He sits up with a sharp gasp, cold sweat clinging to his forehead.
His mind races in every direction, each distorted memory scrambling over the others, desperately trying to reform. One by one, his memories come back: the disappearance of the Princesses… the twisting, clawing spires of the Castle… the giant bat… the Captain…
…bulging, red eyes…
…fangs.
The rest is darkness.
He lifts a leg, but something constricts it. Quickly, he panics—but a voice from deep inside tells him to stop. He isn’t tied down, those are just devices meant to monitor him… though strangely, the monitors they are hooked to are off. His breathing remains hoarse and shaky as he undoes the wires and plugs dotting his body, sitting up as he does so.
Taking a moment, he curls up in the hospital bed, looking around. The room he’s in—perhaps once meticulously clean—is now covered in dust. Some of the hospital equipment lies neglected in a corner. How long has he been out?
It’s too quiet, and too dirty, and too lonely, and too much to take in at once. It’s the silence that unnerves him most. A hospital is normally a quiet place, but there’s an ugliness that lurks just beneath that quiet—an ugliness that grins to itself as it whets its teeth eagerly.
Gathering what shriveled courage he has, he crawls off the bed, cringing slightly as the sheets and mattress crackle and slur beneath his movement. He can’t quite figure out why he feels as though he’s attracting unwanted attention, but the atmosphere itself is thick and oppressive enough that he feels right to be paranoid.
His hooves make quiet sounds that are still too damn loud. He makes his way to the door, passing by the sink. His eyes latch onto the sink’s faucet as he does so, subliminally reminding him how dry his throat is. How achey and parched and limp and fatigued he is as a whole.
He stops. Turns. As an earth pony, he has no telekinesis or wings to work the faucet’s knobs, so instead carefully places the frog of his hoof onto one—the cold switch—and twists.
No water.
Of course.
There’s a mirror on the wall above the sink. The stallion in the reflection stares back at him with haggard, worn-out silver eyes. His snow-white mane is a mess, forming unwashed knots on his head. His face, even though riddled with stubble, is pretty—nearly feminine—but set on hulking shoulders that fan out into a large, sturdy body. His orange pelt is just as unwashed as the rest of him. There’s a patch on his shoulder, covering a spot that throbs and bites.
A name returns to him—Baldwin. Friends had given him the ironic nickname Tiny. From the name, everything else flows: his family, his parents’ divorce, moving away, his time in the Royal Guard, the return of Nightmare Moon, the return of Discord, the Captain’s wedding…
Everything swirls. He crushes his eyes, shutting out a swimming world of color and memories, and sighs.
Then he suddenly sobs, lifting a hoof up to his face to hide himself from his own reflection.
It takes him some time to regain control, but he manages. Tiny looks out the window. And he sees the Castle.
And he remembers the bulging red eyes.
The door refuses to go gently. With a sharply delivered buck of his hind legs, Tiny breaks the doors down with a crack that rocks the entire building. The silence afterward chases the sound away, leaving Tiny by himself once again.
The air here is cold and somehow crusty, like breathing in dust. It tickles his nostrils, drawing a sneeze out of him as he enters the hallway itself. He shivers.
Then Tiny sees something that stops his heart.
The bed that had been blocking his door had been kicked into the wall, fallen onto its side. Right above it sits an abstract shape of blood that has browned since its birth. It stretches and travels from an impact point down to the ground, where it becomes a long, tattered trail on the linoleum floor. The trail turns down one hall, disappearing out of sight.
Tiny’s heavy hooves carry him across the floor, following the trail almost against his will. He’d seen horror movies before—and almost always, the heroes would do something stupid, like… well, like following a blood trail down a portentous hallway. But now that he’s apparently in the middle of a similar scenario, he comes to an understanding of why the characters in those movies do such dumb things: part curiosity, part helplessness.
His breathing becomes sharper as he nears the corner. He slows to a stop. Clenches his teeth. Just a peek. That’s all, he promises himself. Only a peek down the hallway, and that’s it.
But he’s a Royal Guard, interjects one side of himself. It’s his job to protect the innocent. To investigate acts of violence. To bring justice and keep the peace. Why only a peek?
Because he’s never experienced anything like this before, another part of him argues. No eerie Castles replacing your Princess’ own. No strange creatures with bulging red eyes or fangs. No smears of blood on the wall trailing down to the floor and around the corner. Only a peek is necessary.
He shivers. Then, with a quick motion of his head, Tiny looks down the hallway
bulging red eyes
expecting to see a body
fangs
or pieces of one. Instead, he sees spider webs that hang like bedsheets, blocking his view of where the victim had been dragged off to. He reaches a hoof out to the screen of web and touches it. It’s soft, sticky, and sturdy enough to be a wall. He gives it a punch, sending shivers across its ghost-white network.
He’d heard stories about giant spiders that live in mountains. If one—or, more worryingly, a group—had moved into Canterlot and taken residence in a hospital that has since been shut down, then that means it’s time to leave.
Tiny glances down the rest of the hall. Milky daylight drips through the dirty windows, the hall dressed in alternating shafts of yellowed light and olive shadows. Wheelchairs and other hospital accents litter this place, knocked over and abandoned.
He walks quietly, alertly, his eyes darting everywhere, the oppressive atmosphere nearly caving in on him. Tiny only realizes he has no idea of where to go or any indication of what he’s doing when he approaches a door on his right that’s been left ajar.
A second quietly fades. Then another. And another. Finally, Tiny reaches for the door and gives it a slight push, revealing more of the
CREATURE SITTING RIGHT THERE ITS RED EYES BULGING ITS WHITE FANGS BARED JUST SITTING THERE WAITING FOR YOU
but no such creature exists. There is only a bed without an occupant, a single window staring into the room. A small doll sits on the bed, its empty glass eyes facing him, its little lips curved into an eerie smile. The contrast its red dress makes against the monochrome colors is striking.
Tiny brings a hoof up to his right shoulder, where the bandage holds him together. The trauma that brought him here. The creature with the red eyes and the fangs. What was it?
He pulls himself away from the room, his silver eyes falling onto a set of double doors ahead. Taking a deep breath, he trots away from the room, the clip-clop of his heavy hooves echoing, becoming quieter.
Had he hesitated in leaving, he might have seen the doll’s eyes follow him as he left.
Tiny stops in front of the double doors, noticing the windows on them are emitting light, however small. Peering into one, Tiny wonders what could be creating that light. If there’s no water, no power, then…?
He attempts to push the doors open, but something on the other side is blocking it. He purses his lips, asking himself why it’s blocked—
His question is suddenly answered as a face jumps into view. It pales suddenly, the eyes widening.
Tiny thinks to scream, but the face merely stares for a second. “...Who are you?” asks the pony on the other side of the door.
Tiny collects himself, going soldier-rigid in his stance. “Private Baldwin,” he answers. His voice is too young-sounding and high-pitched for a guy his size, cracking from lack of hydration.
“Private?” asks the pony, his face becoming more relaxed. “You’re a Royal Guard?” Before Tiny can confirm it, he turns away from the window. “Guys!” he calls. “Hey, guys! I was right! The Royal Guards are here! We’re saved!”
Tiny clears his throat. “I-I’m sorry, there must be some misunderstanding.” The face turns back to meet him. “I only… just woke up.”
Another face looked in through the second window, this one analyzing him sharply. “Only just…? Wait.” He looks to the other face. “Wait a minute; Squeaky, I thought you said the patient in Room 8 got eaten.”
The first face—Squeaky, apparently—pales. “It, er… it appears I was mistaken.” Before the other face argues, he changes the subject. “A-Anyway, did you see any of those spider-creatures?”
“…No,” Tiny answers uneasily.
“That doesn’t mean they’ve left,” comes a third voice from inside the room—a mare, by the sounds of it. “That just means they’re hiding.”
“Are you guys,” Tiny asks before his boyish voice stumbles. He tries again. “H-have you seriously just been holed up in there since all this… started?”
The sharp eyes answer. “A day or so after the Castle appeared, these giant half-spider, half… something else—these things attacked the hospital. The power went out shortly afterward. We’ve tried escaping a few times now, but…”
“…But?”
“There used to be eight of us,” says Squeaky. “We would run from one room to the next, hide, and repeat until we got out, but that turned out to be… costly. So we’re camping out here until help arrives.”
“Yeah, great plan,” snarks the sharp eyes. “Let’s just camp out here in the ER with a failed surgery patient. Great plan.”
“How many others are in this hospital?” Tiny says suddenly, electing to change the subject before a fight breaks out.
“We only had a few doctors, nurses, surgeons, and patients here,” Squeaky replies. “The others all got moved to other hospitals in other towns thanks to the evac. There were those of you from the Guard who sustained some injuries from that expedition into the Castle. You and a few other guys.”
“I remember the Captain was hurt during that expedition,” Tiny says. “What happened to him?”
“Don’t you remember?” returns Sharp Eyes. “He attacked you.”
Tiny stops.
“You are the guy from Room 2C, right?” asks the sharp eyes.
“I-I don’t—I mean, I never actually saw the number…”
“You woke up only further on down this same hallway, right? I mean, if that’s true…”
Tiny looks down at his bandage. Where the Captain had bit him. The memory struggling in his mind suggests that the bite was savage. He dreads looking under the bandage to see what exactly the damage looks like, feeling an ache creep around just beneath the white square.
“But none of that answers my original question,” Tiny says, returning his attention to the doctors. “Why haven’t you guys tried to escape?”
“Have you seen what’s been going on out there?” asks Squeaky. “We were waiting for the Royal Guard—”
The sharp eyed face turns aside to look at Squeaky. “No, we weren’t! Your idea was stupid. Sitting around, waiting for help that won’t come? We’re waiting for a chance to escape, and it looks like now might be a good time.”
“But those monsters,” argues the third voice. “They’re just hiding. Don’t you get it? They remain quiet enough to lure us out—”
Sharp Eyes cocks his head towards Tiny. “If they were out there, do you think this guy would even be alive right now?”
The mare has nothing to say.
“We can’t just stay here, waiting forever!” argues Sharp Eyes.
“Didn’t you see what happened to Check Up and those two other nurses?!” Squeaky growls. “We need to wait for the Royal Guard!”
“Oh, would you—just—SHUT UP about the Royal Guards!” returns Sharp Eyes. Tiny hears sounds of struggle from inside the room as Squeaky is knocked aside from the windows.
“Knock it off!” yells the mare. “All I know is, we’ve been stuck in this room for the past two days with a dead body, with no food or water!” Her voice catches before she sobs, “I just wanna go home!”
Silence. Tiny shifts his weight from one side to the other awkwardly, apparently forgotten by the doctors in the blocked room.
“Prissy’s right,” says the mare after some silence. “We need to get out of here. Even if we get killed by those things, it’s better than starving to death in here.”
“Uh, guys?” asks Squeaky.
“Shut up, Squeaky!” yells Sharp Eyes (presumably Prissy). “I’m sick of your shit!”
“I said stop arguing!” says the mare.
“If you’d just stop being such a stupid baby—”
“Don’t call him names!”
“Guys?”
“You’re all a bunch of whiners! Why don’t you just go and—”
“Leave him alone!”
“Shut up! I said SHUT UP!”
“GUYS!” Squeaky finally shouts.
Silence.
“…Where’s the body that was on the table?”
Tiny thinks to calm them down, draw them out of the surgery room, only for his thoughts to be cut short by a moan from inside. It’s followed by a yelp of terror that causes Tiny to take a step back, his eyes pried open with fear. Sharp Eyes shouts directions to the others, but to no avail—the moan from before warps into a shriek as everypony screams.
The screams intermingle with sounds of struggle, the shriek shivering and warbling angrily. The blocked door shakes as if struck. Tiny takes a few more steps back, checking behind him in case this was drawing the attention of the spider-things the doctors mentioned. He only looks back when the sounds of struggle and the helpless screams end abruptly. The shriek slowly warps into gurgling.
Tiny stands there for what feels like eternity, at the very mouth of what he imagines Tartarus must be like. Suddenly, a new face appears in the window: something ruined, its lips puffy, a gash on its head leaking something silky red over its mouth. Its empty eyes don’t appear to be looking at anything, yet Tiny can feel it looking him.
It moans.
The door begins to shake.
Tiny gasps and turns and flees in the other direction. What happens next flies by Tiny, a series of photographs rapidly riffled one after the other.
The hallway with the smear of blood on the wall.
A hallway where spiderwebs are plenty.
Descending down a staircase.
A dark room.
Something crawls along the walls. Something big.
Another hallway. Tiny doesn’t remember how he got here.
More darkness.
The feeling of falling.
Staircase. Broken.
Bulging red eyes.
Fangs.
Sounds of the river near his childhood house in the woods. He thinks he hears his mother calling.
Then, sounds of hissing.
Hallway. Low visibility. Something with many legs.
Hissing.
Spiderwebs.
A crack on the floor.
His teenage bedroom. The window offers a beautiful view of downtown Manehatten outside.
Windows to his left. Something looks in at him.
Webbing.
Hissing.
A thing of many legs.
Bulging red eyes.
Fangs.
Darkness.
Darkness.
As wide as he opens his eyes, all Tiny sees is a dark, ghostly blue mesh. As quiet as he tries to remain, Tiny can only hear muffled sounds. As much as he struggles, Tiny remains tightly bound, suspended from the floor and stuck to the wall behind him. He breathes, and struggles, and gasps, and moans. After a few minutes of these inconsequential actions, Tiny returns to stillness.
All is quiet.
Suddenly, he hears something. It’s muffled, but it’s definitely a hiss—a shuddering, slow sound that denotes the presence of predators. The thudding of many legs against a cold, hard ground, carrying a heavy body. The hissing and thudding outside his skintight prison stop only a few feet away from him, turning into silence, then a low growl.
Tiny’s breathing clenches, catches, twists, and twirls. His lungs squeeze desperately as panic overtakes him. Divine Sisters, he pleads, oh, Divine Sisters, please don’t—don’t let me die; not like this! Oh, Sisters, Sweet Celestia, no, don’t abandon me, NO!!!
A sudden, thick sound from his right, coupled with a scream cut short. Then the predator—whatever it is—pounces. Despite the muffle provided by the webbing (and it’s definitely webbing, Tiny realizes; it could be nothing else at this point), the sucking and chewing and gnashing and rending is loud enough to shake his eardrums and messy enough to turn his stomach.
Panic overtakes Tiny; clasping its hooves around him mischievously, enclosing him in the dark respite of unconsciousness.
The darkness slides away as gracefully as a tide from the beach. Tiny takes a deep breath and attempts to raise his head from its uncomfortable position, but to no avail. The webbing is too constricting.
Strangely, he can still breathe. The blue around him has small stars—tiny pokes where the webbing is not, letting in air. He can feel the tiny whistling of cold air from these spots; there are precious few of them, as if only enough to keep the prey alive until… needed.
He remembers his early childhood back in the woods, and the spiders that would take residence in his father’s shed. How they’d catch flies and other insects in their web, kneading them into a tight cocoon as they thrashed helplessly. Tiny was always enraptured by the spider’s performance, how easily and expertly it caught and wrapped up its prey as nonchalantly as his mother would roll dough.
Tiny now understands what it’s like to be the fly in these situations. How helpless. How afraid. What he’d just heard…
Oh. Oh, dear Divine Sisters…
This is it.
Tiny whimpers. Sobs. Weeps.
He waits for the spider to come back.
How much time has passed? It must at least have been a few hours.
Biding his time the way a prisoner awaiting a hanging might, Tiny hums a small tune his mother used to sing while working in her kitchen. He can even smell the eggs and hay in the frying pan, and for a single, lonely second, longs for home and safety and sweet, lost childhood.
He stops when he hears a small sound outside his cocoon. It might be a gasp, but the webbing in his ears muffles it too well. He waits a few seconds. Then a clatter, chased by a harsh, quiet, “Shit!”
Hope peeks through the window of Tiny’s mind that moment. He finds his mouth open already. “I-Is somepony there?”
He hears a gasp, then for a few seconds, nothing. Tiny wiggles as much as his constricted body can muster, shaking his cocoon. “Over here!” he says at a volume he hopes is both loud enough for his potential rescuer to hear, but quiet enough to not draw attention from anything else.
He hears clopping of hooves drawing nearer. A vague shape appears before his bluish screen of darkness—definitely a pony. “You OK?” the voice says quietly. “Hang on, I’mma get’chu outta there.”
The voice is raspy. Feminine, but tomboyish. Accent is inner-city Canterlot. Somewhat familiar, as well.
Tiny follows her directions and remains still. Suddenly, a knife’s point pokes into the cocoon, slowly inserting, stopping just under his chin, glowing a cool blue.
“Hey!” Tiny gasps. “B-Be careful!”
“Fuck you,” his rescuer spits. “This is careful. Now hold still or you’ll end up losin’ something real important.” Slowly, the knife descends. When she feels she’s cut a long enough vertical line, she reaches a hoof over to part it into a hole.
Cold air rushes in, splashing his sweat-soaked pelt, as light reduces his vision to wet shapes. He feels a warm hooftip poke him on the chin. No longer within such a crushing constraint, Tiny’s lungs grab greedy gulps of air as he leans forward and out of the cocoon. The first pearl-white hoof is joined by a second, searching his body for something they can grab onto, settling onto one shoulder. He yelps as the hooves close around the patch covering his wound.
“C’mon,” she commands. “Push yourself out! Push!”
Every muscle in Tiny’s body screams as he forces himself out of his cocoon. He flops onto the stone cold floor, gasping for air as he works his way onto his back, staring upwards, his eyes struggling to focus.
There’s no visible ceiling, concealed completely by a labyrinth of pipes and air ducts, all seemingly held together with thick spider-webs. Tiny turns his head and sees that they must be in the basement level of the hospital—and holds a gasp as he notices cocoons on the walls, all broken and empty, soaked and slicked with various shades of red and brown.
“Not a pretty sight, is it?”
A head pops into his view. It’s as pearl-white as the hooves that helped him out of the cocoon, with magenta eyes that remind him of his drill sergeant’s: hard and demanding. Her unicorn horn is lost in an electric-blue mane that hangs from her head like a palm shade, a set of purple-tinted glasses resting just underneath it. “Y’arright?” she asks after a pause.
Tiny gulps again. “Yeah,” he says wearily. “…Yeah, I’m okay. Just a bit surprised, that’s all.”
The mare sits down next to him gently, her full-looking saddlebags settling on either side of her noisily. Tiny only realizes now how small she is compared to him: it’s almost like a kitten sitting down next to a St. Bernard. She lets him catch his breath.
“Name’s Vinyl Scratch,” she says suddenly.
“…Private Baldwin of the Canterlot Royal Guard,” Tiny responds. “Friends call me Tiny.”
Vinyl’s little lips turn up in an amused smirk. She stands up and offers him a hoof—which he takes. With some effort, he’s able to hoist himself back up on all four hooves. “We shouldn’t stay here,” he says quickly.
“No shit?” Vinyl asks dryly. “I was kinda hopin’ to rent this place out.”
Tiny looks at her quietly. Then quirks an eyebrow.
“Oh, fuck you,” she says bitterly as she walks by him. “Get onto me for makin’ a joke…”
She takes a few steps away from him before stopping and turning her head around. “Ya gonna follow me outta here, or did you jus’ want a nice view of my ass?” she asks with a saucy wiggle of her flanks.
Tiny shakes his head as he follows the foul-mouthed mare into a small tunnel. What has he gotten himself into this time?
The silver padlock on the basement level’s door sparkles as Vinyl’s glowing horn casts light on it. Legions of chains sparkle as well, hugging the door tightly. “Oh, fer—! What kinda stupid motherfucker locks a fuckin’ door when—” is about as far as Vinyl gets before her voice becomes a frustrated gurgle of curse words.
“I got this,” Tiny says. “Stand back, please.”
Vinyl takes a few steps back as Tiny approaches the door and turns around. He takes a deep breath just before he brings up his hind legs. They rocket behind him, breaking the doors open. The padlock and its army of chains clatter helplessly to the ground. The sound is loud enough to make Vinyl Scratch’s ears ring.
“Hey—! The fuck, guy?!” she whispers harshly.
“You wanted an open door,” Tiny says. “You got an open door.”
“I coulda just unlocked it myself!” Vinyl Scratch argues. “It’s how I got around here inna first place! Bet every fuckin’ spider-bitch in this hospital heard us!”
“All the more reason for us to get outta here now,” Tiny says evenly.
Vinyl Scratch’s answering sigh dissolves into a groan as she pokes her head out the door, glancing left, then right, then up. She holds her head up for a time longer than Tiny is comfortable with.
“Something wrong?” he asks.
“Not yet,” she says over her shoulder, looking this way and that around the ceiling. Her lit horn blinks out, giving back the shadows it stole from the darkness around them. Tiny gasps.
“Sorry there, big guy,” she says quietly. “Don’t wanna attract more ’ttention than we already have.”
Tiny debates whether or not Vinyl Scratch is punishing him for opening the door. It ends prematurely as he hears the quiet clip-clop of Vinyl’s tiny hooves traveling down the hall. He follows. “You sure this is the way out?” he asks.
“Maybe,” she sniffs.
Tiny grunts. “This hallway’s too dark. There isn’t any more light coming in from the windows.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It’s not gonna do us any good to just stumble around lost when it’s dark, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“So don’t you think you should be using your light?”
“Whatever.”
Tiny growls. “Hey, what’s your problem?” he asks.
He hears nothing. Suddenly, Vinyl cusses softly as she stumbles over something, falling over completely. Tiny fights the urge to laugh, simply reaching forward where he heard her fall, intent on helping her back up, his large hoof finding Vinyl in the dark.
Tiny hears Vinyl gasp again. Warmth builds in Tiny’s face as he realizes exactly where his hoof had landed. There’s a cool blue glow that illuminates the hallway suddenly—and the glow slaps Tiny hard across the face before fading out.
“I know I got a reputation in th’ clubs, OK?!” Vinyl Scratch growls. “But we don’t got time for that shit right now!”
“Sorry,” Tiny apologizes, blushing. “I didn’t see where you fell. Maybe if we had a light or something…”
Vinyl stands up in the dark, her small form chest-to-chest with Tiny. He feels a hot snort rake his stubbled chin as she growls through clenched teeth, “Maybe if some ponies weren’t so fuckin’ noisy—”
Tiny inhales sharply, the inflation of his chest pushing Vinyl Scratch back. “With all due respect, Vinyl Scratch, I was unaware of what you wanted. You saw a lock and started complaining about it; I just assumed you saw it as a bother, so I went and broke it.”
Silence.
“…I’m sorry,” Tiny says.
Another pause. “Me too,” Vinyl Scratch says. She sighs. “I-I’m sorry, it’s…”
Cautiously, Tiny puts a hoof forward, finding what he hopes is Vinyl Scratch’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, it’s just this situation wearing on us. We gotta keep cool heads if we wanna get outta this alive.”
He hears her sigh, and maybe it’s his eyes adjusting to the dark, but he sees a shape just below his chin—her head—bob with a nod. “OK,” she breathes. “We need a light if we’re gonna get outta here. So…”
Vinyl’s horn glows, casting its cool blue light all over the room.
All along the walls and ceiling crawl black spiders giant enough to dwarf Tiny, their long, hairy legs heaving heavy bodies. Where their heads should be instead begin new bodies: slim and pale and hairless and apelike upper torsos with long arms with small tangles of claws at the ends, their heads crowned with long scraggly hair—
—and fangs in their mouths—
—and bulging
red
eyes.
The spiders hiss.
Tiny finds himself kidnapped by the spider-things’ stares, their clenching, jagged teeth curving into menacing smiles as they ominously skitter down the walls, their impossibly long and twisting legs thumping with every step. His breathing catches. Cold sweat dots his whole body as he freezes on the spot in pure, abject terror.
Something deep inside him broils amidst his panic. A sense of duty? Anger? Self-preservation?
Whatever it is manifests without any time for introductions. Tiny grabs Vinyl and bounds across the hallway, barreling towards the door at the other end, moving like a rocket as the spider-things descend.
Something thick and hard hits his hind leg, sticking to him and pulling taut, stopping Tiny cold and causing him to fall forward. Vinyl launches off his back at the sudden stop, spiraling forward and crashing onto the linoleum floor. The knife she’d used to free Tiny before falls out of her saddlebag and clatters onto the linoleum.
Vinyl Scratch mumbles something as her form crumples and the light from her horn goes out.
Tiny cusses under his breath as he hears the spider-things’ hissing grow louder—more numerous—closer. He crawls forward, hoping beyond hope that he might escape, his frivolous action coupled with nervous grunts and gasps. The darkness around his eyes grows wet with terrified tears.
His hoof brushes against something suddenly.
The knife.
Acting faster than he can think, Tiny picks the knife up in his mouth and with some dexterity he folds himself over, bringing his legs up to his mouth. He slides across the floor, the spider-thing on the other end of the web drawing him nearer to the awful hissing—what Tiny assumes oblivion must sound like.
With great effort, Tiny cuts the webline, disconnecting himself from impending doom—for now. Without hesitation, he gets back up, knife between his teeth and vigor in his limbs, and darts forth, ducking his head down in search of Vinyl Scratch. The moment his snout touches her, he thrusts his head beneath her belly, picking her up and settling her unconscious body onto his back. This all happens in the timespan of a blink—Tiny is barreling forth through the dark as his eyes adjust to shadows, leaping over fallen beds and wheelchairs and other debris, shooting straight for the exit as the hissing behind him resumes their chase. Thick webbing smacks against the floor behind him, the walls next to him, each shot expected and countered with a well-timed dodge.
Through this hall, and the next, and the next, the chase continues.
Suddenly, Vinyl’s weight is torn from Tiny’s back. A gasp caught in his throat, Tiny turns his head to witness Vinyl fall onto the floor, dragged into a hissing darkness. There is moonlight, however faint, stealing inside from a nearby window, painting Vinyl’s unconscious body in ghostly colors as she is pulled across the floor.
Tiny’s mind makes a calculation. There’s a pair of bulging red eyes directly in front of the webline pulling Vinyl Scratch.
With a flick of his neck, Tiny launches the knife. The moonlight glints off its form as it sails, becoming a single line of silver before he hears the thick, muted sound of steel meeting flesh amidst the hissing, followed by a choked yelp that warbles and falls silent.
Vinyl’s ghostly form ceases to drag across the floor. That’s all the indication Tiny needs.
Tiny doesn’t recall going back to retrieve Vinyl Scratch, but her weight is definitely on his back again, his hooves are definitely pounding the floor beneath him as he propels forward, and the hissing is still definitely behind him.
He feels a pair of hooves wrap around his neck, Vinyl Scratch apparently waking from her spell. She grumbles something Tiny cannot hear over all the hisses and shrieks.
His hooves tired, his heart pounding against his chest, the flesh beneath his bandage screaming at him, Tiny nearly lets out a yelp once he finds himself in a dead-end hallway with a single large window at the end, casting a carpet of moonlight onto the floor. The hissing gathers once more. He turns—
—and the bulging red eyes gather in the darkness. The moonlight coming in from the window behind him stops just before the spider-things, their blackened forms becoming more solid and real as they draw near. Their hissing is released in bursts, coming out sounding like sinister chuckles as their pale upper bodies clench and unclench their claws in excitement. The thudding of many legs against floors and walls as those many legs become visible. They gather.
Tiny clenches his teeth, steeling himself for what might come next. Suddenly, Vinyl Scratch’s weight disappears from his back again. “Cover your ears,” she warns.
“What?”
“I said cover your ears, ya fuckin’ idiot!” Vinyl bellows as her horn glows. She brings down her purple shades, the blue of her light shimmering across their lenses.
Tiny clamps his hooves over his ears, his large body settling onto the floor.
Even through his hooves, he can hear and feel it. Vinyl Scratch emits a sound so deep, it shakes the hallway—perhaps even the whole building. The sound turns into a series of beats that pound the hall, perhaps even the entire hospital, with monstrous force, crumbling the walls and crushing the floor. The spider-things raise their strange claws to their pointed ears and open their wide mouths in screams that get covetously devoured by the destructive bass of Vinyl’s magic.
Tiny can feel his teeth rattling in his mouth, his brain jiggling in his skull. The sound is nearly unbearable to him, but the howling spider-things steadily back away from the little pearl-white pony before them, their ears covered by pale claws, trails of blood running down between each finger.
The window shatters with a howl, each piece glittering with moonlight reflected as they are swept outside. The ceiling above begins to loosen. Small bits of debris and dust flutter downward.
Vinyl shouts something unheard (likely a foul taunt, if Tiny’s recent experiences can attest) as she briefly increases the volume of the bass, cranking it until the ceiling begins to warp. With a crash hidden by the bass, the ceiling caves in at the entrance to the hallway, burying any spider-thing unlucky enough to be caught beneath it.
After the entrance to the hall is sufficiently filled with debris, Vinyl’s horn ceases to glow, casting all back to both silence and darkness.
There’s pause, a lengthy allowance of quiet that fills the hall. Tiny lowers his hooves, an invasive ringing taking all that he hears. He looks, bewildered, at Vinyl Scratch, her head hung low, hoarsely heaving breath after tired breath as sweat rolls down her petite form. As sound slowly ebbs back into his ears, Tiny can make out her heavy panting. She swallows.
Then Vinyl Scratch turns her head, giving him an aside glance. A smile pulls at her lips. “Enjoying the view back there, soldier?” she asks. Before Tiny can ask what she means, Vinyl Scratch gives him another suggestive shake of her rump. She laughs at his stunned reaction, then sits down to rest.
Her horn glows as a bottle of water is lifted out of her saddle bags. The cap is unscrewed, then the bottle is brought to Vinyl’s lips where she gulps down some much-needed hydration.
“Where’d you—what was that?” Tiny asks, only realizing when he opens his mouth that he’s still very much out of breath, and that the patch on his shoulder aches, and that he still has had no water. Vinyl Scratch takes the bottle away from her own mouth and offers it to Tiny. He pulls the bottle to his own mouth and drinks.
“I only use that for the clubs I perform at,” Vinyl says. “I usually use it to underline the rest’a my music. Never had it that loud before.” She breathes wistfully. “I had it any louder’n I could’a burst their heads like grapes.”
Tiny chokes on the water a bit before swallowing. “You mean that spell’s lethal?!” he barks, his eyes wide as saucer plates. “Why would you use it at clubs? Around other ponies?”
Vinyl Scratch shrugs. “It’s every bit as lethal as devil sugar,” she says nonchalantly. “It’s pleasant when you use only a little. It’s only deadly when ya use too much.”
Tiny puts the water bottle down. Quiet. “Knew there was a reason I don’t really care for dubstep,” he says quietly.
“That’s cool,” Vinyl Scratch says with a smile, “neither do I.”
A pause.
“…Thanks,” Vinyl Scratch says, scratching the back of her head. “For the, uh… for the rescue.”
Tiny waves a hoof. “Nah, you were the real star of the show here. That bass is what drove them off.”
“If you didn’t save me, there’da been no bass. We’d both be all twenty-one flavors of dead right about now.”
The two share a smile. Tiny offers the water bottle back, only a little liquid in it now. It glows blue, then is brought back to Vinyl Scratch’s saddlebags as she clears her throat. “So what now?” Tiny asks.
“Dunno ’bout you, Tiny, but I’m lookin’ for a friend’a mine. Long dark mane ’n tail, purple eyes, the kinda mare you’d prob’ly wanna date. Don’t suppose you seen her?”
Tiny shrugs. “Unless she’s a doctor here at the hospital, no. And if she is a doctor here, then I’m afraid she’s already dead.”
“Thank Celestia she got her Master’s in music then,” Vinyl Scratch snarks as she settles her saddlebags back onto her flanks. “I’mma keep lookin’ for her.”
Tiny stands up. “I’m going with.”
Vinyl chuckles. “Yeah, I know. I’m irresistible.”
A wry smirk tugs at Tiny’s lips before he turns around to face the window. Just outside, broken glass litters a foggy parking lot. “We’re on the first floor,” he remarks. “Cool.”
He takes a step back, making a dramatic motion with his foreleg. “After you,” he says playfully.
The two survivors then steal into the foggy night, no directions, no clues. All they have is a single fighting chance.