//------------------------------// // Golden // Story: Hunting the 6 // by Starblazer225 //------------------------------// A knocking sounded at the door, a loud knocking. I lifted my head up and stared at the entrance. Small strands of light peeled themselves from the curtain behind me, shedding their dim white early morning light onto the floor. The sweet smell of linen clung to the air as a hint of a strange bodily odor sprouted from someplace around me, it was probably me, I needed a good bathe something fierce. The pounding at the door continued. “Just a minute,” I forced out of my mouth groggily. I managed to lift myself up from the seated position I had slept in and closed in on the door. My muscles were locked in that seated position so long they were beginning to cramp, I could feel them locking as I moved. Something was strange though, the door had no light beneath it. It was dark on the other side. As I wrapped my hoof around the doorknob I felt a strange sensation, as if I had been moved. Like I wasn’t in the hotel anymore. A cold glacial arc traveled down my spine as I turned and looked behind me, nothing. There was no room there anymore, only black. Everything was black, no light had been casted anywhere, it was merely utter and total black. The only thing I could see was my hooves and the white door, everything else remained black. I was bitterly confused but I felt as if it was normal, like it shouldn’t take me as a surprise. I heard a distant voice that wasn’t mine, but it was familiar So soft… and sweet… “Open the door, Golden…” I heard it whisper in my ear. “Open it.” I did as it said. With a single motion I turned the cold doorknob and thrust the door open. A bright light that shone through me it seemed and could light up the entire night sky bombarded me and left me standing there, dumbfounded and blinded. I couldn’t see anything, white light everywhere, It was all I could see. Then it retracted, the white pulled from my eyes giving me clarity into the world it pulled me into. The first thing my senses recognized was the smell of apples. Apple trees surrounded me, they were planted in rows, perfectly lined with not one out of place. The trees stretched for miles it seemed, all under a giant cloud of grey blanketed the world and a dull, eerie mist rolled under it. I walked down the rows and rows now. It was unending, rows and rows of them, they didn’t stop. Then I saw it. Out in the fog a little black blur took form. A big house it looked like, very plain and not much to the shape of it. My first sense, a sense I could not control told me to move towards it. The place had a very strange feeling to it, like I was naturally supposed to be there. The mirage finally came into full view taking a better defined shape, it was a house. Two plain windows hung themselves around an old door that sleepily leaned up to the house, a slightly slanted smoke stack held crooked to the roof. Was it? It was… My… My old home… It had been so long the memory of it had disappeared from my mind and the image of it brought back nostalgia like nothing ever could have. “Home?” I asked myself quietly. “How?” I walked closer, before I could get any closer I heard something, like a cry. Then I saw it, a memory in third person. An older Stallion, maybe five or ten years older than big mac is pulled a young colt into the house by his ear, his green eyes filled with tears, his glossy golden mane was covered in dirt. He flung the door open and slammed it shut behind him. The stallion was screaming at him from inside the house. What they didn’t see was the platoon of white and red guards approaching. I tried to scream but nothing came from my throat except a choking sensation, the less I forced my voice the less it choked me. The guards approached, musket like weapons were strapped to their back, they all looked at each other before unloading them. They took them off their backs and began loading pellets and balls into the guns, pouring gunpowder into the barrels, cocking the rifles. “Aim!” I heard somepony scream. Then I heard it. That phrase that brought me back to that day. “Sparkling! Git down!” “Fire!” I heard. They raised their rifles up and fired at the house. Bullets tore through the house ripping past the walls and tearing the home to shreds and pieces. Then I heard a young colt’s scream. “No! Papa! Don’t go!” The door flew open and the stallion stood on the front doorstep looking out to the guards. Then she came, a tall hooded figure waltzed out of the lines. A black hood blanketed her face, a midnight blue horn emerging from her head. The horn glowed and she pulled something from her cloak. A long blocky pistol emerged, a slender barrel sticking out of the top of it. She pointed it at the stallion with no hesitation. A large crack cut the air. The stallion at the door fell back onto his flank, staring at his chest to see the blood trickling down his front. From there he looked up back to the figure in black coming closer to him. She pushed the stallion over with one hoof to where he laid there on his back, aching in pain. Then I heard her talk. “Interesting,” she said looking at the gun she controlled with her magic. “This is a prototype weapon my sister helped develop, a repeating machine pistol, called a mauser.” She stood on top of him with on hoof and pointed the sidearm down to him. “You’re the first actual test subject.” She cracked of another round into him. Crack Crack Crack Crack Crack One round after the other and with each shot she fired made my heart lurch. When she finally stopped she reloaded it, popping the magazine from the top of the gun and putting a new clip in. She looked to the guards, then to the body. “We’ve done what we’ve needed!” She barked out not taking her eyes off the body. “We’ve successfully purified this place, let us move on!” The guards wailed and stormed off ahead of the black hooded figure. I rushed to the house, I looked at the stallion who laid in the doorway. His eyes stared at the sky, they were dark and bleak, void of life in every sense of the word. My gaze went upward to the inside of the house. Everything was destroyed, pictures shattered, walls torn apart, the whole place was in ruin. In the far corner though, a little body sat there. Forelegs wrapped around his hind legs bent inward under him. He was crying into his hooves silently. I had to do what I think is right, I walked over to him stepping across the pieces that remained of the home. Another body was sprawled across the floor, it was a mare, she laid face down her back was full of holes that bled blood onto little puddles that were around her on the floor. Walking across the rubble I noticed the pictures, some were of them, the stallion and that colt, some of which I’m guessing are of that mare. It was a mess all in all. As I turned my attention back to the crying little figure against the far corner I caught him looking at me. His eyes filled with tears. Fear, fear was the only word I have to describe the emotion on his face, pure and utter fear. He stared at me with that fear stretched across his face that held a grasp to his heart. I reached a hoof out. As I outreached it he withdrew away from it, burying himself deeper into the wall. “I’m not gonna hurt ya buddy.” I said as calmly as I could, pulling my hoof back, I knelt down next to him. He looked up to my face, a long streak ran red coming from the top of his right eyebrow and traveled down his face to his burnt yellow cheek. I wiped the blood away, he cringed a bit as I did it but not so much. I flicked the blood of my hoof and looked into his dark green eyes. “What’s yer name kid?” I asked him. He sniffed and wiped away some tears from his face and looked up to me. “Golden.”