Chapters "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.
Astral was completely lost. She didn't know what to do nor where to go. She expected everything but this. Did the door send her to the wrong Equestria? Could it do that? Which direction was she meant to go in? Left? Right? Which way was north? She pulled off one of the bags from her suit and started digging through it until she found a notepad.
"Plan A, B, C...C-2...D..." Astral gradually yelled lower and threw it back into the saddlebag. "None of the plans work for this!" The mare gradually and carefully made her way down the pile to reach the ruined street below covered in the same black marks and tried to find a spot that would help her scout out the area and find some landmarks she could use. "Alright. That should work," she muttered to herself. She moved toward a standing, blocky skyscraper and jumped up just for her to hit the ground hard. "What?" She tried again, and the same thing happened, leaving the mare baffled. "I...gravity works differently? I'm stuck on this plane?!" She looked at her hooves and the cracked pavement beneath her. "Why would they want to come back here?! It's so limited!"
Grumbling, the mare got back to her hooves and resumed her exploration. There was no way she was going to try and break inside the building and climb its collapsing entrails just to get a good look over the horizon and the ruined city. As she avoided the mutant rats, the mare made sure to take a mental note of them. They didn't look like anything her parents had taught her about Equestria, and if they were new, what else was there? This world was already dangerous within civilization. What was it like now that civilization seemed to have collapsed?
Astral flinched when she heard a beastly cry reverberating through the ruins and making the buildings tremble. A strained screech that the mare just couldn't put her hoof on. She dug into her other saddlebag pouch and pulled out a gun. She affixed the brace around her left shoulder and kept the barrel and mechanisms at her face level, leaving the trigger mechanism looped vertically around her hoof. Without using her chin to hit the safety lock on the top of the weapon itself, there was no way for the mare to shoot anypony by flexing her foreleg back.
The sounds became louder and started to become accompanied by glass breaking and rocks tumbling. "What are you?" the mare grumbled to herself, her eyes darting about and her breath heavy and inaudible in her suit.
A bright yellow 'worm' the size of a wagon came around the corner of a far away street, digging into the broken pavement exposing the soil beneath it. Despite its horrendous size, Astral didn't see much threat coming from a worm regardless of its size and started to let herself relax. Then a second one came around the corner, holding onto the nearby building. Then another, and another, and another.
"What the...?!"
The cry reached her ears with greater clarity, sounding like somepony screaming in agony stretched out by a musical program to make it sound compressed and unusually digitized. Astral felt her heart skip a beat when she realized that these bright yellow things weren't worms at all. At least, not how she understood them. It was all part of a greater mass crawling around on around twenty-one different worm-like limbs. As it dug around, several of its limbs split apart, showing that these were thousands of tiny, hair-thick strands wrapping around each other. Nebula slowly backed away, giving brief glimpses to her surroundings for any free pathway she could take that had not been obscured by the dregs of the city. She froze instinctively when the creature raised itself high, showing yet another horrific secret of its.
The 'worms' were parasitic in nature, although to what degree Astral would never know. She wasn't a biologist. The desiccated remains of a pony rested, entangled, within the mass of golden worms. One eye was glazed over, white from death, while the other socket was occupied by the strands of life emerging and writhing around, breaking the fragile bone. Mere fragments of clothing clung to what used to be a pony, although not much of the dried-out remains stayed untangled or even solid. The pony's lower jaw dangled far from its head, pulled off by the growth of the worms but still hung onto, their bodies perpetually flossing the two rotted teeth that remained as though it were a form of entertainment for them.
The dried skin undulated and waved with the parasite beneath it as it looked around and rummaged through the debris. It caught a skeleton of some deceased animal, then launched it hard against a mostly intact window, shattering it and the fragile bones.
"I don't want to stay around for it to do that to me," Astral thought to herself.
The mare ducked into an alleyway and carefully stepped over some bikes and rusted crates to make her way further into the city. With luck that was the only instance of whatever that horrid thing was, but the mare wasn't going to stay around anytime soon to find out.
"I need to get out of here," Nebula thought to herself. She started rummaging through another pouch. "They told me that the closest way out would be the north-eastern tunnels... or at least over them." She pulled a compass out and balanced it on her right hoof. "So where do I have to go, little compass?"
The circular device was filled with just barely enough water to make the lozenge in the middle float enough. It pointed to her fore-right direction, allowing the mare a moment of respite from being completely lost. As she made her way through the ruined city, Astral was able to observe the ruins of the past and still couldn't understand just how long everypony had been trapped in that pocket dimension. Outside was no better than the basement. Buildings collapsed from neglect, asphalt roads cracked and consumed by dust and dirt, and the occasional skeleton reminding the explorer that this was, indeed, a dead city.
Decayed posters fluttered in the faint wind produced by air flowing between the taller buildings, and while some shreds would peel off and crumble in the air, a few of them were still intact enough that Astral was able to get to approach one hanging off an old restaurant. There was a black pony with sky-blue eyes to the left and a boring looking gray pony with a red mane on the right looking angrily at the observer. The center was taken over by two hooves interlocked and the phrase 'Stick Together!' above. Below was written the text 'If you consider somepony to be harboring malicious intents, contact your local changeling investigation bureau'. Nebula could only make out an eight and a four on the poster. whatever any of it meant in the past was lost on her. At least the boring pony reminded her of the elder. A bit of levity in her situation helped immensely.
The mare eventually came upon an elevated, rocky hill with the tunnels she was told. She dove into a nearby café and peered past the windows, letting her suit handle the broken shards of glass before her. Nebula had a bad feeling of going into such a dark place, especially with that worm monster and the weird mutant things wandering the city. The tunnels themselves were also unusually quiet. Red veins grew out from them, crawling along the surface of the stone they were dug into. One part of the mare believed it to just be some harmless form of mutated fungus and to just go in. The other had more common sense. One of the flying monsters from earlier came down, landing clumsily and rolling on the ground before it could unfurl its large, left wing and dig seven spindly fingers into the ground to stop its crash. Its body pulsed with blue and yellow veins, illuminating the surroundings lightly. Before Astral could make out any other details outside of its eggshell-white feathers with dark-blue tips, the red 'veins' ripped out of the walls, clamped onto the bird monster, and pulled it in instantly into the tunnels. Multiple sharp bits of rebar, ore, and concrete burst out gradually along the interior of the tunnel, resembling broken, sharp teeth that bent as the construct closed down, crunching whatever was inside it.
Astral ran away in the opposite direction, tripping over herself and the destroyed furniture and dishes, her instincts screaming at her that everything was wrong in this place and that none of what she just saw made any sense at all. Her heart was pounding a thousand a minute, her brain was screaming, her instincts wailing. She had to get out of this place as quickly as possible! The best thing she could do now was to just run straight forward and hope that there was another way to get out of the city through there. Even the many black stains marking the city's streets and walls did nothing to deter her fears. Unfortunately, all the noise she was making caught the attention of the same strange, flying beasts that swooped down to catch her. Their clumsy and misshapen bodies didn't allow them any purchase within the air currents, causing them to sway wildly into other directions and crash through windows and against walls or the floor.
Panicking, the mare flexed her left foreleg to shoot at them as they got up on feet too wide to walk naturally with too many clawed toes to count. They moved using their odd left wing in a stumbling gait, the limb essentially being a crutch, and their heads bounced up and down with each step. Their beaks were crooked and jagged, and eyes of varying sizes ran down from the 'normal' section all along the base of their beaks down to the center of their chests lacking feathers. Having regained their bearings, the creatures started dashing clumsily at Nebula who quickly struck the top of her gun with her lower chin, activating it, and letting pink-colored energy flow through the elongated frame. With one bend of her foreleg, the magic was released, releasing a tear-drop shaped mass that cut through seven of the creatures and continued on until it hot some metal debris further away and melted it. The victims had lost almost seventy-percent of their bodies with that one shot alone and collapsed in heaps of charred bone, melted insides, and dirty feathers.
Astral felt relief when the creatures, knowing that this wasn't prey to tangle with, quickly took to the skies to keep away from her. "At least they're still animals," Astral sighed to herself as she felt her heart constricting and her breath hitching. "They...they know when to leave."
She poked the device with her chin again and witnessed, in the corner of her eye, a mass of golden worms that shivered when she looked at it and hid back away in the ruins of an office building. The mare thanked the foresight of her older colleagues to give her a weapon. Having a brief moment of respite, Nebula tried to gather her thoughts and think about a plan of attack that didn't involve her just screaming and running away from the city. She hid in a mostly-intact house whose floorboards had rotted through and dug through her saddlebags again to look at the plans. Her anger started to become palpable when she arrived at the 'Death Throe'. Ultimately, Astral Nebula needed to rebuild the doorway, but she didn't know how. She would need the blueprints. The 'Death Throe' as morose and inappropriate as it sounded, required her to find her way to some 'Canterlot' where the princesses her elders and grandparents always talked about lived. She chuckled at the idea of them idealizing some ponies that let the city collapse as it did, but if anypony could help her it would be them.
Unfortunately, all the landmarks that were indicated in said instructions had probably long side eroded away or been destroyed outright, so the mare had her work cut out for her. If she wanted to get everypony out of that constricting space and save this place then she would need to work hard and try not to panic at everything arou--
"Aaah!"
Astral shot at a mutant rat that made noise across the street, obliterating it and melting through the ground and asphalt. This was going to far more difficult than she thought, and the mare panicked at the idea of what other abominations roamed the lands of this rotted world.
She would have to use her gun again, and that could attract the attention of others like that monster around. Astral activated the illumination function of her suit, activating a light projected around her visor. The pathway hadn't been used for a long time, with errant hair and dust particles lingering in the air and being disturbed from their mindless flying as the visitor moved forward. A metal door kept ajar sat at the end of the tunnel, making Astral's mind run wild with ideas on what might be on the other side. Keeping her gun at the ready, the mare attempted to open the door. Unfortunately, it was far too heavy to be open lightly, and it screamed when she forced it to push open, startling her. Preferring not to do that again, she peered through the crack into the room it was hiding and saw the remains of a family. Their clothing had rotten off their bodies, and their skeletons sat, slumped, on the ground between two bunk beds that were in a mostly conserved state. Whatever used to be in there had been picked clean by something that Astral really, really wanted to be other ponies with nothing weird like the big mouth covered in horns.
Waiting for an hour in the hole left Astral bored and tired, but she thanked the silence and calmness and gradually climbed the rusty ladder bolted into the stone wall, begging it to not shatter under her weight with every step she made. The yard was clear, allowing the mare to hurry away and continue her way outside the city. Every now and then she would hear the same mumbling and made a wide berth to avoid the big mouths. Astral looked at her gun and nibbled at her lower lip. She could use it to shoot at everything that moved, but it would take it forever to recharge afterward. It was better to use it on whatever she couldn't flee from.
Her hooves were killing her in the end, but she passed through skeletal brush into a massive expanse of brown and black. She had made it outside the city after hours of being trapped in it with the mutant monstrosities. She sighed in relief, looking around at the nothing before her, then her good feeling dropped. What was she supposed to do now? Keep wandering? There was no way she was going back into the city. She sighed and started walking again. The best she could do would be to look for signs of life. Non-mutated, non-scary life, this time. Then maybe she would be directed to one of the princesses.
The wandering lasted for many more hours, making Astral suddenly feel fatigued. She realized she was tired and needed sleep. Without the artificiality of her home, she had no idea when to sleep, and sleeping out in the open was a bad idea. Seeing a tilted shack leaning against an assembly of dead trees, Astral was quick to enter it and carefully close the door behind her. The interior had been recently disturbed, and the fireplace was filled with the remains of burnt woods. Dust and cobwebs were present, as always, and the windows were stained brownish-orange by whatever had affected the world outside. A few tables and moldy chairs decorated the interior, with several collapsed pots and pans and shattered plates and glasses strewn along the floor.
"Finally. A moment of rest," the mare sighed.
She wiped one of the windows to see outside and felt her hairs stand on end when the sky started to swirl and shift into a night-blue shade with lightning traveling within it. It was almost impossible to look away as the weather started to change, and the dusty grounds started to shimmer with light, pulling dust and sand up with slowly rising lightning tainted blue into the sky above. Astral spotted something wandering through the wastes when it touched one of the slow-rising bolts and exploded in a flash of blinding lights and fleshy bits.
"I...don't know this weather phenomenon...Even the weather is mutated?!" Astral thought to herself in horror.
The wind started picking up and began battering the leaning wooden shed, causing its occupant to feel her nth panic attacking in twenty-four hours. She covered herself in the dusty blankets and placed the furniture around her to protect her as best as she could be. Trembling walls and old branches scraping the wood filled her mind until she woke up several hours later, realizing she had closed her eyes so hard and so long that she had fallen asleep from exhaustion. She immediately burst from her makeshift bunker and felt relief that the shed hadn't collapsed. It had likely suffered the odd weather phenomenon for as long as it existed, but staying in such a horrible place with broken physics made its continued survival a baffling mystery.
There were a few old pictures littering the ground that had been freed when the shack's new occupant had created her makeshift protective bunker. They depicted a rather big, happy family. Only two of the apparently seventeen pictures were still frames. The rest were exposed to the elements and severely damaged because of it. A consistent theme were the pictures having splotches on their surfaces, damaging the captured moments even further than they already were. One had been almost completely soaked: A picture of a massive family of pegasi and unicorns smiling at the camera. Astral placed the pictures back down and wrapped them around in the cloth. She didn't know the best way to protect the painful past of whomever lived here, but she could at least make an effort.
"...!"
Astral looked at the wall, trying to discern the source of the noise.
"...ui!"
The city was disturbingly quiet, even with all the strange creatures wandering around within it. Nothing made sense at all to the mare. That it might have been destroyed by an unfortunate war was something she took into account when she went through, but that it would be in such a state and the environment would have mutated so badly was a sickening nightmare. Perhaps because she used her pistol, the creatures wandering the ruins were no longer approaching her, and Nebula felt extreme relief from it. Her stress and fear were preventing her from feeling a correct amount of hunger and thirst, and she was aware of this fact, but she didn't want to do anything about it until she got out of the urbanized area.
Every step and every crack Astral made put her further on edge, and the faint light coming through the dead, rusted sky prevented her from knowing the time. She was taught about something called 'night' but didn't know what that meant. The excitement of learning about a new phenomenon was ruined, and her anger started taking over as she continued her trek through the ruined landscape. After several hours of walking, the mare finally made her way to a more rural area, although there were still a few tall buildings, they didn't seem to go beyond four stories in height. Strangely, most of the homes were intact outside some decay and rot in the materials that made them up. The lawns were tainted dirt and the bushes and trees were dead, blackened reminders of the beauty that once was. There were a few more of the black spots here and there, but they were far less common in the rural area than in the city itself. Some houses had completely collapsed, and the stench of burning still lingered, somehow going through the suit's filtration system.
Astral stopped in place when she heard a strange mumbling that sounded like buzzing and somepony droning on at the same time. She slowly moved in the direction of it, going past two houses to reach another street. The mare couldn't understand why she was doing something so stupid like going toward a potential threat rather than avoid it, but if she didn't learn about it now, she would get sideswiped in the future by the surprise.
Nebula tiptoed over the lawn to the skeletal remains of a hedge and peered through them to a house just barely standing from its corner getting blown out by an explosion. Debris hung everywhere, long since taken over by the dust and grime of the area. Peering within the ruined interior, the mare's eyes widened when she realized there was a vanilla-colored pony with almost no mane and tail sitting on a stool at a bar and mumbling like they were having a conversation with somepony. Surrounding them, the walls were charred black with that strange pattern spotted all over the city. Nebula realized they were in the middle of one and furrowed her brows. She saw what she had to. She didn't need to approach them further.
The mare moved away and tripped over several mutant rats wandering around near her hooves. They squeaked and garbled in shock, making Nebula curse loudly unintentionally. When the miniscule monster had moved away, it became clear that the mumbling had stopped. Remembering the tunnel, Astral slowly turned around to see the unicorn at the bar staring at her with wide, unblinking eyes.
"Uh...hi?" Nebula squeaked. The unicorn's mouth opened slightly as a scream of growing intensity came from its throat. "Something wrong?"
The unicorn's mouth seemed to grow wider and wider and started to stretch out its body as it started to fracture and unstable, trembling bits of its body started separating, reminding Astral of the concept of tectonic plates always moving around. The monster's horn started to elongate and split apart as whatever spell was surrounding it started to evaporate, revealing its true form. It grew taller and lankier as its entrails stretched out like limbs, magic spewing wildly from its body and destroying everything around it.
"Oh Tartarus no!" Astral blurted.
She immediately turned tail and started galloping away as fast as she could, but the screaming thing gave chase, clearly furious at being interrupted at whatever it was doing. On the odd occasion that the mare could spot a reflective surface, she realized that many horns were growing through the entity's flesh and interior like tumors, each one thrumming with unstable magic that polluted its surroundings like toxic sludge. One rat was caught in its poisonous embrace and started growing wildly, with limbs bursting at the seems with muscle, magic, and claws before it grew to the size of a pony and popped like a balloon, much to Astral's disgust.
She managed to round a corner and fall down an open hole behind a house, leaving the monstrosity to stumble away chasing after prey it could never find.
"What's this, now?" Astral muttered to herself as she rubbed the back of her head and checked her limbs for fractures.
She was in a small tunnel lined with lightbulbs that had popped or weren't fed power in a very long while. While it would be better to climb back up, the mare could only bide her time until she felt enough time had passed. Worst case scenario:
She galloped to the windows and looked around, weary of the big mouth monsters. Instead, she bore witness to a dozen equine-shaped creatures draped in cloth garb using archaic gunpowder weaponry against multiple deer-like creatures with antlers in place of legs. Said growths were bending and twisting at their enemies, the extended pieces breaking off almost instantly so they could regrow differently. They seemed to exist with a form of diprosopus, making their heads wide and malformed but hindered them in no way to dealing with their aggressors. Their size, three times that of a regular pony, made them incredibly dangerous, which was probably why the ponies in question kept their distance.
Two of the larger ponies easily the size of these deer rushed forward and body slammed into them, knocking them over before they stomped hard on their bodies, killing them. Three more were shot dead and double-tapped in the ground for good measure. The two giants bounced giddily when they were congratulated by their smaller kin and had ropes tied around the deer and their waists, letting them drag their hunt along the ground. An open wagon made from welded bits of scrap metal and its attendant waited for them, ropes, and wooden poles waiting for them.
"This is my chance!" Astral realized.
The mare put her gun away in her pouch and went out of the shack, rushing toward the ponies before they could finish whatever they were doing and leave. Her approach was unnecessary since the ponies were letting the corpses of their prey and stringing them up to let gravity do the work.
"Excuse me! Excuse me!" the mare shouted.
The ponies noticed her and then flew into a panic.
"What in blue blazes? We've got aliens 'round here now!" The pony smacked the wagon attendant on the back of his head to grab his attention. "Git yer rahfle. We've got aliens here!"
The attendant reluctantly faced Astral's direction and rolled his eyes. "It's an alien because it's wearing a suit?" He flinched when three rifles were shot at the mare. "Stop shooting, you idiots!"
"Not a great way to introduce myself," Astral said. "I got too carried away."
One of the mares groaned and rolled her eyes. "Can't we just kill her and loot her?"
"We crush? Smush?" one of the giants asked innocently.
The other clapped her hooves excitedly. "Brother smush. I crush!"
"No! I crush! You smush!" the brother opposed.
The caretaker leaned his face into his hoof. "They're fighting again."
"Consarnit!" the country pony cursed. "Ah told y'all ta stop that stupid fightin'! Yer just doin' the same thing with different names!" He froze in place, glaring at nothing until he swung and pointed a hoof at the bloodthirsty mare. "And you! The city is down thatta ways. Ya think this alien is safe ta murk 'n loot 'cause ya like shootin' things? What's under that suit, then?!"
"I-I can show you, if you want," Astral suggested nervously. "If it's not dangerous to breathe here."
The ponies mumbled to each other while the giants kept pummeling each other. Getting a better look at them when they started approaching with rifles locked around their shoulders, Astral was able to see that their weapons were sanded down to get rid of rust and the wood used for the stocks weren't of the best quality. They were scavengers surviving in the wastelands.
"It ain't unsafe ta breathe here," the older stallion claimed. "Just lots of crap flyin 'round. Gets in yer eye and hurts something' fierce." He leaned to the side, his fellows keeping their weapons stable. "Now, y'all're gon' git turned intae a pockmarked calendar if ya trah somethin' weird, ya hear?"
"A pockmarked...okay?" Astral said with a shrug.
"Food." He waved his hoof several times at the mare. "Now be slow with yer helmet removin' 'n such. Can't be too careful."
The ponies focused harder when Astral's helmet hissed, letting loose the familiar air of her home out, coat her surroundings from barely a moment in pastel colors and white mist. She lowered the helmet to her side and kept it under her right foreleg, smiling nervously all the while, sweat staining her fur.
"Did I pass?" she asked. She shifted in place nervously when the ponies stared at her, dumbfounded. "Is everything okay?"
"The Tartarus kind of pony is she supposed to be?" the wagon caretaker blurted out.
"What? What's wrong with my appearance?" Astral asked.
"What's wrong with your everything?!" the caretaker insisted.
Astral Nebula's mane imitated the background of her home, being colorful with many pastels shades that moved around on their own, and a coat of solid colors that was just as varied but static. Her eyes were expanding rings of the same colors, with various lines fading in and out of existence in new patterns.
"She's a unicorn!" one of the hunters realized.
The oldest hunter stared at her horn, shocked. "Ah ain't never seen no unicorns before. Some slavers got 'em a few years back, but there was only three." He shrugged. "Figured that was a lah."
"What's wrong with my appearance?" Astral Nebula asked. Insulted, her tone became more aggressive. "You're the ones who all look stagnant and boring!" she claimed. The hunters stared silently. "Everypony looks like me back home! Only our eldest didn't."
A hunter approached the old hunter, ill intent in every step. "If we capture her, we might be able to sell her for a ton! All of us would be able to live like the princesses of old!"
They watched the two giants lumber over to an increasingly worried mare. They started to gently poke and prod her, their massive bodies causing the mare an instinctive fear.
"Ha ha. Pretty," the brother mused.
"Like colors. Sparkly," the sister noted.
"I'm...not sparkly...some ponies where I'm from are, though. Something about the magic or energy within the space that we live in that modifies our biology and makes our nascent magical potential come out as sparkling lights, I think."
The two giants had removed their masks while listening to her, revealing their colors to be dim yellow and dim red, the color locations inverted between them. They had frozen in place, and the brother was shaking his head left and right.
"Consarnit!" the oldest hunter shouted in frustration. He stomped over to them and try smacking his hooves together to get them out of their trance. "Ya went 'n broke 'em! They ain't gots the smarts to be comprehensing yer big words! They're simple folk!"
Astral put her helmet back on with a whistling of the seals and backed away slightly. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
The aggressive mare pointed her rifle at Astral and licked her lips, her goggles reflected malice. "I'll just shoot her in the legs, then we can loot her and send her to a slaver. Pretty little art piece like that oughta be worth a fortune."
Nebula furrowed her brows. "But I don't want that."
"Doesn't matter what you want."
"Now hold on just a sec!" The older hunter stepped forward, attempting to stand between the two. "Ah din't give ya permission fer that yet."
"Too bad!" the aggressive mare shouted enthusiastically. She fired a shot at Astral and missed, allowing the mare to hurriedly pull her pistol out and have it ready by the time the fourth shot just narrowly missed her head. The aggressive huntress started shaking her gun angrily. "This stupid gun keeps missing! I told you we needed new ones and not these stupid pieces of scrap!"
When she aimed at Astral again, the unicorn looked away.
"Hey, what's that gun she's using?" one of the other hunters wondered.
Everyone froze like statues when the magitech weapon released its charge, atomizing the aggressive mare and created a shallow half-pipe trench for about a dozen feet before it dissipated. The event shook the giants from their stupor, and they were quick to fearfully back away from Astral Nebula.
"The Tartarus was that?" the old stallion asked.
Doing her best to suppress the horror of what she just did, Astral responded, but with a trembling voice. "I...It's my weapon. The others gave it to me when I came here."
The old hunter stomped around, wheezing angrily and passing a hoof over his hood. "Y'all just pulled me outta a plum pie 'n called me Plum Pie fer yer troubles!" the stallion grumbled. He glared at Astral with one eye as he looked around briefly, baffled. " 'N just where is it ya come from? Y'all been baskin' in the taint of a sun shard ah reckon? How exactly did y'all even live afterward?"
"A what?"
Plum Pie blinked slowly. "A sun shard. You know? Fragments of the past?" His face dropped when Astral shrugged and shook her head. "Can't believe this. Some random, glowing, painted unicorn comes outta nowhere, offs one of mah hunters, 'n doesn't know nothin' 'bout the world."
He was overtaken by the wagon caretaker pushing him aside. "You didn't come from the past with a time travel spell did you?"
"What are you talking about, Hay?" a hunter asked.
"I heard that sometimes a pony from the past comes out of nowhere, having time-travelled." His excitement faded almost instantly. "But they would disappear soon afterward. Hmmmm."
"Look," Astral started. "I just want to know how to get to Canterlot and talk with one of the princesses there. I need information that only they can provide."
"The princesses?" Hay repeated.
He looked at the others that exchanged looks before they all burst into laughter, leaving the giants confused.
The mare's cheeks puffed up in frustration. "What's so funny?" she asked angrily.
"Yer lookin' fer Canterlot?" Plum asked. "Ain't we all?!"
Astral felt the blood flee her face, and her veins turned cold. "Wh...what are you trying to say?"
Plum laughed even harder, having to take a moment to get himself to breathe normally again. "That's cause-" He noticed the giants in the corner of his eye. "Put yer masks back on ya idjits!" The giants complied immediately and stood to attention in place. Plum shook his head in disappointment, waiting for the raucous laughter to die down a bit. "Dunno where yer from, but Canterlot's been lost 'n fergotten fer 'bout a hunderd years 're so. Dunno the exact number, and ah don't care none."
"Hey, Plum, are we just gonna let her go?" one of the hunters asked.
"Ah ain't enslavin' no pony." He gave Astral a side glance when she jumped in terror at a tail ending in a stinger poking out of the ground briefly. "Especially not with that gun 'o hers. We'll just leave her be 'n get our catch back home."
"We could always just drop her off at our town and move on from there. I have a feeling she'll follow us the whole time and attract all sorts of attention if we don't," she explained.
Plum weighed the pros and cons and sighed, wondering why he was agreeing to what his employee had just argued. "Fine." He pointed at Astral. "You. Unicorn. You'll accompany us to the town. There's ponies there at a meetup that escort gits like you ta where yer lookin'. Ya poke 'em some and you leave us alone, got it?"
"Yes, of course!" Astral said enthusiastically. "I'm not interested in bothering anypony." She hurried to join up with the ponies and smiled when they hitched the siblings up to the wagon and got moving.
Most of the trip was done in silence, although the siblings liked to sing as they pulled the wagon. Their voices were atrocious, but it seemed that their fellow hunters learned to tune them out. Astral, however, wasn't so lucky. As they moved along the hilly landscape dotted by the occasional debris of crashed aircraft, two hunters approached Plum Pie.
"You sure about this, Plum? She's a freaky looking unicorn. That's like a...a quintuple whammy!" the huntress whispered. "You're just gonna let her go?"
The other hunter nodded. "I understand that you don't like the idea of slavery and all, but a unicorn?! And she looks like she's overflowing with magic!"
Plum spat onto the ground and watched it sizzle. He grunted as he looked up, seeing an elevated mound, and gave it a wide berth. "It's because of how freaky she is, and that weapon o' hers ain't no joke either. Evaporated Jemmy Shards in an instant!" He looked behind to see the suited pony walking carefully while staring at the ground. "Ain't nopony looks like that 'n ain't been taintin' by a shard."
"But she's not even some weird mutant giant or elongated abbe ration!" the huntress said. "She just looks weird, which is what makes her prime material!"
Plum removed his mask, his plum-purple eyes darting left and right between the glass of the huntress' mask. "Okay. Say we did that. Then what? Those things'd come after us if she's gone too long. They clearly know that she left. All the others that kidnapped the victims were chased down until they were beaten ta death." He widened his eyes and pursed his lips as he pulled the mask back down. "Ah ain't goin' through that no way no how." His hoof went between both hunters quickly. " 'N Ah ain't 'bouta let that happen ta all y'all neither, so stop suggestin' it."
"Yes, sir," the two hunters responded reluctantly.
With a few more hours passed, Astral approached the wagon and the caretaker actively aiming at things from atop the corpses. "So...what are you going to do with those...things?" she asked. "Did you kill them because they're malformed? Are they going to pollute everything if left behind?"
Hay looked bewildered. "What are you talking about? These Deters are in perfect health. Some of the best I've ever seen."
It was Astral's turn to be bewildered. "But..." She looked at the white cloth fluttering behind the stallion. "Deer aren't supposed to look like that."
She was met with a shrug. "No idea what a 'deer' is, but a deter looks like these guys right here." He patted the mound behind him, creasing the fabric and loosening some errant blood on the fur.
"Okay...and what do you use them for?" Astral asked.
"We eat them and harvest their legs if we can't capture and farm their bonewood," Hay explained nonchalantly.
The mare was left stunned. "But...ponies don't eat meat..."
"That's a myth," Plum Pie interjected. "Us equines 're herbivorous but also opportunistic carnivores." He grinned at Plum, his mask creasing from his jaw muscles tensing. "We still eat whenever we can. Besides." He walked up to the giant siblings and jabbed the sister in her flank. "Show her yer big teeth?"
"Show who?" the sister asked.
"The u..." Plum took a deep breath. "The sparkly pony."
"Ooooo," the siblings aww'd in unison.
They took off their masks and smiled at Astral, scaring her. She hadn't noticed how bulky they were, but their faces were...slightly deformed. Their muzzles were exceptionally pronounced with immense lower jaws, but their mouths were seemingly small in comparison. What wasn't small was the rows of sharp teeth growing every which way from their gums. Calloused muscle crevices were located above and below, letting their awkward teeth rest tranquilly in their mouths.
"Look like sharks from the old books," Plum laughed.
"Sparkly mare like teeth?" the sister asked.
Her brother laughed heartily. "We like smile. Smile make lots better."
Astral was thankful they couldn't see her disturbed expression behind her helmet. "Uh, yes. Very lovely smiles."
Plum patted the brother on his side. "Alright, ya giant sausages. Get yer masks back on." He watched them struggle to pull the masks back down before speaking again. "They're primarily carnivores, those ponies. Big colts 'n filles need their protein, in't that right?" He chuckled when the giants giggled. " 'Sides, we're almost there."
"Really?" Astral asked with surprise.
The older hunter nodded. "Yes. We aren't going to travel days out just for hunting."
"The meat will spoil," Hay interjected.
"Gotta git it ta the smoker's right fast." Plum nodded. "Stayin' away
"Oh."
The hunters looked at her, smirking under their masks. "You sound disappointed."
"There's that..." The unicorn swayed left to right. "I kinda expected there to be a long trek there so I could see more of Equestria. It's way different from what our elders told us."
"Oh?" Plum said absent-mindedly. "And what did they tell you?"
"That it was a place full of color and life, with plenty of different species around." With every word Astral said, the hunters gradually looked at her, their movements becoming stiff and robotic. "They never told me what to do if Equestria looked like this, though."
"Like this?" a hunter repeated. "You act like you were hidden away in a vault." He paused and pointed his rifle at Astral again. "Or that you came from space, alien !"
Plum grabbed a rock and chucked it at the hunter's head. "Ah told ya ta knock it off!" He waved the stallion off. "Never you mind him. The town's rrrright over there."
A bunch of homes made from repurposed, concrete ruins sat in the middle of the wasteland, with scrap metal walls surrounding it on all sides. A few old buildings were still mostly intact, but reinforced with white, wooden material that held them and their new walls up. The tallest building had three gradually smaller floors and looked like a giant bell sat on the second. A large field sat opposite the group's direction, next to the town, full of wooden poles holding up a plethora of dried out vines that Astral could see ponies tending to, much to her confusion.
What had caught her attention first, but that she tried her best to ignore, was a strange, stretched out thing standing over the walls at one of the gates. It stood on four long legs that grew at the base, like gravity was pulling all of its fat down. It was covered in splotches of red surrounded by yellow rings, sitting in a sea of deep blue. The main body looked like a potato sitting comfortably far above even the tallest building in the city.
"Why do you have a statue like that at the town? To scare off any monsters."
Confused, Hay spoke up. "Statue?"
The surface of the 'statue' shifted to sharp zigzags of red surrounded by white lines on a flickering background of green and purple. The potato body elongated and stretched out to meet the group, multiple stalks popping out of its front to look at the group. Its skin started to glisten, and buckets of acidic substances slid off its body to stain the ground beneath everyone. Two of the stalks lingered on the giants who cheered like children and started swiping carefully at the stalks staring at them. They lingered on everypony until one spotted Astral, and they all converged on her.
Nebula screamed in terror and fell backward as the stalks followed her every movement until Plum jumped in front of her. "It's okay!" he declared. "She's just a visitor. Ain't gon' bring no harm ta the town. Y'ain't need ta worry none."
The stalks bypassed the stallion, seemingly 'sniffing' Astral before receding back in the shrinking body, leaving the unicorn gasping for air.
"I hate this place," the mare complained. "Now there are colorful potatoes able to stretch for miles to eat you!"
The hunters laughed together once again.
"Welcome to Equestria, 'Sparkly Pony'," Plum mocked.
