"We're almost done!" Sparkling Bay declared enthusiastically.

Astral Nebula had put on a thick uniform akin to a space suit that hung loosely off of her thin frame. The white, puffy sections separated by black rings made the mare appear to be made of marshmallows. Her helmet was far sturdier than her uniform, engulfing the mare's head in solid metal also painted white, while keeping the inside insulated and padded against blunt strikes. The reflective, magenta surface of her visor gave any observers a mirror image of themselves, rather than revealing what hid behind it.

"I'm ready!" Astral Nebula declared.

The pocket dimension they were in was all Astral had known. A strange, white abyss with nonsensical dimensions. Pastel colors would eb and flow across the sky like paint in streams or splotches. Every so often there would be periods of sparkling light that would flow over the homes and streets twisting and turning this way and that. Brick houses were hanging from above or dangling from nonexistent walls, and ponies would meander out to walk casually to those standing on a different plane to them. The houses all had the same aspect: Circular walls with lance-brace roofs, all of them of various pastel colors. Life had become so utterly absurd that the elders that lived in Equestria still couldn't adapt to this plane of existence, but without them, no pony would have figured out how to grow food, or build homes, or create water. It was a very odd place from which something could be made from nothing, but the space was finite. Very finite.

Astral looked behind her, seeing the huge crowd standing at every angle. Some had even figured out the functions of the pocket reality better than the others and were standing, sideways, on nothing. The young mare looked around and smiled when she saw the last surviving elder sitting in his bronze wheelchair. He looked as grumpy and frustrated as ever, not so much as even disturbing that thin blanket meant to keep him warm lying on his back.

Sparkling Bay's blue coat and silver mane and tail were colored by the lights in the void, obscuring their natural appearance and that of the energy going through the cables leading from their workstation.

"Just about done." The mare was busy typing on their trapezoidal station while dozens of their colleagues typed on their own or were frantically replacing or repairing pieces of the many giant, loud machines surrounding a half-podium on which a hollow circle of metal stood. For whatever reason, this part of the void had a 'wall' to it despite being able to see through just fine like with the rest of the pocket dimension. "You got everything?" she asked Astral.

The young mare nodded. "Yes." She patted the in-built saddlebags on her side. "I have every note about what to do in whatever situation Equestria is in right now. I have spare food, survival instructions that you taught me," she specified with a low tone of voice. "I have my pistol for self-defense, and I have spare rations and my water filtration bottle." Before the scientist could speak up, Astral interrupted her first. "Yes. I know how to clean the filter and the spare filters."

"Good. Good." Sparkling continued to tap away at the console, checking a tiny screen to the right and nodding to herself. "Remember: It's been about twenty years since the portal was opened. Time moves faster here than in Equestria, so just watch out. We need you to fix this portal from the other side, ok?"

Exasperated, Astral exhaled loudly. "Yes! I know!" she exclaimed. "That's the whole point of this. I'll just find the other ponies, and they'll fix everything." She dug her hooves into the podium and focused on the circle, her nerves flaring up and sweating staining her coat.

"Hold on!" an old voice declared. Everypony turned to see the last elder with his hoof raised. He looked behind himself and started gently hitting his caretaker in the chest with his hind leg. "Come on. Get me closer. Hurry up, hurry up!" When his wheelchair was finally at the podium, he gestured Astral to approach him and chased the others away. "I didn't know you could talk," Astral mocked.

"I'm not here for funny ha has, miss Nebula," the elder stated. He put a shaking hoof to her suited shoulder. "Now that we're out of earshot, we can talk quietly." He smacked and moved his lips around before finally talking, his eyes somber and tone bereft of life. "Time doesn't move faster here," the stallion said. "That was a lie we told our children to not stress them too much when we all got trapped here."

Horrified, Astral back up slightly and always yelled, but kept her voice low. "That's a terrible lie!" she exclaimed quietly. "Why would you do such a thing?!"

"Because they were children, foal!" He jabbed the mare in the chest. "How would you react to the idea that you'll never see all your friends and the rest of your family again? That everything you had known would vanish if you managed to get out?!" The stallion paused and dragged a hoof across his face. "We don't even remember how long we've been here. At first we used our children's birthdays, but without a day-night cycle our perceptions of time became wonky at best, completely gone at worst."

The mare was frozen in place. Even if the elder couldn't see her face, he knew immediately what her expression was and what she was feeling. "You will have to be extra careful. If they were unable to rebuild the portal on the other side after all this time, then there's a high chance that the facility was destroyed or abandoned." He took a deep breath and nestled himself further in his wheelchair supporting him by his stomach. "We gave you that gun for a reason. It's old magitech. There's more, but you don't have room for rifles and the like." The elder rubbed the back of his hide to hide his shame, causing his joints to crack with every movement. "I...uh...they were just supposed to be here to see what kind of effects this place would have on our equipment. Clearly none at all."

"Astral, the door is ready," Sparkling Bay declared. "Finish whatever you're talking about with the elder and get ready!"

"Almost done!" Astral reassured. "Thank you for your advice, elder, but I have to go."

The mare tried to leave but found her leg held by the old stallion. His usual grumpy expression had changed to pure worry and terror, revealing all the wrinkles he really had and pushing home to Astral just how old this pony really was.

"Please, Astral. Be very careful. We might not be able to open another door again without your help. We already only managed to get enough power to let one pony through." When he let go of the mare, she looked at her foreleg, feeling the warmth and pure fear still clinging to her fur. "I don't think I have long left. If you--"

"Don't talk like that, elder!" Astral interjected. "You've been around since I was a filly! You'll still be around for a while longer."

The stallion chuckled, shocking the audience. "If only that were true, but please. If I really am still around when you get back; Don't. Tell me. What happened. I don't want to know what happened to my beloved Equestria in my absence."

Astral nodded, her mind blank on what to say to reassure this old pony. He had never spoken much before, usually just staying near the town center to stare at the colors expanding and flowing across the white surface of this pocket dimension's interior. It wasn't a mystery that he never shared any emotions with anypony, usually just staying with his caretaker Furry Plums who never seemed to leave the old pony. Ponies surmised it was because he had outlived his children or because he never managed to reverse-engineer the portal technology well enough to be able to get back through. After all, everypony that became trapped wasn't there with advanced knowledge in dimensional mathematics or magitech engineering. Astral Nebula, however, felt his fears starting to gnaw at her own enthusiasm and courage.

"If it hasn't just been around twenty years, how long has it been?" the mare thought to herself as she stepped once more in front of the circle.

"Opening the door now!" the scientist declared.

Without any dramatic flair, the door instantly appeared into existence within the ring, its surface undulating like mercury reflecting the pastel colors of the void like a shattered and dirty mirror. With one final breath, Astral waved her friends and family goodbye before stepping through the portal, the words of the old stallion consuming her mind.

At first there was nausea, then a sensation of dropping suddenly, followed by her body twisting left and right, and then she was back on solid ground. Or, at least, as solid as she knew it. The once permanent brightness of her home had become dark, like the houses when they closed the blinds. The mare did a double take, and realized that she was wrong as well. Even when closed, a large amount of white light still managed to pass through them.

Several seconds had passed before Astral was able to assess her situation and see the world around her. She was devastated to see that the podium she had come out to was a rusted, collapsed heap of scrap metal and rotted wiring. Even the ring had rusted through to only barely elevate from the base. The surrounding architecture was a horrific mess that matched the podium within it. Whatever it was or however big it was, there was nothing left but a few walls above the basement the mare realized she was standing in. The servers, power cables, and other machines the mare didn't recognize had been destroyed by collapsing debris.

Carefully making her way through the puddles of stagnant water colored orange by rust and the rotted flesh of her ancestors' legacy, the mare couldn't help but notice strange black marks on the ground. With how enormous this basement was, Astral couldn't help but believe it to be caused by machines exploding or flammable substances igniting and burning the ground, but it wasn't as consistent. A sense of dread washed over her when she looked at the stains: A sharp black in the center with multiple jagged arms growing from it. Looking around, it became apparent that some of these strange explosions had caused significant damage to what was in this place. Some support pillars were struck, blowing chunks of concrete and metal into the surrounding walls and machinery.

Reaching the end, Astral took the left stairs, noticing that the right were coated in multiple black spots that tore apart the pathway. With every step came a faint echo that bounced off of seemingly nothing, but Nebula could feel her heart in her throat beating a mile a minute. It was almost like she was being watched intently by the dead, judging her for daring to disturb their slumber.

After dodging a collapsing stair that nearly took the mare with it, Astral looked around to realize that multiple walls were still standing, even if they were horrifically damaged. There was more concrete and metal debris around, and as she continued exploring, Nebula discovered a skeleton hoof sticking out from beneath one pile of refuse, causing her heart to sink and her fear response to trigger, but it was too late. She had no way to get back home anyway, and she volunteered for this. She couldn't just go back because of a bit of fear. Maybe this building had simply been destroyed and the ponies were lax in clean up.

A thought suddenly struck the mare while she was climbing several decayed support pillars of concrete that had collapsed. Where were the plants? Were the ponies removing them, but not taking care of the building itself? Why not? Was this a memorial of some sort?

Finally over the pile, Astral Nebula dusted her suit off and looked around to find any ponies. She thought her soul had left her body. As far as the eye could see: Ruins everywhere. Collapsed buildings, crashed vehicles and even long streaks of damage caused by massive heavy vehicles from the times before. The mare recognized all of them, down to the last, minute detail, as her parents taught her. There were skeletons in the closest vehicles the mare could see, and one such crash had a skeleton far from it with glass still impaled on the few dregs of clothing still clinging desperately to the corpse as though hoping it would stand up and fix them.

The sky was as rusty as the water in the basement, and asperitas clouds made Astral think she was in an agitated ocean with its waters waving? Dregs of light would occasionally pierce through the morass of ruin, illuminating the landscape, but it only showed more skeletal shapes and collapsed ruins. The mare jumped in fear when a foreleg-sized rodent creature brushed against her. It stopped once a few feet away and turned to face her: Its gray body was misshapen and uneven, with a few extra, vestigial limbs dangling. It stood on five legs of random size and length, and each ended in one or two toes with a long, blue claw glowing in the dark. Furthermore, it only had one eye, but this eye contained four pupils growing off of each other. How it could see her was a mystery, and when it hissed at her, several teeth fell out of its mouth before instantly growing back before her eyes.

The mare trembled as she watched it leave and looked up, seeing the buildings that still stood tall and pockmarked with holes. Several flying creatures flew around as well, but Astral Nebula didn't want them to see her and reveal what was wrong with them. She could already see one large silhouette sporting an extra wing on its right.

"...I shouldn't have volunteered. The elder was right," Nebula lamented.

Author's Note

Alrighty. This is the newest story idea of mine. Keep in mind that I'm also writing the sequel to my Reverting Scales book so updates will be inconsistent (but not take weeks. At worst, days). Gonna keep this consistent like I did White Sun.

You can find the first book I mentioned here: Reverting Scales

Naydrus is a dragon born to immense parents who live with and serve humans. When the dragonling hatches, it is revealed that she doesn't look anything like her family and she has a passion for fighting. However, she also carries a deep hatred for the hominid 'caretakers'. This inspires her escape from the city through the sewer system and her search for other dragons that share her mindset. However, the world is a big place and very old. Much has happened and continues to happen without Naydrus being aware of it, causing her to cross paths with dangerous individuals and end up in hazardous locations.