"Will You Wait for Me?" She Asked, Pleading Desperately for Time. Her Lover Considered for a Moment, Hand at His Chin in Contemplation. "Meh, Probably." · 12:17am Feb 10th, 2013
Hey All,
Been awhile, huh? Sorry 'bout that. Got work to do and such, so writing has been on the back-burner for awhile. As a reward for your patience (and a reassurance of writings to come) here is a preview of Chapter 12.
Enjoy!
Screams echoed into the courtyard from the city below. Not the “Oh, Mommy! Look at the Royal Guards” kind of screams, or even the barely frightened “Nightmare Night” level wails. These were cries of unimaginable pain and terror and fright.
Squeals of the damned.
“Scootaloo! Stay here!”
“Yeah! Ya heard what Rarity said! We gotta stay here an’ wait!”
Scootaloo crept away from her friends, away from the dark, oily underbelly of Jer’s jeep and into the nuptial courtyard. There should have been a party going on right now—post wedding dancing, drinking and dining—but the green expanse was empty.
Smoke rose in plumes across the city, filtering through drifting eggshell-bits of magic that descended like wispy, pink snow upon a burning world. Pink mist fizzled from a fallen hunk of the magic precipitation nearby, and the bandstand near the hill’s edge had collapsed: punched inward by a black creature falling from the sky, wreathed in emerald manalight. The changeling was gone now, but the stage remained—splintered and broken.
Jerry was going to play there today: “For the Italian Knockoff,” he said.
The orange pegasus crawled cautiously toward the wooden structure, keeping as low to the ground as possible. If she rounded the side closest to her, she’d be able to look downhill on the distressed city below. She didn’t know why, but seeing Equestria’s shining star in flames was the most important thing on Scootaloo’s mind… besides Jer… and Ray…
Her humans.
Scootaloo’s eyes narrowed and she quickened her pace, scootching across the grassy yard with renewed fervor. She was dimly aware of a pair of ponies following behind her, but she paid them little mind. Her thoughts turned to the men who housed her as she scanned the sky for buzzing soldiers. Where were they? She’d seen them thrown through the stained glass window depicting the birth of the Minotaur Confederacy—something Cheerilee covered near the end of the year, so it was, surprisingly, still fresh in her mind—and then nothing. She and her friends were carried outside by the mob of wedding guests fleeing the ceremony gone wrong.
They had been lucky: thrown under the humans’ vehicle. If they hadn’t rolled underneath, the three fillies surely would have been trampled. Luck mattered little at that point, however. What mattered was the fact that Jer and Ray weren’t back for their weapons yet. Applebloom had found them. Two rifles, strapped against the axle with some kind of magnetic bands.
It had been nearly an hour, and the guns were still there. The humans had yet to arrive, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders were alone.
Scootaloo wanted to know why. The hill they’d climbed to reach the court building had been steep, but not nearly steep enough that if she’d fallen down she couldn’t scramble back up within a few minutes. Jer should be there. Ray should BE there!
But they weren’t.
The bandstand passed by silently, and Scootaloo approached the low, stone wall that marked the end of the courtyard. With one last glance up to the sky—and a quick scan for bird droppings upon the stone blocks—she hopped atop the granite wall with a sharp flap of her wings.
Scootaloo was suddenly face-to-face with a yawning chasm, punctuated by the shingled roofs of shrunken buildings and tiny, dollhouse ponies. Her body lurched forward, and she felt gravity tug her over the edge.
A hoof slipped, and any semblance of balance was lost. Scootaloo locked up—the “Filly Freeze”—and now she was going to die. The pegasus filly briefly wondered why she hadn’t seen her life flash before her eyes. She assumed she missed it, and another, shrill scream rent the air among its fleeting brethren.
The sky burned with noise and light and rushing wind and a sharp pain in Scootaloo’s flank snapped her backward, cracking her skull against the cliff-side. The world popped, and all she could feel was blinding pain racing from her brow to her spine, ending where her tail met her flank. Scootaloo felt herself pulled upwards, and with a Herculean effort, she turned her throbbing head to look over her withers.
Applebloom strained under a sky of blue, green, black and pink, Scootaloo’s tail clamped firmly in her jaws. Suddenly Sweetie was beside her, underdeveloped horn sparking in agitation. The white unicorn sprawled forward and grabbed one of the pegasus’s hind-legs. In one final lurch, Scootaloo felt herself pulled upward, scraping her stomach on the outer edge of the wall up to her chin before she fell on her back, staring into the tempestuous sky in disbelief.
“What the hay, Scootaloo!” wailed a clearly agitated unicorn, appearing above and blocking out the raging air overhead. “You almost DIED! What were you doing?!”
The dazed pegasus stared past her friend, into the battle above, and listened to the wheezing sound of Applebloom breathing from beside her. Was her tail still in her mouth? A quick twitch of the flank later, and Scootaloo once again was in possession of her entire being.
Her body was a castle; the grass, her foundation; the sky, her—
“SCOOTALOO!” Sweetie practically screamed, livid, frightened tears in her eyes. “What’s wrong with you?!” Suddenly, the pegasus lurched upward, latching onto her yelling friend. Sweetie Belle squeaked and collapsed under Scootaloo’s weight, and both of them slumped onto Applebloom, whom was still wheezing like a fish out of water.
“I… I… I’m alive!” Scootaloo whooped, still crushing Sweetie within her forelegs.
“Of course ya are! Now gerroff!” Applebloom mumbled exhaustedly. “Ah can’t hardly breathe.” The other two fillies obliged sheepishly, Scootaloo taking the opportunity to kiss the ground at her belly while Sweetie helped Applebloom get up. The grass was soft as silk and the tingling aftertaste was absolutely magical. Scootaloo was never taking grass for granted ever again…
“What the hay were you doing jumpin’ up on the edge a’ the cliff like that?” Applebloom puffed, still not quite recovered from lifting a pegasus nearly her size from certain death.
“I didn’t know!” the orange filly exclaimed.
“That you were jumping, or that there was a cliff?” Sweetie asked, skeptical.
“The second one. I thought it was just another hill like the other side, so I was gonna look down and see… where Jerry… was…” Scootaloo’s eyes widened. “Oh my Luna, JERRY! RAY!” She tried to jump back over the low stone wall, but Applebloom just barely snatched her by the tail again.
“Dnt yuh drrr, Scrtler!”
“Let me go!” Scootaloo tried jumping again, only to be tugged back by a sharp pain between her flanks. “They fell,” she sobbed, “we have to help them, they fell!”
“What the hay do you mean, they fell!” Sweetie yelled, scrambling to put herself between her orange friend and what to her probably seemed like prospective suicide. She clutched Scootaloo’s forelegs, mane frazzled and eyes equally wild, and planted herself against the stone bulwark between them and the rest of the capitol below.
Still straining towards the edge, the pegasus sobbed openly. “Jerry. Ray,” she mouthed, not caring that her friends finally saw her cry. “The Queen threw them out the wi-window, and… and…”
Scootaloo broke down, tiny wings drooping at her sides. The tension in her tail let up immediately, she was drowning in a pair of orange eyes and yellow fur.
“Are ya sure?!” Applebloom intoned, holding Scootaloo at hooves’ length and giving her a frightened stare. “Ah didn’t see anything like that, and mah sis an’ her friends came out just fine!”
Broken glass and screams: heart wrenching screams, not from the humans but from Pinkie and Applejack and Rainbow Dash and… and…
“I’m… I’m s-sure,” Scootaloo wailed. “They’re… gone.” Flashes of fire under a full moon tore a path through the pegasus’s memories, punctuated by a long, agonizing shriek. “Gone.” She shoved Appleboom away and hugged the ground, curling up into a shuddering ball of fur, feathers, and tears. Her friend made no further move to comfort her, letting slip a low moan and slumping to her haunches a few inches away.
“N-Now hold on, girls,” Sweetie squeaked. “What about the others?” Scootaloo joined Applebloom in voicing her sorrow, their cadence of moans filling the courtyard. “Girls, stop a second! Think! If they came out, maybe Twilight and Rainbow saved them with magic or speed or something! Don’t you think they would be doing the same thing you are if they were dead? They were our friends for Luna’s sake! They could just be unconscious, laying on the… court… floor? Scootaloo wait!”
Sweetie was gone, left behind near the collapsed bandstand. The courthouse loomed ahead under a burning sky, and Scootaloo could hear her earth pony friend’s hooves pounding in rhythm with her own. She cursed herself for not thinking of it before! Twilight was the most powerful unicorn in Equestria: she must have done something to save her bipedal guardians. She MUST have.
Panting, the orange filly climbed the tiered steps to the courthouse door and tried to pry it open. With a little help from Applebloom and a lot of strain, she was able to to get the massive ceremonial gateway open wide enough to peek inside.
The courtroom was in shambles. Broken glass littered the aisle, mingled with torn dresses, trampled flowers, and what looked like a small pool of drying blood in the center of the once immaculate chamber. To Scootaloo’s horror, the room seemed empty: completely and utterly empty. Tears threatening to return, she backed away and allowed Applebloom a look inside.
Humanless as the courtroom-turned-dump was, Sweetie was still right; she couldn’t just pronounce them dead. Not until she saw the bodies. Scootaloo just had to figure out a way insi—
“Oh. Mah. Stars. Scootaloo, come look!” Applebloom’s urgent whisper broke Scootaloo away from thoughts of sneaking inside, and she scrambled past her friend to get another look indoors. “On the ceiling.”
Scootaloo turned her gaze up toward the vaulted, ba-coltish ceiling and paled. Sickly green and pulsing, a gigantic cocoon hung like a chandelier in the center of the room. Inside, she could just barely make out the body of Celestia, Life-Giver and Stewardess of the Sun. The royal mare was alive, staring straight down at them with a frantic, even fearful expression and mouthing—no, screaming—something from her oozing prison.
“Wha… Howwhat?!”
“She’s tryin’ tah tell us somethin’…”
“I know, but what?” Trying to read her ruler’s lips, Scootaloo got as far as “look behind” when a shadow loomed above her, obscuring afternoon sky and causing her to freeze in fear. It was over.
Slowly, the orange filly turned to face her demise.
She would not cry, nor would she beg, she decided. Scootaloo would fight, just as her surrogate parents would have wanted.
The small pegasus faced her fate, and it was something rather unexpected to say the least.
Thanks for reading!
All of my Jeff Goldblums.
813071 HAWT