Antipodes

by PK

Antipodes- Chapter 15

Antipodes

Chapter 15

By PK

Tantalus surveyed the burning wreckage of the city. He had finally achieved his goal, his revenge on Rubidium, but it still didn’t help the rage. He could still feel it boiling away inside him, barely controlled by the sheer effort of his will.

Then, he doubled over in pain. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before, as though part of him was being ripped out from the inside. He knew what it was. The fragment of Celestia had been absorbed, and it had left the city. The rage was uncontrollable. He opened his mouth wide, and green light seemed to grow from deep inside his throat. For just an instant, Tantalus tried to suppress it, but he knew it was hopeless. The light erupted out in a funnel of magical energy of nearly inconceivable power. It expanded in all directions, burrowing deep into the earth, up into the sky, and out in every direction, obliterating all in its path.

~~~

Jigsaw and Tiptoe tumbled through the chaotic funnel of light and sound. The crystalline walls of the tunnel flew past the two ponies, coming close to collision but never actually touching them. After several minutes of being tossed through twists, turns, and bends in the tunnel, they were spit out of another platform in an unfamiliar room.

The rotting wooden walls had begun to buckle under the strain of an unknown load above them, making the room’s age clear. In one corner of the room, a steady trickle of water flowed from a large crack in the ceiling. The room was poorly lit by several small, blue lights hanging haphazardly on the walls. They sparked feebly in an attempt at greater brilliance as Tiptoe and Jigsaw picked themselves off the ground and began to take their bearings.

The pad was located in the back left corner of the room. It had a low ceiling- perhaps only a yard above Jigsaw’s head. What was once a table lay in the center of the room. One leg had broken in two, causing one corner of the table to rest on the wooden floor. Scraps of green fabric could still be seen clinging to the surface of the table, though it was almost entirely bare. The teleportation platform itself was also in abysmal condition. Large cracks and seams ran through it, occasionally sending out sparks of blue light. Jigsaw was surprised they had even managed to come through it. In general, the room appeared to be in far worse condition than even most ruins they had seen.

“Are you alright?” Jigsaw asked. He could only just see the outline of Tiptoe on his left through the dim light.

“I’m okay,” she replied, though her voice was shaky. “Where are we? What is this place?”

“I don’t know,” Jigsaw replied. They looked around the room, their eyes beginning to adjust to the gloom. At the opposite end of the room was a door with what were once small glass windows, though the glass had long since fallen away.

“Jigsaw, can you light your horn?” Tiptoe inquired. Jigsaw obliged, his horn igniting with a brilliant blue light, brightly illuminating the rather small room. The lights on the wall flicked again in response to the magical energy, though now they were barely visible.

“I think we should get out of here,” Jigsaw said nervously, looking towards the cracks in the ancient wood above them. Tiptoe nodded and they began to canter towards the door. The floor creaked with every step they took, bending and buckling under their weight. Tiptoe began to flutter her wings slightly in an attempt to keep her weight off the floorboards. Fortunately, they reached the other side of the room without incident. When they reached the door, Jigsaw pushed against it to open it for a moment, then stepped back.

“Hold on,” he said, “there’s some kind of protection around this door.”

“What kind?” asked Tiptoe.

“I’m not sure. It was very faint, but it’s there. Hold on.”

The light from his horn faded to a small blue pinprick as he touched it to the seam where the door met the wall. He began to run it along the edges of the door, repeating this several times. When he was done, he stepped away and relit his horn.

“I can’t tell what it’s supposed to be. It’s very, very weak. I think it was placed here before the fall, and hasn’t held up well since then. Like most of this place,” he added as an afterthought.

“So, it’s safe to go through?” Tiptoe asked.

“It’s safe,” Jigsaw confirmed, “but it might not be pleasant. I have a feeling it was meant to keep people out.”

“... or in,” Tiptoe added. Jigsaw pushed the door open.

Beyond the door was another very dismal-looking hallway. It was pitch black, and the wood had buckled and bent so much from water damage that it seemed to meander around corners. Sections of the wall had fallen in altogether, and a pile of debris lined up along the wall where wood paneling had once been.

Jigsaw began to walk through the doorway. Immediately, he felt a strange buzzing in his horn and a pressure trying to force him back the way he came. He struggled forward as the feeling became more intense. It was as if somepony had stretched a sheet of clear plastic over the doorway, and he had to force his way through. The air around him began to grow hot. Then, just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to get through, the pressure released and he tumbled forward, hitting the wall at the opposite end of the hallway.

He stood up and shook himself. “You can come through, but it can be pretty uncomfortable,” he said.

Tiptoe nodded and pushed against the invisible barrier in the doorway. From this angle Jigsaw could just barely make out a golden yellow sheen that seemed to be pressing against the pegasus. But after a few moments of struggling, it broke and Tiptoe began to fall forward. Jigsaw’s horn flared, and a blue nimbus appeared around Tiptoe, providing enough support for her to recover from her fall and stand upright.

“Thanks,” she said.

Jigsaw nodded, and they began their slow trot into the gloom of the hallway. After a few minutes of winding darkness, they came across a heavy metal door that seemed quite at odds with the purely wooden aesthetic they had seen so far. They pushed it open with an ear-splitting screech and entered into the room beyond.

The room was in a similar state of disrepair, though it seemed to be made of more modern materials. Crumbling plaster sloughed off the walls, revealing an iron framework beneath, and the same faint, blue lights from the portal room lined the walls. It was small and square, with a still relatively intact desk in the center. Jigsaw took a step towards it when Tiptoe spoke behind him. “Look at the door.”

Jigsaw turned to look at it, and his confusion grew. On the metallic surface of the door was a very large scorch mark- as if something had been burned off the door. Inspecting it closer, Jigsaw found that the edges were jagged and rough and that the mark was actually a crater. It was as if a section of the door had been melted off.

“What happened here?” Jigsaw asked, more to himself than Tiptoe. There was nothing at the base of the door, as one would expect if the metal had been melted off. It was simply gone.

Jigsaw looked around the room again. On the two walls on either side were smaller, wooden doors, also with scorched gouges cut out of them. One was missing its entire bottom half.

“I don’t like it here,” Tiptoe said nervously, looking up at the heavily cracked ceiling. “Wherever we are, I don’t think it’s safe.”

“I think you’re right,” Jigsaw said, “but how are we supposed to find our way out of here?”

“I have no idea. Maybe there’s something in the desk that can help,” Tiptoe replied.

Together, they made their way over to the desk. Jigsaw’s horn flared with light and the desk drawers pulled themselves out and floated above the desk in a haze of blue light. In unison, they all upturned themselves and dumped their contents on to the desk. Jigsaw was disappointed in the results. Almost everything in the desk had crumbled to dust, with only a few scraps of paper remaining. But, just when he was about to drop the drawers in dismay, a lone, intact sheet of paper floated down to land upon the pile of scraps. Jigsaw carelessly tossed the floating drawers aside and picked up the sheet.

“What does it say?” Tiptoe asked, taking off to hover above Jigsaw so as to get a better look at the document.

Emblazoned in the upper left corner was the sun-and-moon insignia, next to strings of Old World writing. “I think it says... ‘instructions’, or possibly ‘protocols’. It’s a set of directions for what to do in an emergency. I think... I think this is some kind of emergency bunker or war room.”

“War room?” Tiptoe said. “You mean, from the Grand Cataclysm?”

“I don’t know, it doesn’t say anything about what emergency... but I think I can use it to find our way back. It says ‘corridor three has surface access and should be blocked during lockdown’.”

“Which one is corridor three?” Tiptoe asked.

The room shook violently. Jigsaw and Tiptoe lost their balance and slammed into the ground. The iron bars began to buckle and snap, groaning like an ancient beast waking from a long slumber. Dirt began to pour in from the cracks in the walls, and the ceiling slipped a few inches lower. The blue lights flickered out.

“Run!” shouted Jigsaw, and began galloping towards the door to his right. Tiptoe quickly followed, and they blasted through the aging door and flew down the hallway. With a jerk that nearly knocked Jigsaw off his feet, the room they had just left collapsed. A wave of dust blew past him, obscuring his vision. Tiptoe took off and flew ahead of him, flapping her wings hard. The dust began to clear, and Jigsaw saw something that almost made him laugh with relief- a stone stairwell that ascended into darkness above them. As they began running up the stairs, however, Jigsaw noticed something was off- his horn was positively humming with magical energy. Then, a few steps farther up, a sharp pain shot from his horn and through his left side, causing him to collapse in pain.

Tiptoe turned quickly in midair and alighted next to Jigsaw, who was now lying on the steps, convulsing, as though he was having some kind of fit. Then, his horn erupted with light, but not the familiar blue light. Golden light streamed out of the tip of his horn, thick and warm, floating in the air above them. An ear-splitting bang sounded from somewhere above them, and a rock about twice the size of Tiptoe came tumbling down from farther up the staircase. Tiptoe shoved Jigsaw to the side of the wall and pressed herself against it. The boulder tumbled past them, missing by only a few feet. Then, with another ground-shaking rumble, a sound like an explosion came from overhead. Tiptoe squinted up the staircase in the light cast by the strange swirling magical tendrils, which now seemed to be swirling even faster. What she saw caused her to scream in terror.

Rapidly tumbling down the stairs was a jumbled mash of metal beams, stone, and wood. Tiptoe threw herself over Jigsaw’s body in an attempt to shield him from the worst of the onslaught and braced herself.

Then, just before impact, the swirling tendril of light suddenly coalesced. Tiptoe looked up in awe to see what looked like a gigantic sun blazing over her head before it’s brilliance forced her to look away. The rumbling of the rocks had ceased, and they appeared to be frozen mere inches away from her face. Then, with another blinding flash, the sun sent out a burst of heat. It was unlike anything Tiptoe had ever experienced. She let out another cry of pain and tightened her hold against Jigsaw. Then, just when she thought she might sear, the heat and light faded to darkness. She opened her eyes. They were huddled over in the center of a ring of scorched earth about thirty feet in diameter. Tiptoe didn’t have time to consider the strangeness of the scenario, however. With one final shudder, she released Jigsaw and drifted into unconsciousness.

Comments

[Magical Trevor]

FIRST! 8D
/shot
images.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw3969-roflbot.jpg

[Enmar]

Tantalus reminded me of
Imma firin mah LAZAR!

[erockertorres]

Holy crap this is one intense story!!

[JustAnotherTimeLord]

They fall unconscious a lot.

[Cerulean Voice]

4373928
They seem to yell "Run!" and flee a lot, too.

[Jet Fly]

It's kinda sad that all those ponies died in that town.