lot more when it’s illegal.”

A smirk crawls onto your lips as you connect the dots; no wonder he knows how to navigate here.

“You smuggled it in.”

“In, out, every which way you could think of ta anyone who had the coin t’ buy it. Had to sneak outside the walls ta harvest the raw stuff ourselves, which was tough as all get out, but it was way more than worth it. For a while there, we never had to worry about nothin’.”

“Something happened, though?”

He nods, his ocular glow dimming considerably.

“Little rats caught me n’ one o’ my sons comin’ back from a trip outside one day. They were gonna take us both to the prison, but I told ‘em where we were storin’ the nectar in exchange for his freedom. The rest is right in front o’ ya.”

He gestures to his skeletal self, diminished against the dusty sandstone. You frown, dismayed.

“They did that to you…?”

“They brought me in for ‘punishment’ on a day where I was bein’ particularly rowdy with ‘em. Kept the blindfold on while they strapped me in, though, and then… I woke up in my cell, an’ I couldn’t feel anything. Touch, taste, smell… nothin’. Just a vague sense that there’s somethin’ there, just outta reach.”

You shudder as you fail to imagine what unholy process they could have made him undergo. Your eyes flitter across the glowing scrawlings on his ribs, unsure of what to say.

“Shit, Pal… I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” he replies, appearing to level out. “I’m alive, n’ that’s all I really care about, far as I’m concerned.”

You frown at yourself, disappointed.

“I can’t believe I forgot all of that between the prison and here.”

To your surprise, he chuckles, and his regular glow returns to his sockets.

“Well, I didn’t really go into that much detail back then. Can’t remember somethin’ ya never heard before.”

“Come ta think of it,” he continues, “you didn’t either, big guy. Ya told us ‘bout the mystery girl, and that ya worked in an ‘office’ - whatever that is - but apart from that, I don’t really know much about ya.”

You hold the blanket around you ever tighter, having finally worked up a decent amount of body heat.

“I mean, what’s there to tell?”

“Well, for starters, I ain’t ever seen anything like you in my life, and that’s sayin’ somethin’, considerin’ where I live. What’s up with that?”

Huh… been a long while since you’ve been through one of these talks. Thoughts of Twilight’s thorough questionnaire bring a genuine smile to your face as you answer his question.

“Well, when you said I wasn't from here, you were right in more than one way. I’m not from here, yeah, but I’m not from anywhere, either.”

You pause, eager to let him mull over your confusing choice of words.

“Meaning…?” he replies after a few moments, a skeletal eyebrow raised in what looks like disbelief.

“I’m not native to this planet. Or this universe, for that matter.”

The other ‘eyebrow’ shoots up as Pal eyes you from head to toe.

“Didn’t take ya for a fibber, Anon. Where’re ya from, really? That Equestria place you talked about?”

Before you can continue your coy antics, the reality of where you are hits you like a truck. How could you mill about at a time like this?

“Shouldn’t we get somewhere safer before we get into telling our life stories? I’m worried about Hearth, she’s been asleep ever since she got hit.”

Your eyes pore over her sleeping form again. She almost looks peaceful, tucked away in her blanket like that.

“She’ll be fine, Anon,” Pal tries to reassure you. “I’ve been on the receiving end of that spell before, this is par for th’ course.”

“What if he supercharged it, like the one he hit my shoulder with?”

Pal’s expression becomes contemplative for a moment as he weighs the decision in his mind.

“They got night patrols that roll through the industrial sector lookin’ for people violatin’ curfew. They catch us, we’re goin’ straight back into cells.”

“How many are there, usually?”

“Last I remember, they usually send out nineteen or twenty teams o’ four to walk the whole ring. I remember usin’ this exit in particular a few times, so we’re probably on the eastern part o’ the wall, not far from where my restaurant is.”

“Do they patrol around there often?”

“Not when I was around, but they coulda tightened up since then. Anon, you gotta slow down, bud. Rushin’ into this is gonna get us caught. You and Hearth’ve never been here, and it’s been a while since I set foot in town.”

He’s got a point. You don’t like sitting here while she’s like this, but what else can you do?

“What should we do, then?”

“We probably got a few hours ‘till day breaks,” he proposes, shifting to sit up more. “There’s a big rush o’ people that go ta work around then, so it’ll be easy to blend in with the crowd.”

Normally, that would be a solid plan, but…

“Pal?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a skeleton.”

He deadpans, staring you straight in the eyes.

“…That cuts deep, Anon.”

A sigh comes from his intangible lungs… wait, how does that even work?

“I’ll find somethin’ to wear that covers me. I'll carry Hearth and just pull somethin' over her so people think I'm toting a sack o’ food or somethin’.”

The solidity of your plan decreases a little with that method of disguising her, but it should still hold up in theory if you can avoid close scrutiny.

“And nobody’ll take an interest in us? Even looking like we do?”

“Trust me,” he reassures as he goes to stand, fetching his lantern from the table. “We’ll be fine. People in this sector pretty much keep to themselves in public after the takeover.”

He strolls over to the outside door again and, grunting, nudges it open. The same amount of light from before floods in, coating the hall in a dim, blue light. The wind threatens to blow Pal’s lantern out, but remarkably, the flame fights it with everything it has.

He readjusts the door just enough to leave naught more than a crack leading to the outside before returning to the mouth of the hallway and sitting down facing the opposite wall.

“I’ll watch the light so we don’t miss our chance,” he says as he turns to face you again. “Get some rest if ya need to, it might be a while.”

In the depths of your worry, you find time to fling a friendly jab his way.

“What, you don’t want my company?”

“Ha! What happened ta gettin’ somewhere safer first, eh?”

“It got put on the backburner, that’s what.”

He chuckles before replying.

“Even still, I need ya alert. It’s safer durin’ the day, but that don’t mean there aren’t gonna be any o’ Her Cronies around. How long’s it been since ya got any sleep?”

…Oh, shit, how long has it been? Since you passed out in the wreckage of the train, maybe?

“I’ll take your silence as an answer. Get some winks, alien boy.”

With that, he returns his attention to the door, his silent vigil having begun.

Well, you aren’t going to argue with that.

The pain in your shoulder has subsided quite a bit - whatever was in that liquid, you’re downright ecstatic that it’s working as well as it is. You shuffle backwards onto the strikingly solid mattress, pressing your back against the cold wall as you let your head fall against it once more.

Sleep won’t come easily, but you’re more than willing to try.