Ruby Beacon breathed in slow, cautious breaths. The drainage tunnel was a looming thing, designed to allow minotaurs to walk through for work. Inside, it was quiet, save for a distant whispering in the background. Too familiar sounds of anguish being whispered out. I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty. She couldn’t make out faces in the dark, but that uneasy feeling that passed through one’s bones when a bloomer was near was coursing through her like adrenaline.

Field Surgeon tailed behind her, alongside their platoon of ponies. Marsh light spells were flung forward in hundred-yard intervals. At first entry, Field suggested letting the heavy ballista team forward alongside three cataphracts. Ruby agreed, so the ballista team headed their quiet sidling through the drainage, a unicorn named Butter Hooves and an earth pony named Bolt Thrower making up the loader and gunner respectively. The cataphracts, in heavy plate armor mixed with chainmail shawls, sidled forward at an angle in front of the ballista team, throwing up their heads in a deer-like halting gesture every few hundred yards. The ballista would click onto its heavy wooden tripod, the cataphracts’ barrel-mounted spears would angle forward like pikes. Then silence.

The occasional bouts of fighting never came without casualties, especially in the insidious darkness of the winding drainage tunnels, with frequent splits. Every so often, Field Surgeon would hear a crunch, turn her head and there was one less pony in their unit, always the unarmored magi. They aren’t this smart. We’re just this stupid, she mused, then kept moving, flicking marsh lights forward to light the tunnel a hundred yards ahead.

Ruby Beacon felt cagey. Without the ability to use magic due to her lack of a unicorn horn to channel, she had no offensive capabilities aside from her spear. Without the ability to use her wings, she was grounded, both due to them being pinned under her armor and due to that armor’s weight in equal parts. She listened for the back of the platoon, took comfort in the steady burbling sound of pitch letting out of wooden barrels like the junior officer had ordered. If we get overwhelmed, we’ll take the whole tunnel with us. It’ll collapse, and that much of the city will be destroyed. I’ll take partial completion to failure.

Unterofficer Faris Quirke looked over the streets of ‘Tartarus’ and found that familiar anxious feeling in her chest she’d felt so many times before on the precipice of a bad firefight. Her eyes wandered down to her rifle. She ran the bolt back partially, letting the brass glint in the scant illumination of the foggy streets. The branching fungal trees sprouting out of high-rise buildings let a constant rain of fungal spores like ashen fog down from on high. Faris checked her watch again. Need to do a filter swap in about 40 minutes.

“You seen this yet, Faris?” Quirke turned back to see Nat. She was squat, poking at an unidentifiable pile of dead meat with patches of fur. More of those black branches stuck out of it at odd angles. Some of the branches ended in white bulbs, the air thick with spores. Nat had her chemsuit down to her waist despite Faris’ orders to the otherwise, but she had the good decency to wear the long asbestos gloves her flamethrower required to be worn. Faris loomed behind her and the scrawny rifleman beside her.

“Don’t touch that. It might be infectious.” Faris muttered, checking her watch again. Nat glanced back at her, ridged helmet and bird-faced gas mask with its twin filters blankly staring up at Faris. Her mask’s lenses had been penned over with dark ink to tint them like a motor carriage’s windows. With a quick look thrown back at the pile of furry meat, Nat muttered something in her native tongue—a language Faris couldn’t recognize of course—grabbed her flamethrower and barked for the assistant to back up and top her off after “she grills this old burger.” Then, with a click-click-click, she gave a short, single spurt of flaming jellied fuel onto the pile of meat. They both leapt out of their skin at the way it immediately jolted. Faris’ rifle levelled and were it not for Nat putting a glove on the barrel, she’d have fired.

“Don’t waste the ammo, Unterofficer. We’ve still got plenty of opportunities where we might need it. Whole city out there, and all that,” Nat steadily enunciated. Faris furrowed her brow and scowled behind her mask. Babying me like this is my first work detail in combat. The balls on you, Nat Zahariev, are immense. Wish you weren’t right about my nerves, though. Faris nodded, then hung her rifle in its sling, hand moving to rest on her holster—it was a comfort thing, feeling the wooden grip of the revolver over the coarse hand-fitted rubber-leather gloves. The cobblestones glowed under the pile of ash that was jittering seconds before. Nat beckoned her assistant trooper along, and Faris led the way back toward the wharf. It was a beautiful thing made of large stone blocks cemented together at the bottom, with smaller stone bricks lining the walkways and making a short railing along the edge overlooking the short beaches. Low tide, I guess. The smell of salty ocean air managed to penetrate Nat’s mask in spite of everything. So did the smell of burnt meat and rot, though.

There were abandoned fruit and vegetable stalls along the wharf against the backs of several low-rise brick and wood offices. Harbor authority, I wager, Faris noted.Soggy, their combat engineer, was eagerly fixing up a pulley-winch system that looked older than her. The sort of thing you think of in the same vein as line fighting with muskets and wood-hulled ships. Faris also noted the actual wrecks of wood-hulled ships that were half-burned out or crashed into the wharf, several rows down from where they were. She shuffled over to where the combat engineer was tweaking at a nut and bolt assembly at the base of a tall wooden structure, a big leather bag of tools at her boots. “Any sign of the dinghy team?” Faris proffered to the mousy egghead, kneeling beside her. Soggy flicked her head slightly upward.

“Yeah, actually. I sent them across the river to start marking out the drop-off point, they’ll be back soon.” She jabbed a thumb to her right toward the end of the wharf. Faris stood up and leaned left and right, trying to get a good look—till, there. The wooden dinghy was being watched by the machine gunner and their riflemen on the other side of the moat-like river. “Wonder where all the people are?”

Faris flicked her gaze down at the engineer again, then round the wharf. Wooden carts left abandoned on the streets, some with their goods spilled across the street haphazardly. “Nowhere to be seen. Same with the wee tree-horses. Doc said they were infected with some kinda mushroom, like the cork flu1 back home.” Soggy snorted.

“Maybe they’re all underground like the corkers, too.”

Another pony down. Ruby Beacon stared at the twitching, glass-eyed body of the unicorn with a deeply unnerved frown. Their seventh casualty since getting here. Old mares and foals is all they give me, and I have to watch them all die like this because they’re too slow. She shook her head and took a shaky breath. Field Surgeon’s sympathetic brush against the morale-broken junior officer helped her focus. She gulped down her nerves and checked her local map again.

“Should be a waystation up ahead, in that alcove.” She pointed with a foreleg, and the under-strength platoon continued forward. There were abandoned barricades made of trash, mud and rubbish splayed across the cut in the wall, and at the end, up a slight incline—bingo. Ruby rushed forward and jolted up. She bit her lip to prevent herself from screaming at the sight of the pony behind the locked grate. The pony jumped too—aqua green fur and a yellow mess of hair atop her head, wings at her sides. A Pegasus. No obvious signs of infection, though without the marsh lights it was hard for Ruby to tell.

“Who are you?!” the guard whispered in a hushed scream. Ruby’s team filed in behind the barricades behind her, quickly lying flat against them, or against the curved walls for cover. There was a distant scream down the tunnel. Ruby’s heart rate spiked.

“We’re the cavalry—you gonna let us in, or what?!” Ruby harshly retorted. The guard looked over the uniform—caught the glint of the solar sun on her peytral, then nodded eagerly.

“Yeah, but I need to go get the key.” Damn it all. Ruby nodded and gestured for the guard to hurry—go, go, we don’t have time for arguing. The screaming and manic mumbling grew louder. Field Surgeon threw a look at Ruby, and whispered orders to take cover and hide. The bloomers won’t poke into the alcove if they don’t see any of us. They were probably attracted by the smell of the burning pontoon bridge, or the blood, or… hell, I don’t know. Ruby ducked behind a shattered wooden barrel lying splayed across the ground.

“What’re we going to do, Field?” Ruby looked to the self-titled mare herself, who shot her a look. If I start picking that lock, the noise and magical presence will alert any bloomers. We wait until we can’t wait anymore, then we fight. Ruby had problems with the plan, but she couldn’t think of anything better to suggest, so she hunkered down behind her barrel and waited. If this gets us killed or worse, I am going to haunt her ass.

The bloomers came shuffling, running and staggering past them. The ones in the throes of infection moved like they were being puppeteered by a drunk, the ones long past in their final stages of bloom moved with disconcerting accuracy. The fungal infection that had eaten its way into their brains had taken over the meat suit with fine motor accuracy. It mimicked the few words it could remember. So thirsty. Have you seen my socks? Bandages will fix it, bandages fix it, bandage, bandage, bandage, bandage. Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty. They were manic, slurring each word and twitching audibly with almost wooden cracks as the dried out joints tore and snapped into place by the chemical commands of the fungal brain. Her troops were antsy, unnerved and uneasy like her. Field Surgeon too. She wore a veneer of calm, but Ruby could read the sudden bouts of anxiety in her eyes every few words. All too familiar with the sounds. Bringing back bad memories. Ruby wasn’t a virgin to the horrid sounds either.

She made the mistake of assuming they were through the worst of it—that salvation was around the corner. Then that stupid blue Pegasus came jingling along with the keys. A neck snapped to turn toward the sound. Thirsty. Please. Joints cracked as the thing limped forward with all the grace of a corpse. Her ponies went silent as the thing tunnel-visioned toward the grate. Field Surgeon turned blue through her fur as she held her breath. It was a unicorn at some point, with its horn having shattered early on in its infection like so many others. Its eyes were beyond being glassy, just small, focused pupils without any life or color left in them. Just dryness. Its jaw was broken, and it slurred out its words, mouth dry and without any spittle to come flying out with each desperate parroting of those two words. Thirsty. Please. Please. Please. Thirsty. Thirsty. Quiet, louder than a murmur, quieter than an indoor voice. It began to mantle the wooden barrel Ruby was behind. She all but pissed herself as the thing loomed over her. Its eyes scanned the tunnel ahead behind the grate. Its neck was narrow and thin. Its shoulders were gaunt, ribs visible against blacked furless skin, like a sphinx cat covered in soot. Its tail was devoid of all but the rattiest hairs at the end, flicking with idle movements. Another parroting movement to draw in prey. Look at me, I’m normal. My tail and my ears flick. I speak the same language as you, I am alive. Come close and breathe in my spores, become distracted by my horrific form long enough so I might sink my rotten teeth into your supple flesh. Ruby tried to cleanse her mind of the thoughts, but couldn’t in the face of the utter horror of the thing. The guard wasn’t visible in the tunnel yet, just the echo of the keyring in her mouth. Go away, turn back where you came from and get distracted.

Then its eyes turned down at her. “So thirsty. Please. Thirsty please.” It’s jaw flapped, and it lunged forward. Ruby screamed—she flailed, she raged against the dark silhouette in a desperate act of something between courage and a fight response.

A magical aura encompassed the thing’s head as it fell upon Ruby. Field Surgeon cast Break Leg. The thing’s head crunched inwardly like a melon being popped with rubber bands in those precious seconds before it exploded. Ruby’s flailing limbs sent it careening past her into a heap.

“There goes the element of surprise,” Field muttered. She swore under her breath at the sound of the twisted voices getting louder again. “Alrighty, then. Let’s get ready to die fighting, hm?” While Ruby laid there, panting and coming down from the panic, Field Surgeon barked orders. Barricades were pushed forward and piled up. Spells were cast, fires began to glow. Field Surgeon grabbed the broken corpse of the bloomer and flung it over the barricades with her muddy-gold magic aura, then lifted Ruby’s head off the ground. Their eyes met. “Unless you want to start drinking bloomer brain juices, get up.” Ruby got up. Why am I alive? Field Surgeon flinched visibly at the answer—just barely perceptible, but enough to snap Ruby out of it. “You need to lead these ponies to relative safety, out of this fight. Get to it.” Ruby nodded with numb, coarse bobs of her head. She began whimpering orders. Field Surgeon translated them and barked them out. They were followed, and when the first beady, glassy eyes were visible over the barricades, a flaming ballista bolt was planted tween them. Their head popped. Another pair of eyes, then another and another. More ballista bolts, more corpses falling. Shots missed and embedded into the stone wall behind the heads, or past barred windows into the snapping jaws of frantic faces trying to claw their way through solid stone.

1900 hours.

Unterofficer Faris Quirke watched the perimeter on their little section of wharf with that queasy feeling rising in her gut. They filled sandbags, stacked them against the streets turning into the Wharf, combined with the discarded wooden carts and other various bits of dock trash to make proper barricades. Riflemen manned the bags and watched the barricades, sitting on trash, sandbag stools or lobster traps.

Gefreiter Armand Malvina stood beside Faris, Nat and Nat’s assistant flamer, Kalin Rylee. Armand was a rifleman, carrying a shotgun and bandoliers packed tightly with wax shells. Kalin was arguing with him about the soundness of his logic to use rock-salt shells in the shotgun as a paranatural deterrent. The sun cast an orange glow through the fog that cloaked the city, thin beams trailing between the buildings and dimly illuminating the wharf.

“’And misery did follow her, wherever she went.’” Faris turned to Nat, who was sitting with her right side to the city, her left to the wharf, using one of the dirt sandbags as a stool.

“What the hell are you saying now?” Faris cocked an eyebrow behind her mask at the flametrooper, who was looking her flamethrowing wand over with a suck of her teeth. I’m quoting poetry, Nat said. Faris asked what poem. Nat told her—some Omelese poet from the ‘teens. Faris told her to stop being a sap and stay focused.

Then Faris saw something moving in the dim orange-pale blue light of the waning afternoon. She narrowed her eyes. Black silhouette. Quadruped. Coughing and wheezing out choked words in Escalian—why always that rat tongue? Faris drew her pistol, turned to the subordinate on her left, Nat. The muscly flame trooper cocked her head. “Going in for the kill, boss?” Faris proffered a reply by drawing her revolver from its holster and thumbing the hammer back to full cock. Nat readied her flamethrower and followed behind Faris.

The thing was sickly. Not as far gone as she had thought—not as bad, but still bad. She could make out an ugly aqua-green-blue faded to a darker baby blue by disease or nature. It had glassy eyes, twitching limbs and a cracked horn at the base of its head. The ratty hair on its head was thin. It kept murmuring in that “rat tongue.” Nat translated.

“Help me, I’m so thirsty, so thirsty. Flitter, is that you?” Nat repeated. The thing seemed to stop as it was nearer to them. Its glassy eyes shakily rose to greet them. The thing twitched. Faris raised her revolver. The thing stared at it, lips trembling as it murmured more indecipherable speech. “Flitter, please. I’m still your sister, Flitter. Please.” Faris shot a glare at Nat. She felt a little thump in her hand. The horse had gently headbutted its forehead against the bore of her pistol. “It’s suffering, boss.” Her words lacked that bordering monotonous and mocking quality that Nat’s voice naturally took on. Faris met eyes with the horse again. The black branches growing out of its back looked agonizing. Seated in the spine, I’d guess. She pulled the trigger.

CRACK.

The horse dropped. There was a scream and a flutter from the rafters of a building to the left, on the corner. Faris shot her eyes up, pistol tracking in turn. The thing that flung itself off the roof looked better off than its now dead compatriot by a margin but starved in the same way. Faris crossed the fingers on her offhand, then with her body aimed perpendicular to the horse, pistol drawn and raised in one hand, she pulled the trigger. The trigger depressed the first three quarters and the hammer pulled back. It fell off the cliff-like hook mechanism inside the grip, and flew forward under spring tension. The cartridge pistol barked, and the winged horse cried out. Got you. The thing was bleeding like a stuck cow. Faris turned to Nat. There was disapproval in her eyes, past the tinted lenses of her gas mask. Heat wafted off the back of Faris’ neck. “Burn that body,” she kicked her head toward the dead one she shot square in the forehead, “then get Urbain and Malvina. We’re going to track that thing back to whatever nest it came from.” Faris added “Like killing a bunch of irradiated dogs,” right at the end, fervently. As if to convince herself. Nat gave her a concerned look, then nodded, turning her flamer on the body as several troopers came rushing over. Faris was already on the move when she heard the distinct click-click-click of the thing’s pilot light.

Author's Note

Alphyrra's Almanac, Issue 4

1 The Cork Flu is an ill-understood disease with its origins in the Wraihohen Deserts. It gets its name for the porous holes that begin forming on the victim after a period of time. The Cork Flu causes severe heliophobia and manic mood swings, and is fatal after three weeks.

If ever there is a term you read in here that does not make sense, leave a comment and I'll add an addendum to the chapter with my almanac of terminology. ^^

06/13/2024: Rewrote the last section of the chapter. Wasn't happy with it, is all.