• Published 10th Aug 2011
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My Little Metro - redsquirrel456



After Doomsday forces ponies underground, a lone colt braves the Stalliongrad metro system to save his people from an unknown threat.

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Chapter 18

My Little Metro: Chapter 18

“There's only one thing that can save a pony from madness, and that's uncertainty.”

I remembered a time when I was younger, seventeen or so, that I was assigned to help with the watch at the western entrance to our station. It was a quiet post with nothing but riff-raff and the occasional wandering lurker or nosalis to worry about—nothing like the southern tunnel where we got all the traffic from Draft and the Ring. I trudged down the tunnel towards the five hundred meter mark, eyes on the small fire that sputtered and coughed in the middle of the blackness. Usually the guard here just sat around playing cards and drinking, but I’d been stuck with the job of courier, carrying messages back and forth between guard posts to make sure the outer checkpoints hadn’t been overrun.

I drew closer to the fire and saw the shadows hunched over it. They rose up along the curve of the tunnel wall, twice as tall as the ponies that cast them, wavering and undulating like macabre dancers over the guttering flame. I heard voices, muddled and quiet, as the guards discussed what recipes they should use in the next mushroom stew or which filly would finally start paying attention to them.

“Ho, five hundred meter mark!” I called when I was several yards distant. The sound echoed up and down the tunnel, and I realized how hoarse and quiet I was. It wasn’t that I was scared of attracting mutants; they always came towards the fires, towards the scent of living ponies. I just didn’t like making a lot of noise. My voice was familiar to the guards by now, and only a few faces turned up to look at me; gaunt, bored, and relieved they had new company. There were seven ponies all told, and they shuffled out of the way as I entered their circle.

“Lockbox, welcome,” said a big bearded earth pony with a cigar in his mouth, named Lightskipper. He’d won the cigar as a prize from some other poor sucker from Draft who was foolish enough to bet with it after buying it from Hoofsa. He didn’t light it, just chewed on it so he could savor the triumph. “Sit down and have a drink. We have a little ‘shroom vodka left.”

“Any news from the station? Is our shift done?” asked a skinny unicorn named Stopgap. He sat closest to the fire, shivering under his thick jacket.

“Still a few hours to go,” I lamented, sitting down next to another earth pony I didn’t recognize. He scooted over to make room at the fire and then spoke up, continuing some line of thought my arrival had interrupted.

“So, in any case, I don’t think anypony knows what really happened at Eriskay station.”

“You’re fooling yourself, Undercarriage,” said Lightskipper. “We sit on the ass-end of nowhere up here. All the news we get is nothing but stories and tales of drunkards.”

“Why?” I asked. “What did happen?”

Undercarriage brightened up and words started tumbling from his mouth; apparently he was excited to retell the story since Lightskipper had brushed him off. “Well, Eriskay Station, that’s further to the west, right? About as far north as us. And you know it’s a maze from here to there, with a whole tunnel line in the way before you get onto Eriskay’s tracks. But apparently they’ve been getting problems with some new creature that attacked them from the surface. At least that’s what Kerrybog Station said.”

“And why is Kerrybog saying all of this?” I wondered.

“Because Eriskay’s been totally wiped out!” Undercarriage said, leaning forward, his eyes wide like some superstitious madpony.

“There’s over three hundred ponies living in Eriskay,” Stopgap said with another shiver either from cold or fear, “there’s no way the entire station could be massacred like that. I think somepony from Kerrybog is lying.”

“Oh sure, because nopony from Eriskay can be bothered to give us some information,” countered Undercarriage.

“So what happened?” I asked, growing impatient.

Lightskipper rolled his eyes. Undercarriage smiled. “Well, Eriskay is near the end of their line, right? And one day, they started noticing some strange things going on. Rats and lurkers were leaving the area. Some of them just charged right into the station, blind with fear or courage. And they’re all coming from the north, like something was driving them. So Eriskay decides there’s going to be something coming down the tunnel, and strengthens the guard to see to the problem. But then, just a day or two later, the guards at the furthest checkpoint just vanish. I don’t mean they abandoned camp, I mean everything is just gone! No sandbags, no machine guns, no evidence that there was ever anything but a big, dark tunnel. So they figure maybe all the ponies just deserted? And they set up another checkpoint, closer to the station this time. Two days later, the same damn thing: no guns, no ponies, no fires. They just vanish into thin air when nopony’s looking. So this Stalker is hired to go and investigate, because those crazy devils will do anything for a few bullets. And he comes back, but he doesn’t say anything. The poor bastard’s been traumatized, and he just wanders on back through Eriskay, pale as a ghost and just as silent. They hold him for questioning but he won’t answer, so they let him go.”

“Oh, here it comes,” groaned Lightskipper. Undercarriage grinned and scooted a bit closer to me, like a colt sharing a childhood secret.

“They sent a message to Kerrybog, saying that they were fortifying the entrance to their station and to expect a distress call. And a few ponies abandon Eriskay, the lucky bastards. But then nopony else ever comes. No alarm, no messages. Kerrybog sent fifty armed ponies to investigate, and the entire station is just like the guard posts! No tents, no houses, no toys, no ponies. All just a dark, empty station now. It’s like they all just got up and left, and were kind enough to clean up after themselves! So now Kerrybog is freaking out. They can’t blow the tunnel, since it would cause structural integrity problems we’d all have to deal with. So they seal the hydraulic doors they got to the northern entrance of their station, pack the whole doorway with sandbags, machine guns, ponies guarding it twenty-four seven... and they wait. For what? Nopony knows. All they know is they’re too scared shitless to even think of opening that door again.”

“Don’t listen to him, Lockbox,” muttered a mare to my right. “Undercarriage likes to scare himself with ghost stories. What’s really happening is there’s some trouble at Eriskay and everypony’s just freaking out about it like usual.”

“Don’t be so sure, Jonagold,” Undercarriage replied with a cagey grin. “Maybe it’s the Sandpony come to get everypony!”

“Stupid, he only comes in your sleep,” Stopgap muttered. “And you’re not supposed to say his name! That’s when he gets you. I mean, I’m not superstitious, but what if it is true? There’s some pretty weird shit going on these days.”

“All of you shut up,” Lightskipper said, his booming voice carrying through the tunnel. “We’re here to be on watch, not to try and make each other piss our barrels.”

The conversation died down after that. We drank the last of our vodka to steel our nerves, listening to the distant groans and creaks of the Metro, the comforting whispers of noise that reached us from guardposts further back. For a while, there was just that, enjoying each other’s company, murmuring about this, that, or some other thing. I liked being on guard duty this far out. Out here nopony treated me differently because of my status as the son of Cinder Block. I didn’t feel any more important than these ponies because of my birth.

Then came a noise none of us knew: a scuttling sound, and then the noise of our alarm glyphs being tripped. A loud bang and a flash at the six-hundredth meter! Stopgap stood up straight, his horn glowing, trying to read the magical message contained in the explosion. We followed suit, slapping on our war reins, placing the rough triggers in our mouths and pointing flashlights and machine guns down the tunnel. My heart raced as I imagined all kinds of horrors rushing at us from the darkness.

“What the hell was it, Stopgap?” Lightskipper whispered.

“Big enough to trip three glyphs at once,” Stopgap hissed back. “Shit, either one big thing or a bunch of little things, I can’t be sure. They aren’t coming closer though, or they’d have tripped the other alarms.”

“Lockbox,” Lightskipper grunted over his gun’s trigger, “get back to the two-hundred-fifty meter and tell them the alarms went off. We need reinforcements if it’s the fucking nosalises again.”

I didn’t need a second bidding. I turned tail and bolted down the tunnel, probably causing as much noise as the monsters we feared. When I saw the lights of the next checkpoint, this one bristling with a spotlight and a machine gun already pointed my way, I shouted.

“Ho! Two-fiftieth! The alarm glyphs were tripped! We need help!” I was ashamed of how scared I sounded, but I’d barely seen two real engagements. I still hadn’t gotten over the fear of combat.

But something happened the way I didn’t remember it. When I reached the two-hundred-fifty meter checkpoint, I saw the spotlight didn’t turn to match my movements. I didn’t see any shadows of hunched guardponies ready to kill. I didn’t see anypony at all. I dashed up onto the trolley holding the spotlight and shouted for somepony to answer. There was nothing. Not a single guard waited at their post, nor was there even evidence of their coming and going. Just an empty trolley and a machine gun, waiting for nopony. An irrational fear tore through me; the terror of Eriskay had come to Exiperia!

I shook my head, trying to get over the strange feelings. This wasn’t happening the way I remembered. It was all wrong. This never happened to my station... my shift had ended without any incident that day...

I heard a keening wail float down the tunnel from the direction of the five-hundred meter mark, sorrowful and loud like a funeral dirge. I jumped on the machine gun, peering into the bright circle provided by the spotlight.

“Hello?!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, peering through the iron sights. “Who’s there? Password! Show yourself! I—I have a gun! I’ll shoot you!”

The wailing just grew louder, and I discerned it was not just one noise, but a thousand of them. A whole mob of throats singing that thin, disconcerting shriek, the noise of the damned howling as they sunk into Tartarus. My grip on the machine gun trigger tightened. The wailing just got louder, a million voices tearing into my skull from all angles, louder and louder until I heard nothing but the wailing; it was my world, my purpose. Then I saw flashes of light in front of my eyes and realized the gun was shooting and I couldn’t take my hoof off the trigger, and then monsters flew at me from the shadows. I didn’t even see what they were, didn’t care, my imagination ran away from me and all I saw was a boiling mass of shrieking, gibbering madness and death. I fired into the mob and my throat felt raw, and that was when I realized I was screaming right along with the other voices of the damned until we were one horrible chorus.

Monsters fell in clumps, but there were too many, even as I fired until the machine gun barrel grew red-hot. Then something jumped on me and shoved me back, and I kept screaming, screaming, don’t stop screaming, don’t stop shooting, stab stab stab until the job is done I grabbed something solid and screamed as I shoved its head to the dirt and screamed while it screamed I drew my hoof knife and screamed as I shoved the blade into its screaming skull looked for the soft bits and stabbed them stabbed until the blood was all over me and stab it again make sure it stops moving and...

And I saw Stopgap, looking up at me with an expression of horror, one eye skewed out of alignment from the knife plunged into the side of his head.

No more screaming.

No more noise at all.

I pulled my hoof away, letting the body drop. I looked up and saw the rest of my comrades seated around the fire, dead, dead, riddled with bullets and gushing knife wounds. I looked down and blood was on my hooves, all over Stopgap’s face, all over my jacket and oh Celestia it was in my eyes, get it out, get it out—

I fell to my haunches, blanked out from the horror. I felt a wave of nausea and realized there were more bodies, all of them gruesomely dead. I saw Hunter, his head just barely attached to his body, I saw my father with his hooves crossed peacefully over his chest, there was poor, poor Starry Gaze scattered in pieces all over the ground, I’m sorry I didn’t like you back, I’ll come home and make it better, I promise—

I saw Sunny Side, just sitting there with a blank stare and a vacant smile, looking up. I followed his gaze.

Ray Drop stared back at me as she dangled from the ceiling, torn to shreds, dripping blood from that one little hole in her head—

“No,” I whispered, squeezing my head between my hooves. “No, no, please! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I had to, I had to, I had to!”

The blood dribbled down into a pool, covering my hooves, and then flowed up, forming long legs that stretched up and up over me, a bulky torso with wings that stretched out and out, and over all a long, graceful neck. Then came the horn that graced its head, sharp and beautiful like an executioner’s axe. Charnel eyes, swirling with red and orange and white, staring down from an impassive face.

“Please,” I whispered. “Please.”

This one does not understand

He sees only death

A horrible, eyeless face, a mushroom cloud, screaming, fire, running, bleeding, stabbing and ripping and tearing—

They cannot be saved

Cannot be stopped

Flashes of great engines of war, dragons scorching the sky, armies marching and dissolving before each other—

He must See

He must understand

But he cannot

Will not

Stop him

Save him

Help him

Destroy him

Find him find us find

Truth

Must

Save

Life

I reached up for the towering figure, beautiful and abhorrent, my savior, my murderer, my Princess and Dark One. It reached out with a hoof and touched it to mine. It vanished, and I was alone.

“Lockbox,” Sweet Dreams crooned sing-song in my ear right before she bit into it, ripping it from my skull. She turned me to face her and I beheld her empty eye sockets, swallowing me like a Metro tunnel as she grinned, gnashing my ear between her teeth. “Lockbox,” she said, and enveloped my muzzle with a gruesome kiss, forcing her tongue into my mouth along with my own blood and gristle.

“Lockbox,” she whispered. “Lockbox.”

---------------

Pain was the first thing I noticed.

At least it meant I wasn’t dead.

I felt wrong, as if there was something I needed to do but hadn’t done yet. I stirred in the grip of something warm and soft, and when I tried to lift my legs I found them weak and unresponsive. I felt as if the entire world was made of jelly, from the air around me to the brain between my ears. My thoughts were sluggish and imbalanced, reeling back and forth between extreme apathy and the throbbing, pulsing need to get up and do something. A war raged in my mind between my need to rest and my need to get up and continue my mission.

I felt as if I needed a winch and pulley to draw my eyes open, and when they did, I saw only a faint glimmer from a dying sprite-light not far off. My eyes rolled in their sockets, taking in the stone ceiling, the mattress beneath me, and the heavy blanket on top of me. My leg and chest simmered with old aches and pains. My ribs were in need of attention, calling back to the time I’d broken them when I fell out of the moving cart outside Draft station. My leg was swollen and slow to respond. Every breath hurt.

I tried to speak but my throat was too parched. Why did everything feel so wrong?

“Hello?” I asked, listening to my dry voice crackle through the empty room. “Is somepony there?”

No answer. I tried to roll over, turning myself towards the sprite-light, and was wracked with a raging headache, but I’d suffered worse than that by now. I pushed my hooves under myself and stood up. Immediately my strength faltered and I dropped onto my stomach. My breath squeaked as it was forced from my lungs.

“Water,” I croaked just before my vision fell on a nearby pitcher. I crawled over to it and dunked the end of my muzzle in the lukewarm liquid within, lapping it up greedily as I waited for the dizziness and pain to subside.

“Not so fast,” said a familiar voice, though it was tinny and muffled, “you don’t want to make yourself sick and throw it all up again.”

I pulled my mouth from the pitcher, dribbling spit and water on the stone floor. I looked to a darkened corner of the room, and saw a hooded pony wearing heavy clothes step forward. Their face was shrouded—no, covered by a gasmask. The reflection of the sprite-light on the visor of their mask created a strange, illuminating effect, where it seemed their face was glowing.

“Nopony,” I muttered, feeling like my tongue was two sizes too big for my mouth. Somehow, I didn’t feel surprised at all. I supposed I was just becoming inured to the strangeness of the Metro. “I was wondering when I’d see you again. Have you been watching me all this time and I just didn’t know you were there?”

“Maybe,” he answered, and I thought he must be smirking under that mask of his. “Maybe I’m just a hallucination caused by the stress of living in the Metro. Maybe all of this is in your head, and you’re wasting away on a cot in Exiperia, dreaming of a journey to save your world from the Dark Ones.”

He slinked forward, extending a hoof to me. On it rested a can of preserved food. “Or maybe,” he whispered, “you just got incredibly lucky and you’re actually being hidden away in a cave outside a Republic station, waiting for your body to heal so you can get moving again.”

“Which is it?” I grumbled, taking the can and peeling back the top. Inside was a yellow mealy lump that tasted grainy and salty when I bit into it. But it was better than nothing, and certainly better than the spit-thin gruel I’d gotten in the slave pits.

“All that matters is that it’s happening to you, real or not,” Nopony answered. “Now I suppose you’re wondering how it is you’re still alive.”

“Among other things,” I said through a mouthful of “food.” Is this what old Equestrians thought of as preserved goods? We must have been worse off than I thought.

“You are here because a confluence of events conspired to make your escape from the Republic slave pits possible. You engineered your little revolution just at the same time a force of Diamond Dogs was digging through the tunnels to free their fellows. That tapping you noticed did the trick. Diamond Dogs feel the earth just as well, if not better, than an earth pony. They are able to send long-distance messages through that sensitivity. When you came, the imprisoned Dogs realized they might have somepony smart enough to help them, and sent the signal to their brethren that the time to strike had come. You helped them get revenge for a great many grievances, Lockbox.”

“And got a lot of ponies killed doing it,” I added. “I didn’t want to kill anypony, Republic or Dog or whoever. I just ended up having to, or I’d be dead myself. I am a killer now, I can see that. It’s what the Metro has reduced us to. I’ll never be able to make up for all the death I’ve caused. Even the first one… even that was too much. Even if I stop the Dark Ones they’ll all still be dead.”

“It is a very wise thing,” Nopony replied, “to see that no amount of right will take a wrong away, and no amount of wrongs will justify another.”

“Did you come to lecture me then? And how do you know everything that happened, anyway? How did you know all of this, or even where to find me? Are you one of those monsters I’m supposed to See? Are you here because I’m a Shadow Walker or whatever those cultists called me?”

Nopony leaned back and put a hoof to his chest, comically affronted. “Nonsense! Perhaps all you’ve been through is making you delusional. I’m not some creepy creature of the dark come to steal your soul.”

“Then how do you know everything?” I snapped.

Nopony pointed off to the side. “Because he told me all about it.”

I turned around and saw a Diamond Dog hunched in the entrance to the small cave.

“Pony,” it rasped in that strange, high-pitched warble. “Friend. Lockbox.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry,” I muttered, suddenly sheepish. “I don’t really know you.”

“I am Clef,” the Dog said with a little bow. “I remember you. Set me free from the cage, many days ago. Let me rejoin my pack.”

“Pfft,” I said, and the memories, such as they were, came rushing back. A Dog in a cage, me making the hasty decision to set him free, and then Ruby Red coming down a hallway to kill us all. Strange that I’d meet the very same wretched creature from back then here and now. “So you’re the first Dog I ever met in the Metro?”

“We killed maaany bandits together, pony friend,” the Dog said with an eager, toothy grin. “Saved maaany poniiieees.”

I scoffed. “I haven’t saved anypony yet.”

“Saved me. Saved my pack,” Clef pressed, stepping forward. “You are a friend of Diamond Dogs, like the masked pony!”

“I’m a friend of nothing!” I snapped, anger rising up out of nowhere, striking out like a snake. “Do you understand? You and your Dogs ran in there and slaughtered everypony like… like pigs! And I led you there! I made it happen! Everything that’s happened so far… I’m at the center of it! And I’m sick of it. I’m sick to death of it.”

Clef was silent as I glared up at him, focusing the anger and guilt that swirled inside me into my voice. “I helped you because it was convenient. I helped your pack get loose because I was angry. I don’t know why I’m alive. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I’m sick of all this, do you hear me? Don’t say anything about me being your friend, because we aren’t friends and I’m not a hero.”

Clef retreated a step as I dropped onto my stomach. My outburst had drained what little strength I’d recovered and I felt a chill wash over me. “I’m not,” I grunted, whacking the stone with my hoof. “I’m not.”

It was silent for a time.

I looked up at Nopony, who stared back at me in silence. I turned back to Clef, who watched me with his beady yellow eyes.

“Still,” he said, “thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I muttered. “So what now?”

“I have told the Diamond Dogs of your journey,” said Nopony, “and they are willing to help. Don’t despair yet, Lockbox. There’s still a mission to complete, and you may not believe it but your revolution in the Republic slave pits actually helped you get back on track.”

He stepped forward, pulling out a familiar sheet of paper.

“Remember this?”

I looked down at it. A map of the Metro, covered in scribbles and notes, stared back. My blood went cold. Symbols and pictures swirled in front of me, whispers of codes and safehouses and ancient secrets and everything was too much to look at but I snatched it out of Nopony’s hooves and looked closer, closer, drinking deep of the knowledge it wanted to give me.

“A Guide,” I whispered reverently.

“Your Guide,” Nopony whispered back. I looked up at him in awe.

“How did you get this?”

“The same way I got all of your things,” the strange pony replied. “With a little luck, and a little help.” He nodded at Clef, who dropped a duffel bag at my hooves. Out of it spilled a little mess of equipment.

Along with a little green stone, a screw, and the clear, young, happy face of Ray Drop.

I picked those up and held them tightly to my chest. I remembered the way Brick’s voice sounded before he threw himself in the generator. I remembered Ray Drop’s face, not the bloody mess it ended as but the smiling one I saw in the picture.

Then I remembered Sunny Side, and Starry Gaze, and my father.

My father…

It all came rushing back to me. The idealistic hope I’d felt at the start of all this. My hero-worship of Hunter and the Rangers. I thought of my little room, and the Wall, and all the pictures that dotted its face. I thought of a yellow pegasus beckoning me on, and a vision of a green Equestria with ponies who danced on ice and weren’t afraid to see the Sun or the Moon.

I thought of the anger ripping me apart inside and the pain of so much death weighing on my conscience, stripping away everything until there remained only the stubborn will to go on, if only to not give death the satisfaction of having me.

Everything I used to be was gone. All I was now was wrapped up in those little trinkets and pictures, and the memories they represented. I touched my cutie mark, and realized that even if I didn’t honor the lives of those who had passed, their memory remained. Safe in these pictures and baubles I collected, there lay proof of who they were and what they’d done. That was why I kept going. I was the last repository for those sacred thoughts. Even if I turned away from my path, I had to keep the memory safe. I had to keep them alive. I had to save the Metro from utter destruction, even if it was only to pass on those memories to another.

I shook my head, waiting for the hot tears pricking the corners of my eyes to spill out. They didn’t, and I wasn’t sure if I was glad for that.

“I’m so tired,” I whispered.

“And yet you have a strange destiny ahead to fulfill,” Nopony answered. “You aren’t going to give up, Lockbox. For good or ill, you know you must press on. It’s not in ponies like you to give up.”

“Maybe I should,” I answered. “Maybe if I knew when to stop I’d actually save a pony.”

Nopony didn’t answer.

“We will help,” Clef said, thumping his chest with his oversized paw. “After we are born, we all go towards death. But with friends the road is made easier.”

“All right,” I said, wiping my eyes and putting my equipment back on. “All right. Where’s Sidewinder?”

“Right where we left him,” replied Nopony. “Come! I’ll take you to him.”

----------------

I’d been dragged into the side passages just outside Narym Station, on the northwest border of the Republic. Though officially held by the Republic, the populace owed its existence to the Guild of Magic. Narym Station was famously the last station of an alliance of three others, which had all perished in the early years of the Metro due to cave-ins, plague, and mutants. The Guild of Magic came and secured it with their knowledge of the Old World’s secrets, installing a permanent base inside the station. Narym hailed them as saviors and gave them free reign. This gave Narym an unspoken guarantee of independence, never to be fully put under another station’s boot so long as the Guild of Magic influenced its comings and goings. It was in the Guild’s interest to stay independent, so many smaller stations welcomed them with open hooves to help in that endeavor.

Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark glared down at me from every corner, reminding me that her followers in the Guild were always watching. This was one reason I could walk without fear in the sight of Republic troops who lined the halls and crowded the tavern. The other reason was that I knew all the Republic ponies who saw my face in the mine were dead.

“How many made it out? From the slave pits, I mean?” I asked Nopony as we threaded our way through the crowded station, dodging soldiers and officers. Narym was near the frontline of the Republic’s war with the Monarchy, and they used it as a staging area for many of their troops.

“Oh, at least a couple hundred, I’m sure,” Nopony replied blithely. “But the better question is: how many actually found a way to survive once they got out? That number will never be known.” He gave me a nudge with his shoulder. “Anyway, what you did in there will be carved into the annals of Metro history. It’s on everypony’s lips.”

“It can’t be,” I muttered back. “What are they saying?”

Nopony merely nodded to a nearby Republic checkpoint, and the soldiers crowded around a radio. I approached as close as I dared.

“—and we say again: This act of violence and sedition will not go unpunished!” a deep female voice boomed from the speakers. “Our work camps provide labor, purpose, and safety as well as education for convicts reintegrating into our great society. They provide food and freedom to those with the skill to work. This wanton terrorism, this strike against the foundation of civilization, threatens the safety of all that we have fought to build these last fifteen years! Thanks to these anarchists, these traitors to Harmony, serial killers, rapists and mutants are free to roam our once safe tunnels. But do not fear, good citizens of the Republic. Though Diamond Dogs claw at our doors, and spies and saboteurs gnaw at our fetlocks, we will stand strong! All our enemies will be crushed soon enough!”

Another voice replaced the first, male this time. “That was the voice of our great president Lucky Clover, speaking on the unprovoked attack earlier this week. Though dozens of our own lie dead, they will be avenged tenfold! As said before: it is believed this terrorist act was committed by either a Celestian Monarchy spy or a saboteur working for the Ponyopolis Rangers. Report all suspicious behavior to the nearest guard station!”

I sighed and put a hoof over my face. The Rangers were getting blamed for my actions? And they wanted to use the attack as an excuse to hate the Monarchy even more than they already did. It seemed no matter where I went I was a catalyst for conflict.

Nopony drew me away. “You need to leave the Republic,” he said, “and Sidewinder and the Diamond Dogs are your only chance. They know the tunnels like no other, and are much more accustomed to the mutants than we are.”

“Strange,” I murmured. “I’m on a mission to save my home, but I’m tearing it apart everywhere I go.”

“There is no change that comes without upheaval and casualties,” Nopony said. His voice, though low and soothing, was warped and eerie through the mask. “Remember that, Lockbox. This world is imperfect and so are you. There will never be a day that goes by that you do not struggle with something. Change may bring bad things. War, pain, and death among them. But that does not make the change itself a bad thing.”

“So I do my best and hope to keep the casualties down?” I grumbled. “That’s what I’ve been doing all this time.”

“Nopony can ask anymore than that,” he answered.” And you cannot ask the change to be more or less than what it is. That is the nature of the world: it simply is, while we try to alter it. But when both sides need to be in balance, it only takes a little for one side to go too far.”

We entered the bar on a sour note, with my mood shot from hearing that damn announcement. The Republic was going to turn my attempt to free ponies into an excuse for war, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn’t kill Lucky Clover. I couldn’t fight the Republic. Who would help me? And that would solve nothing about the Dark Ones. All I could do was move on and hope the Metro took care of itself. The sight of ponies cheerfully drinking and playing cards just made it even worse. The bar reeked of sweat and alcohol, and a few ponies were dazedly sucking on a hookah pipe in one corner. Many of them wore uniforms of the Republic. How dare they, I thought. How dare they drink and be merry when the Metro is plummeting into the darkness around them. If half of them worked half as hard as I have, this world would be back to normal.

I spotted Sidewinder easily, sitting among a crowd of mixed station dwellers and Republic soldiers, regaling them with tales of his adventures, heavily embellished. He didn’t even look at me as I approached the table, focusing on his enchanted audience.

“So then my friend just, just leaps on the fuckin’ thing and he stabs it in the eye with his hoof knife! It reared back like this, claws flailing as it died! But then it comes back down, crash! And he hops right off it like it’s no problem! Killed the bastard dead.”

Only then he looked up at me, pointing me out to the entertained, yet still skeptical audience.

“Oh, here’s the hero of the hour! Lockbox, I was just telling these nice ponies about the time you killed an alpha nosalis by yourself!”

“That can’t be true!” one of the Republic soldiers called out. “Alphas are three times the size of a pony! Even Monarchy assault squads have trouble with them! How’d you manage it, huh?”

I looked around the table, buzzing with anticipation, questions, and inebriation. Half of them looked like they believed it entirely; I supposed all my bandages and bruises helped paint a picture of a pony able to take on anything. Sidewinder looked up at me, grinning all the while as he rubbed his hooves together.

“You can’t kill an alpha with just a knife,” I said with a shrug, “Sidewinder has it wrong.”

They leaned closer, expecting me to tear the curtains down on Sidewinder’s illusion. Instead, I smirked. “I actually used a grenade.”

The table erupted with either boos or laughter as ponies debated the truth of it. I didn’t care either way, as long as they didn’t bother me when I grabbed Sidewinder and hauled him away, much to the chagrin of his audience.

“You shoulda seen their faces!” the Stalker chuckled. “Lockbox, these Republic ponies don’t know anything about the outside! Ha, by this time tomorrow you’ll be their folk hero, I know it!”

“The Republic is blaming Rangers and the Monarchy for our little stunt back at the prison,” I hissed.

Sidewinder shrugged. “I know! I’m running a PR job here, Lockbox. You gotta fight the bad gossip with the good. If anypony ever does figure out it was you, this way they won’t know what to think and will chalk it up to another one of ‘those stories’ about you. I’m hiding you with a cloak of embellishment, you see.”

I gaped. “Have you been telling lies about me the entire time we’ve been here?”

Sidewinder scrunched his face as he thought. “Oh, only the last couple of days or so. Why?”

I groaned and shoved him away, wincing as my injuries twinged. “Nevermind, we need to find a way out of here and Nopony said the Diamond Dogs would help.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Nopony,” I said, only realizing how crazy I sounded when he looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Look, never mind. You know the Dogs have been taking care of me, right?”

“I sure do,” he replied. “Showed them the cave myself. I hope the accomodations were to your liking? You know, those bandages make you look like a creep, kind of pathetic really. Fortunately I just met a mare who loves to kiss things and make it better—”

“We need to leave. Look around you Sidewinder. The Republic is gearing up for war.”

“Of course they are! That’s what the Republic does. I hear they execute a pony for every day they aren’t fighting the Monarchy.”

“Because of what I did!” I hissed. “Of what we did!”

Sidewinder rolled his eyes. “You think that anything you do makes a difference to them, Lockbox? If not this, it would’ve been some other excuse, or they’d just go to war for the hell of it! The Metro’s always been at war with itself, it’s how things are.”

I felt a headache coming on and decided not to argue; my other strange conversation with Nopony was still too fresh in my mind. “Look, we’re practically inside the central Metro now. That’s not too far from Ponyopolis. All we need to do is—”

“Find a way through the Red Line.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“The Line that’s called the Red Line because it bisects the Metro and is owned by nopony, and has been the site of every major engagement between the Republic and the Monarchy since the Metro got started. Red from all the blood spilled on it.”

“Yes, now if you’ll stop interrupting—”

“The Line that is infamous for being a place constantly warred over, has the highest mortality rate in the whole Metro, and is also unstable and overrun by mutants in many places. The Line that Ponyopolis Rangers don’t use unless they have to. That Line.”

I rubbed my temples. My headache was getting worse. “Are you done?”

Sidewinder tapped his chin, scratched his mane, and took a sip of vodka. “Also the Line I first got backstabbed traveling. Figures we need to cross it.”

I glared at him. He stared back, and then he grinned that crazy Stalker grin.

“Now I’m done. When do we start?”

“As soon as we can.”

Sidewinder snickered. “No rest for the weary, of course. Fine, then. I’ll find a way out of here lickety-split. I know a pony by that name, Lickety-Split. You know he once outran a demon on the wing? Luckiest bastard I ever knew!”

I dragged him out of the bar, going back to the cave to collect my things. Clef was still there, and gave me a grunt of greeting that I returned. Sidewinder poked his head inside and stared at the Diamond Dog unblinking for a while. Clef just stared right back, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air.

“So you’re going to help us through the Red Line?” I asked, slipping my jacket on and reattaching the bits and baubles. Headlamp, charger, hoof knife…

“Will heeeelp pony friiieeend,” Clef rumbled. “We know the seeecret ways, close to the surface. We can hiiiide you from the bullets and the killing.”

“That’s all well and good,” I said, “but can you take us all the way to Ponyopolis?”

Sidewinder looked away from Clef and back to me. “That requires going through Monarchy territory… or if not that, the surface. Or both, if our luck really goes down the shitter.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, picking up the gun Nopony had provided me with. It was a twelve-round magazine fed pistol with an extended barrel and a larger stock modified with extra grips, allowing a pony to fire it with their hooves if they had to. A fine weapon, but only five magazines to spare. I’d lost all my bullet currency long ago, but where we were going money wouldn’t do us much good. “I’ll travel any path I need to.”

“Our tunnels are no saaafer than yours, pooonyyy,” Clef rumbled. “But weee will see you throoough.”

----------

There were many exits from Narym Station, but only a few were worth taking. The front lines were close, which meant we had to take one of those not so worthy tunnels to avoid unwanted complications. The northern warrens were clogged with troops flowing in and out of the war, and even as we trekked through the crowded corridors of the station I couldn’t help but take a peek—I’d only heard rumors about this great war my entire life until now. Slipping away from Sidewinder for just a moment I assumed the role of a weary traveler, walking aimlessly and avoiding eye contact so nopony would bother me until I reached the northern exit to Narym. What I saw gave me pause, and I leaned up against a wall to take it all in.

It had been utterly taken over by the Republic in their mad dash to secure the Red Line, doubtlessly still reeling from my insurrection behind the lines and now desperate to save face. Ponies of every kind crowded around rickety wagons that were still covered in dry blood, shouting and pushing as they joined a constant flow in and out of the station. Guns and ammunition abounded in such quantities that it seemed us ponies could destroy every monster in the Metro if they really wanted, and yet they used them on each other. Gunsmiths and munitions experts calibrated and cleaned every gun brought back from the front without its owner; the grim price of a society that couldn’t afford to make many new weapons. Republic banners fluttered in breezes made by wheezing air vents and loudspeakers kept up a constant stream of slogans:

Harmony for all, all for Harmony!

As one, we stand! Separate we fall!

The Monarchist believes we are inferior! Will you prove him wrong?

I glanced up at the walls and saw propaganda plastered over every available surface. Pictures of brave Republic ponies stepping over the corpses of mutants and Monarchy soldiers, guided by the lights of the Elements of Harmony. Demonic depictions of King Pleiades overseeing a harem of slave mares, leering at the viewer and mocking them with smug contempt. Utopian visions of pegasus, unicorn, and earth pony uniting in the comforting embrace of an alicorn’s wings. All of it senseless, pointless drivel designed to make ponies hate one another.

“So this is the panoply of war,” I muttered, remembering the phrase from one of my old books.

“What’s a panoply?” Sidewinder asked. He must have snuck out with me while I wasn’t watching.

“All of this,” I replied. “A giant, well-oiled machine made to kill ponies. Nothing more.”

“You’re surprised?” Sidewinder asked with a cocky grin.

“No. And that surprises me even more,” I replied, and stepped away from the wall. “Where exactly are we meeting the Diamond Dogs?”

Sidewinder fell in beside me, guiding me back through the crowds. They were so busy in their eagerness to get their daily bullet rations and fill of Monarchy blood we weren’t even noticed. “Outside of the western entrance, near the abandoned tunnels. I heard bad things about that place, but the Dogs told me it was all right.”

“They’re not worried about being discovered this close to the station?” I wondered, sidestepping a hulking pony in massive body armor, complete with a modified welder’s helmet.

Sidewinder rolled his eyes. “You think the Republic gives two shits about Diamond Dogs anymore? Everypony knows Dogs skulk around the edges of our stations, but with the war getting back into full swing they have bigger bales to stack. Full steam ahead to the end of all life!”

I noticed an earth pony in a commissar's hat give him a wary look, but we were lost to the crowd so quickly he couldn’t make a fuss if he wanted to.

“I wonder how many of those ponies we’ll run into again at the Line,” I muttered as we went back into the civilian parts of Narym, and the guards wore Guild of Magic patches instead of Republic ones. Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark was displayed proudly on their shoulders, but that didn’t make them harmonious ponies. Just another brand of killer.

“Can’t tell you exactly,” said Sidewinder, shrugging. “We’ll definitely be seeing pieces of them.”

We turned another corner into a deeper, darker part of the station until the tunnels had no lights to speak of, guided only by the path illuminated by our headlamps. Twists and turns and ups and downs led to hidden warrens infested by rusting machinery and giant cobwebs, with the skeletons of either drug addicts or murder victims in the corners. Just when I was wondering whether we’d get to where we were going, I found myself in a room with nothing but four blank walls and an open vent shaft.

“Right here,” Sidewinder said, pointing his headlamp at a bundle of rags and fur in the corner.

A Diamond Dog uncurled from the hunched posture he’d been hiding in, his long, burly limbs reaching out like a spider. He wasn’t Clef, but a much shorter, stockier version with dirty tan fur.

“Pooonyyy friiiends,” it rasped with a smile too big for his narrow snout. “I am Slate. I am heeere to lead you! Come come!”

“Where are the others?” I asked him, but the Dog only yipped and bounced on his paws.

“Others! Dogs! This way! Hnnn. This way!” he said in a voice that alternated between high pitched giggles and low growls. As my light shined on him I saw a long pink scar running nearly the whole length of his skull.

He pointed with a blunt claw that could easily bore through my eye socket towards the vent shaft, then hopped up to grab the rim. With his large paws it was easy to haul himself inside, his comically short legs scrambling to get a foothold. I shrugged at Sidewinder and he hoisted me up next, and I was swallowed up by claustrophobic darkness. It smelled of stale air and very faintly of rotten meat.

“Not smart, trying to connect tunnels to pony ones,” Sidewinder muttered over the hollow banging of the vent walls bending under his weight. “Pony magic is sure to find them.”

“The Guild of Magic owns this station,” I replied, turning my nose up at what appeared to be an old, dried out egg sac. “It’s no surprise its well guarded.”

“Not this one! Daaanger!” Slate yipped. “Daanger in this tunnel. Blood and gloom. A strong tunnel! Only the strong live in it. Dogs strong, and we live! Yes.”

The vent exited into another tunnel right next to a hydraulic door, firmly shut. At its base was gathered a small group of six Diamond Dogs and Nopony, who conversed quietly with Clef in some kind of rough, growling language that sounded like rocks grinding together. They stopped as soon as they saw me looking at them.

“Lockbox, glad you’re here,” said Nopony. “It’s time for us to take the next step in our journey. We’re at the western end of Narym Station, and everypony is so focused on the upcoming war that they have no idea we’re here. Now is the perfect time to leave.”

I took out my Guide. “Show me where we’re going.”

Nopony walked over and traced a hoof from Narym northwestward towards the Red Line. “Dog tunnels will not show up even on a Guide; they were carved when we ponies weren’t looking. But rest assured they’re there. We’ll sneak by both armies at the Line and hopefully avoid the shooting. It’ll shave hours, if not a day or two off your course to Ponyopolis. After everything you’ve already been through, this will be a walk in the park.”

“I’ve had one of those, thanks,” I muttered, putting the Guide back in my saddlebag. “I’d rather not take another.”

“This tunnel is daaangerous,” Clef murmured, gesturing for his Dogs to take the lead. “The poonies are wise to put a door heerrre. Monsters live beyooond. They are maaany, and they are hungryyy.”

“I’ve faced many monsters,” I declared. “What could be coming that I would have to be worried about?”

“Just stick close, Lockbox,” Nopony said to me, herding me and Sidewinder together. “And whatever you do, while we are in this tunnel, do not let your light go out.”

------------------------

Shadows and decay, stains on the walls, the rusted skeletons of old wires and pipes. These were things I lived with; things that I knew and even gave me comfort. The tunnel itself held no especial menace. I was no stranger to the dark. What I feared was what else could be lurking there with me. What a strange existence we led, all trying to compete with nosalises, howlers, demons and ghosts to be the most frightening monster in the darkness. All of us were so frail, yet we struck at our enemies so fiercely. Even at the end of the world, our survival instincts held strong.

Another instinct that still clung to us was the herd, or in the case of the Dogs, the pack. We all stuck close together as we traveled further into the abandoned tunnel, calmed by the way our shoulders brushed together or our equipment clanked. The Dogs wore very little compared to us ponies: it must have been a nightmare finding clothes to fit them. They had rags and plates of metal strapped to their bodies, with leather belts fashioned into makeshift holders for rusty pickaxes and long knives. Satchels adorned their bodies, stuffed to the brim with gemstones—more gemstones than most ponies saw in their entire lives—and trash. I found some amusement in their pack rat mentality. It reminded me of myself.

We said nothing as we passed through a broken barricade, surrounded by the skeletons of dead nosalises and smaller lurkers, with the odd pony skull here and there. I surmised some great battle fought for the survival of Narym Station had taken place here, and the Guild of Magic abandoned this stretch of tunnel when it was over.

I stepped on something sticky. I looked down and my light shone upon a patch of thick, gossamer webbing that stretched over the floor, covering the body of a cerberus. I pulled away and the rotten, dry skin of the carcass came away with it, along with a gross profusion of black, swarming shapes with many legs.

“Ugh,” I grunted as the skittering arachnids scattered from my light. I followed their path up the wall, watching them disappear into cracks in the walls. My light fell upon a warning sign.

“Bugs,” I couldn’t help but read. “Bugs?”

“Oh, that’s right,” Sidewinder said with a sigh, “you haven’t seen too much of the Metro yet. Are you scared of spiders, Lockbox?”

“Yes,” I replied. “But there’s much worse to be afraid of.”

“Ain't that the truth. Spiderbugs like to scavenge the dead around the Red Line, so there’s gonna be a shitton of those creeps. Basically huge spiders with skin that shrug off anything but a bullet right to the face.”

“They won’t be a problem,” said Nopony, “as long as you keep your light on. They are creatures wholly accustomed to the shadows. Light burns them.”

“They are eaaasily agitated,” Clef rumbled. “We must go through quickly and quieeetly. Dogs! Prepaaare your lights.”

The Diamond Dogs brought out the gemstones in their pockets, and I realized they were tied together by metal wires into a kind of bandolier they slung around their shoulders. When one gem was rubbed, all of them lit up in unison. The walls were thrown into relief, and I saw webs stretched across every inch.

The webs grew thicker with every foot until they covered the walls and stretched across the floor. I struggled to keep my footing, but most of them were old and brittle, easily torn by our heavy hooves, though it stuck to every available surface until my whole body felt sticky and strange. I heard scraping and skittering in the walls and along the pipes as we came to an intersection.

We were forced to head right. The way forward was blocked by webs.

“They watch us now,” said Nopony. “As long as the lights stay on, they won’t get too bold.”

My headlamp caught a glimpse of a head covered in many eyes retreat into a hole large enough to fit my head. Some kind of squealing chitter accompanied it.

“Why haven’t we encountered these creatures before?” I asked.

Nopony answered. “They do not go where ponies gather in great numbers. Ponies are drawn to light and warmth, like moths to a flame. These creatures prefer the dark and the cold and the wet, and also places where there is meat. The death that surrounds the Red Line provides them with easy scavenging. They are animals of the new world if I’ve ever seen one.”

Creatures of the new world. I thought about that for a while as we walked. We ponies were not creatures of the new world, not by far. When confronted with darkness and death we did not retreat to the cold and the shadows like the spiders, or cloak ourselves in blizzards like the snow ghosts to await fresh meat. We broke or went mad. We huddled around lights and fires and guttering lanterns and pretended they were little suns, and those little circles of light became tiny worlds we were the masters of. We closed our eyes when the shadows closed in because the darkness inside us was more familiar. My mind whirled with thoughts of old worlds and new ones, of cinder and ash and long-legged beasties crawling over bleached bones, right up until my face smacked into a cold wall. My cheeks were covered in carpets of spiderweb, and I realized Sidewinder was laughing at me.

“I tried to warn you,” he said through wheezing lips that squeezed air out like a leaky pipe, “but it was too funny to watch you just walk into it!”

I shoved a hoofful of webs into Sidewinder’s face for his trouble. Slate giggled and smacked his paw on the ground, earning him a cuff on the ear from an older Dog.

“The way is shut,” Clef explained, pointing up to the wall I’d just walked face first into. There was a gate before us, covered in thick strands of the awful webs. Within the tangled mess I could see dried bones and the carcass of a nosalis, alongside tumorous fleshy sacs that pulsed and writhed as though something within were ready to claw its way out. When I shined my light directly on one, it squirmed and split open with an ugly wet noise like some horrific blossom. A torrent of spiders no larger than my hoof skittered out from the hole, turning the web into a seething mass of writhing legs and displeased clicks and clacks. The spiderlings took shelter from my burning headlamp within crevices and beneath bones, and then all was still.

“Eww,” I said.

“The wires to the door aren’t cut,” mused Sidewinder, peering at the ceiling. “If we could find a generator—”

“No,” said Nopony. “Look, the hinges have been welded shut. Somepony really wanted this door to stay closed.”

A Dog went forward to sniff at the blackened lumps of metal that secured the gate, preventing it from ever opening again.

“Is reeecent,” he declared. “I smell the stench of buuurning here.”

“A vain attempt by the Republic to keep the monsters out,” grunted Nopony.

“Or the Monarchy,” replied Sidewinder, picking at a door set into the side of the tunnel. “This is the only way now.”

“Do not worry, poniiieees,” rumbled Clef. “Where your doors clooose, our ways ooopen.”

We entered the side tunnel and walked through featureless, bland hallways covered in webs and infested with crawling, skittering things that shrieked at our passing and shied away from our lights. I never got more than a glimpse—the blur of moving legs and steady, unblinking eyes in the corners of my vision. The Dogs walked with calm self-confidence, knowing the spiderbugs wouldn’t consider them easy prey. The constant twists and turns made my head spin, and I realized that without our Diamond Dog friends we’d be lost down here in the dark, with no hope of ever reaching civilization before falling prey to something. On instinct I touched the Guide in my saddlebag, and somehow that made me feel better.

In an empty room in a featureless corner of the Metro, Clef brought us to a halt. There in the wall was an open hole gouged out of the concrete and stone, leading to a gaping dirt tunnel. It went so far my light didn’t reach more than a few ponylengths in. Webs covered the floor.

“Nooow,” rasped Clef, “we take the low road.”

----------------------

Time had no meaning in the Dog tunnels. In the Metro, we marked our hours by dimming lights and kicking out fires, letting the darkness sweep us away into the shelter of dreams or the tempest of nightmares. Here, with the earth all around me, there was nothing but darkness. Were it not for the glowing gems the Dogs wore, I would’ve sworn they simply lived without the need for light. Nowhere did I see torches or any other things to help a living creature see. There was only the hard, packed dirt closing in all around us. The Dogs, big as they were, seemed unaffected save for the webs we constantly had to push through.

“This is a transit tunnel,” Clef explained to me after I asked whether Dogs lived in these warrens. “Our living places are as biiig as yours. But like all tunnels, sooome are not attended tooo. This one is crawling with the buuugs.”

“That figures,” I answered. “You can see the webs all over the place.”

The Dog shook his head. “Nooo, Lockbox. I mean we feel them. They dig their tunnels as we dooo. You must sense it. Most ponies of earth caaan.”

“I didn’t like the last few times I used my earth magic,” I grunted. “It only showed me how broken the world really is. I used it to help slay a giant monster, and even that just hurt the Metro and got ponies killed. Even using our magic is nothing but suffering now. If I don’t use my magic, maybe I’ll help more than I have.”

“Evvverything in this world is suffering, Lockbox,” Clef answered. “We cannot avoid it. Onnnly gird ourselves for when it cooomes.”

He looked down at me with a glare that I found bracing and repulsive all at once. He had the eyes of a predator in him, one that looked at me with pity and condescension.

“Why do ponies chooose their magic? Why do they insist on controlling it and piiiicking and pluuuucking only what they think was valuable?” he rasped. “Why do they not simply let it flooow? If they lived as before, maaaybe we would not be stuck in this ruuuin.”

I didn’t have an answer for him.

I trotted to catch up with Sidewinder, and he gave me a bump with his shoulder.

“Stop it,” he said.

“Stop what?”

“Being a Metro pony. Clef’s right. I don’t dig into my earth magic, Lockbox. It just is. I thought after all this time you’d have gotten a little more used to it. When was the last time you even tried to touch the earth with your hooves and feel it?”

“If it means drawing more attention to myself, then—”

“Shut up and listen, Lockbox. I see the way you covet those little trinkets. I know you value what ponies used to be. You want to see that come back. You want to preserve and protect. Well here’s something: preserve yourself first.”

Something about that sentence made me look shamefully to the ground. “You’re the one who said magic is changing,” I said lamely.

“But have we ponies changed? I mean, really?” Sidewinder asked. “We’re violent and oppressive and we kill for scraps of food. But does that make us worse than what we were? If we’re doing it now, couldn’t we have done it then? Just think, Lockbox. ”

“Why are you suddenly so philosophical?”

“Why not? I’ve seen more strange things in my life than anypony you can name. And now I meet you. You refuse to die, Lockbox, but it isn’t just that. Something is pulling you along. Something pulled you and me back together. I can feel it.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I grumbled, but thoughts of Sweet Dreams and the Dark Ones and the name “Shadow Walker” pushed to the front of my mind.

“You can feel it too, Lockbox,” whispered Sidewinder, in perhaps the calmest voice I’d ever heard him use. “If you only try. This magic is the only thing left that connects us to the ponies of old. It’s the only memory nopony and nothing will ever be able to take away. You have to open yourself to it before it’s too late!”

“Too late for what?”

“Hooold, pooonies.”

We stopped in the middle of the dark hallway, and listened. All the Dogs had their paws to the ground and their heads up, ears straining and twitching. Some of them even had their eyes closed.

“What is—” I began, but then Nopony was suddenly at my side. He touched me on the flank, and then pointed to the ground. Confused, I watched him for a moment until he snorted and stamped his hoof several times. I scowled. Didn’t we just get through talking about our magic? But Sidewinder insisted, and I knew I was too curious not to try.

I planted my hooves in the ground and dug them into the dirt.

“Don’t hear, Lockbox.” said Nopony. “Listen.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” I grumbled, digging a divot with my hoof.

Sidewinder shrugged. “You don’t do magic. It happens.”

I grunted and dug my hoof in a little deeper, feeling the gentle scrape of fine pebbles and other detritus. Against my better judgment, I let my magic drift and flow where it would, letting it gorge on the presence of the earth around me. I didn’t need to concentrate this time; the magic did as it wanted.

It started as a tingling sensation all over my hooves. I felt little pinpricks and tremors walk all over the bottoms of my feet, and I almost pulled away for fear they were spiderbugs. But I remained and the feelings intensified, and I began to feel slight differences between them. Changes in rhythm, volume, pitch. Dull thuds, loud groans, and distant echoes.

Then it hit me: I could hear everything.

My eyes flew open and saw nothing but the tunnel ahead, but the noise was inside me, running up my legs and thundering in my chest, racing through my veins and seeping into the crevices in my brain.

I heard an endless scuttling and the vibrations of high-pitched squeals; no doubt those were the spiderbugs all around us. Above that was the deep, slow breathing of the Dogs, and Sidewinder’s heart racing next to me. I heard the dirt beneath his hooves crackle as he shifted his weight, heard every tiny creak and groan of his used, worn-out body. I cast my magic net once more and caught him in it, feeling the life within him like I had the Hydra.

I closed my eyes.

Before me stood a wretched thing, dismal and dark and full of flickering ember lights that burst brilliantly before fading again. It was like seeing a dying bonfire made into a pony. Underneath the soot and ashes I saw a glow, steady and strong. But it was so very small.

Next I turned to Nopony.

In front of me stood a shadow made solid. It was dark and powerful here in the tunnel, but fleeting and ephemeral anywhere else. It would flee the moment a light shined on it, I knew. The moment anypony would try to reach into that muddled blotch of ink the world, it would vanish as if it had never been. If even the earth itself didn’t know what or who Nopony was behind that mask, how could I be sure if he was on my side?

I turned my gaze to the Diamond Dogs, who stood as crystal monoliths, steady and unchanging in the face of danger. Their bodies looked as hard as granite and just as coarse. They knew their place in this world. But was that such a good thing when the world was as horrible as this?

And then under my hooves I heard it. A constant bass rumbling, interspersed by hundreds of desperate little bangs and thunderous booming. It was the sound of battle, unceasing and merciless. Either the little coughs of noise beneath the explosions were bullets, or bodies hitting the ground. The Red Line was near, and I realized I could follow any echo through any tunnel I wanted.

So this is what it was like to See.

I let out a gentle sigh, wondering if this is what the Cult of the Wyrm and the Dark Ones really wanted from me. I wondered if it was what I wanted from myself.

But what a pony wants doesn’t really matter in the end. Nopony really wants to die, yet we all die. Nopony wants to starve, yet many of us go hungry. Nopony wants to be left alone, but families leave us, friends betray us, and shadows close in from all sides. And little earth pony orphans never know their parents, are forced into the uncaring world by making promises they can’t keep, and are left with nothing but mysteries and blood on their hooves. Regardless of what I wanted from myself, this was what lay dormant within me. This was my magic. My heritage. It was me, no matter how much I railed against it.

I stomped my hoof and scattered the visions.

Sidewinder blinked as if we’d all just come out of a long sleep and looked straight at me. I looked back and wasn’t sure what my own expression was at that moment.

“Do it again,” Sidewinder whispered.

“No.”

“You weren’t in there long enough! You have to—”

“Fuck what I have to do,” I muttered, feeling angry all of a sudden. “Don’t tell me I have to do a fucking thing, Sidewinder. I’ve had enough of that.”

“You don’t have to,” Nopony offered in a conciliatory tone. “But you want to.”

I shuddered. “Yes.”

Sidewinder and Nopony stood back. I had a sense the Dogs were watching me too, though out of curiosity or boredom I couldn’t say. I put my hooves in the earth. I closed my eyes. The visions came again, Sidewinder all full of fireflies and the tunnels around us packed to the brim with spiderbugs that watched us hungrily. I didn’t know what Sidewinder wanted me to see next, but what did catch my eye kept me from seeing anything else.

Far away, a bright orange flame trudged along in a dismal corridor near the Line. My magic rushed forward to meet it, and when I collided with the stranger he looked up at me. Eyes that weren’t quite eyes met through hundreds of yards of earth and stone.

Sixpence.

“I see you,” I growled, possessed of a sudden and unstoppable anger. I took a step forward, and then a spring snapped loose and I barreled down the tunnel. I heard Sidewinder and Nopony shouting behind me, deafeningly loud with my new senses, telling me to stop and come back, but I didn’t care. I had to get him. I had to catch that rat bastard, the one who left me for dead and was the cause of so much suffering. He was connected with the Dark Ones and I needed answers, I needed revenge, I needed to get my hooves around his throat and squeeze—

Except my hooves weren’t even on the ground anymore. They kicked out and grasped nothing. I fell.

I hit something hard and leathery, bouncing off it and into a stone wall with so much force my legs splayed out against it and something in my equipment vest cracked. Gravity peeled me off and threw me down again into a pool of stagnant water that made me retch the moment it touched my lips, and as I pulled my head up I felt sticky, ropey strands tug at my mane. The entire room stank of organic decay. I saw flashes of ugly, bulbous growths around the walls and shadows of scurrying shapes that screamed at my intrusion. I realized I wasn’t seeing by the light of my own lamp, but another far above.

“Lockbox!” Sidewinder called, poking his head out of a large crack in a concrete wall I must have flung myself out of.

“Lockbox, tell me you’re not dead! Or crazy! Or both!”

“I’m fine, I think,” I called back. “It looks like a sewage line…”

I turned my head more slowly, taking in the details as Sidewinder’s light dodged over the walls. Fleshy pods burst open and recoiled at the touch of the light, sticky strands were everywhere, and a clawed tail vanished into a hole in the wall just as I laid eyes on it.

It was a nest. A nest full of spiderbugs. I touched the side of my head and realized it was my lamp that had been broken.

“Sidewinder,” I said, my voice hoarse, “I think I am about to die.”

“Stay right there!” the Stalker called back. “We’re coming down!”

“We’re whaaaat?” I heard a Diamond Dog mutter before Sidewinder took a running jump, rebounding off one of the leathery egg sacs and taking a much more graceful tumble than I did into the scummy water. At the dancing light’s touch, more skittering creatures screeched and raised their claws at us in the dark.

“Okay, okay,” he said, shaking himself like a dog and making me gag at the stench of water fouled for years suddenly being disturbed. “We’re good. This is good! This is fine, just fine. Sid, you soft-hearted idiot, we’re all gonna die!”

“Calm down,” I said, though I didn’t feel calm at all. “Just keep your light on. Hey, Dogs!” I shouted up. “Can you find another way down?”

“This was nooot our intended paaath, pony!” Clef barked at me. “You leaped into this pit of your own accooord! But for youuuur sake, we will coooome. Look out!”

Sidewinder wheeled around as a six-legged creature charged him from the shadows, rearing up and clawing at thin air as his light fell on it. Its pale yellow carapace sizzled and popped under the harsh glare, turning to blackened embers. From a gaping maw surrounded by gnashing mandibles and fangs I heard a horrifying screech like a pig being spitted alive as the spiderbug scurried back into the dark, its still burning exoskeleton creaking and wheezing all the way. All around us the hive was waking up, stirred into a chittering, scuttling frenzy. My ears were full of clacking and scraping and squealing. There were far too many to chase away with our meager lamp.

“Dogs!” shouted Clef. “Dig! Dig now! We must give them an exit!”

“No! It’s too dangerous!” I shouted back. “We’re dead if we stay here! Try to meet us further in!”

“We will find you by your hoofsteps, ponyyy!” Clef answered. “As fast as we caaaan! Try not to diiiiie.”

Sidewinder grabbed my jacket and hauled me through the fetid water towards a hatch covered in webs. I heard clawed feet scuttling over the walls as we tore at the webs with our bare hooves, smothering ourselves before the bugs even got to us. With sticky hooves we grasped the turning wheel and pulled. It groaned and squealed in protest but our earth pony strength got the better of it, nearly tearing it right off its hinges.

The scuttling was right above our heads.

“One more!” screamed Sidewinder. One good yank ripped the door free of its rust, sending us all sprawling. As we collapsed on our backs Sidewinder looked up into the macabre grimace of a spiderbug bearing its teeth. It screamed as the light shone right into its delicate mouthparts, and legs that should have been gripping the wall flew up to cover its face, making the beast topple right onto the Stalker.

I lunged for the open hatch, putting one hoof on the other side while the other wrapped around Sidewinder’s flailing tail. The pony attached to it was screeching like the spiderbug rolling around on top of him. Fortunately, Sidewinder’s convulsions made the rest of the horde hesitate as his headlamp jerked around in random directions, burning whatever it touched.

With one breath, I pulled Sidewinder right out from under the spiderbug and threw him into the next room. With another I fell backwards and leaned back into the nest, grabbing the hatch. With one more breath I pulled the door shut, but not fast enough. Spiny legs reached into the gap, trying to prize the door open again, and eyes uncountable pressed up against the crack to leer hungrily at me.

“Light!” I screamed over my shoulder. “Light! Gun! Shoot them! Shoot them, Sidewinder, my gun’s not primed!”

The Stalker was at my side in an instant, pumping the charger on his lamp to maximum brightness and shining it right into the ugly faces on the other side. My ears rang as he accompanied it with staccato barks of his machine gun, jamming the barrel right through the sliver of space those horrible legs were jutting out from and biting down on the trigger.

“Here’s something to chew on, bitches!”

I turned my head away as flecks of concrete and exploded exoskeleton rained down on me. The pressure from the other side let up just enough that my earth pony strength did the rest, slamming the hatch shut and crushing whatever spiderbug limbs still dangled onto my side. I turned the wheel and fell backwards, not even caring as I landed on a cerberus skeleton. Scratching and chittering on the other side of the hatch told us the bug horde was anything but calmed.

“You all right?” asked Sidewinder.

“I can hear bells ringing,” I grunted.

“You’ll get over it. Come on. With only one light between us we’re gonna have to stick to each other like these webs.”

The tunnel was infested with spiderbug nests and associated offal. The ugly, tumorous bulbs wriggled and writhed as we passed by as if they were aware of us. Some burst open to reveal more baby spiderbugs, which scampered away from our light.

“Fucking webs,” Sidewinder snapped, pushing through a sticky barrier stretching from wall to wall. “Lockbox, you got a light?”

“I should.” I reached into my saddlebag, ignoring the feel of tiny legs crawling around in my mane, and snatched a lighter out. “Nopony was kind enough to include this when he brought me my old gear.”

I knew where Sidewinder was going and bit down on the trigger, holding the tiny flame up to the webs. In spite of the moist environment their silky threads caught aflame and shriveled instantly, sending whole packs of the foul spawn therein scurrying to shelter. In moments the way was clear.

“Sidewinder,” I said, taking point, “before we get eaten alive down here, I want to ask why you came down after me.”

Sidewinder said nothing.

“Sidewinder?”

Silence. I turned back.

Sidewinder stood very still, watching me. He seemed distracted. Thoughtful. He was mulling over what to say. Then he grinned, and it made my skin crawl.

“You didn’t look at yourself when you saw the world with your magic, did you?” he asked. His voice echoed strangely in the tunnel, somehow sounding further away.

“No,” I answered, taking a step back.

“You should some time.” His ear flicked back. “By the way, we’re about to have company.”

He pointed his headlamp into a grate directly overhead. The pipe above was packed with spiderbugs. They screeched in horrible chorus as the light exposed the hunger in their eyes, and one fell straight down, smashing through the grate, landed right in front of me impaled on a piece of rebar. I ran before it stopped twitching.

“We’re gonna die,” Sidewinder remarked as he caught up with me. I looked over my shoulder and saw the tunnel behind us filled with yellow eyes blank with animal ferocity.

“I know,” I said. “Any ideas?”

“None. Unless we find a way to maybe stop the endless surge of death critters behind us and get a nice, easy source of light to keep them away.”

He reached into his saddlebag as he ran and nosed out a grenade.

“Like, say, one of these!”

He flipped it around and caught it with his teeth, leaning towards me. I caught his meaning and held up my lighter.

We paused for three seconds to light the fuse before we ran. The next time my legs kicked off the ground they bucked a spiderbug right in the face. Sidewinder held the burning fuse in his mouth, a crazy grin almost splitting his head in two. Just as I thought he might let us burn instead to be spared the fate of teeth and claws, he dropped it.

A heartbeat later something almost popped my eardrums and a searing heat washed over my flanks, spurring me to run faster. The walls of the tunnel came alive with dancing shadows over an orange light, and I looked over my shoulder to behold most of it in flames behind us. The spiderbugs that weren’t on fire milled about in confusion. The ones that were flailed and screamed and scattered their brethren as they burned alive. At the very least, it would keep them busy.

“Incendiaries!” Sidewinder whooped. “Never leave home without ‘em!”

We left the conflagration behind, but when we hit the inevitable dead end I still saw its glow in the tunnel behind us.

“What the hell, where’d this come from? We were making good time!”

I punched the solid wooden wall that blocked the entire tunnel as Sidewinder groused. “They must know about the bugs in here.”

“Well, that’s great,” said Sidewinder. “Fire and spiders behind and a wall right in front. I don’t think this is how anypony intends to die, but we’re sure as hell gonna get it if we don’t find a way out.”

“We passed some gates on the way back. Locked ones. We shoot them open and start walking.”

"Deeper into the spiderbug nests? No thank you, Lockbox.” Sidewinder sighed and put his head against the wall. “We’re gonna die without even knowing what was on the other side.”

I grunted, feeling the grain of the wood and how strong the beams were under my hoof. “Maybe I can find out. Stand back.”

I planted my hooves in the earth just like before… rather, the algae covered, rancid water. I closed my eyes. It came so easily now, my magic, it was like dropping into a river and letting it carry me. I followed the flow beyond the wall, listening for the slightest noise that might give me a clue of where we are or what might be there. Perhaps I could get a hint of how to escape.

But then I saw the backside of a tank barreling towards us.

“Lockbox?” Sidewinder asked. “What’s that noise?”

I opened my eyes and gulped.

Sidewinder slumped. “Shit.”

The wall burst.

Author's Note:

Welcome home.

Comments ( 13 )

Good to see a new chapter after so long!

Whelp, this chapter is fitting to the story's standard for a wild ride all the way through. I like how the pacing slowed to the more relaxed exit from town before the panic of spider's nest.

into the macabre grimace of a spiderbug bearing its teeth
he asked. his voice echoed strangely
He flipped it around and caught it with his teeth, leaning towards me. I caught his
meaning and held up my lighter.

1. Baring.
2. Extra full stop.
3. You accidentally split this sentence apart.

I almost want to say that Lockbox is now having a barrel of fun... but that would be a really bad pun:pinkiesad2:

And just like your author notes, I say welcome back. I also liked the scene you did in the beginning, a possible shout out to Metro: Last Light. I think it might be bad that when the parts where they were supposed to keep their light on, I kept hearing them recharge it throughout the story. I can still hear it now, the near cacaphony of the charger put into action against the spiders:pinkiecrazy:

Man it's been a pretty long time. I wish there was a quick synopsis so I could remember what happened.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

--AAAAAAAH! :D Time for your friendly neighborhood edit comment!

Missing a paragraph space after "get it out, get it out"

Also, the indents are kind of wonky toward the end of this first scene; is that intentional? (Okay, actually it's here and there.)

Nopony's back! :D Aaaaah! Not to mention a return to talk of the Dark Ones. I was beginning to fear that they'd been forgotten in favor of more immediate concerns.

Nice reassertion of purpose there. A reminder that Lockbox isn't your average silent protagonist.

Nopony, I'm so glad you are here to talk sense into him. ;_;

he answered.” And

It's no surprise its well guarded.

Nopony wants to die? He wants to starve? Man, he's fucked up. :V

How big are these spiderbugs? I never got a good sense for their size when they were introduced.

13k words and it's too short. It's too short, Squirrel, I need more! D:

4500976

Perhaps a "previously on Lockbox's adventure" prologue is in order before every chapter :trollestia:

4498760

It's kinda good to be back!

4498925

I write every chapter as it's own tiny little arc. Usually with a cliffhanger at the end. That way, I can feel satisfied even if the story overall hasn't been finished yet. Something always must happen, rather like episodes in a TV show.

4499015

Fixed and fixed! And I am glad that some people remember to hear the sound of the light charger in their heads. I know I heard it enough running through those darn spider levels. :twilightblush:

4500976

Uhhhh....

Lockbox has adventures! And... there's guns! And guts! And cursing. Lots and lots of cursing. Also cute ponies probably die? And then they curse, because they died.

Also guns.

4501043

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH My favorite big comment commentator is also back!

The spiderbugs are about the size of an actual pony when fully grown, but they vary quite a lot since there's so many and they're all different ages.

As for Lockbox not being a silent protagonist, I'm glad you brought that up. Lockbox is not a "typical" post-apocalyptic adventure hero. Artyom certainly wasn't either. Both of them are quite cynical, find killing distasteful if necessary, antisocial, and don't make friends easily. Lockbox doesn't like being here, doesn't like the death and violence, but not in some grandstanding, longsuffering way of a hero who is looking forward to the light at the end of the tunnel. He literally just kind of hates his life right now and truly wishes, for the most part, that none of this had happened to him. And honestly, wouldn't you?

Lockbox, when I developed him, was actually very heavily affected by Littlepip, which might have hurt me overall - people wanted to read about Littlepip when this story came out, and the fact that I was trying to make Lockbox as anti-Littlepip as possible certainly couldn't have helped popularity. Littlepip quickly takes on the burden of saving the whole Wasteland and the world at large. Lockbox struggles with just saving himself, and isn't even sure he wants to save the Metro.

Also the fact I update this story like once a year can't help. So PPPPPPPTTTTT. :pinkiesick:

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

4526473
Well, I hate Littlepip, so that's good by me. :V Admittedly, I've always found them both to be pretty fucking whiny (Lockbox especially), but I see now that it is in completely different ways: LP is crumbling under the burdens she willingly shoulders while LB is just sick of everything and wants to be done already.

Good to see a new chapter. Well played on the diamond dog front. Looking forward to next chapters. Remember that while the work of creating a story may take time - once it is done it is done forever.

7794578

A crossover with fallout was never planned. However, I began the story shortly after reading FO:E.

If others want such a crossover, I would be tickled to see them write it though...

Metro: Exodus is coming!!!, :yay: are you planning to make a new chapter soon??

Metro Universe: Amazing, great, and I am a great fan
Fallout Universe: Amazing, great, and I am a great fan
Fallout: Equestria universe: Horrible and I wish it never happened
This: Pending, but leaning on the same of the Fallout: Equestria universe. I don't like ponified stories in general, but the metro universe intrigues me so much I just have to read this.

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