> Winter Unending > by Random Gamer > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > First Chapter > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hailing from an unknown place, a warm breeze touched her face, gently swiped her cheeks and then left as swiftly, as it arrived. The nothingness slowly melted away, giving way to her consciousness. In a burst of energy and bleak sunlight, she awoke from her slumber, lying atop a pile of rubble. A hole could be seen in the ceiling, with the sun peering in, laughing at her as she laid there, barely alive. Although her head felt like a boulder and her hooves ignored her commands, she slowly got up and had a blurred look at her surroundings. All that she could make out was a room, later joined by a door as her vision gradually became more clear. With no windows, the room had a dimmed, shadowy appearance. Snow was slowly gathering in the room, but it wasn't new to the room. Judging by the large patches of it all around, it must have been at least a day since she ended up here. After a look around, an uneasy feeling spontaneously emerged from the vast depths of her mind. It took her a while to recognise it, but when the walls started closing in and the roof was getting closer to the floor, she felt it in its fullest. She quickly walked over to the door and reached for a handle, only to find it had none. Since she had no other choice, she gave the door a push. After her soft touch, the door was freed from its hinges and fell down, the vived light from outside temporarily blinding her. As she cautiosly walked out of the dark room, she was immediately frozen in place, captivated by the sight of a land unlike any other. Everything, as far as the eye could see, was white. Awestruck, she stared mouth agape as every single building, both nearby and distant, was in ruin and buried beneath layer upon layer of snow, with no signs of anyone else out in the open. Skyscrapers stood as the only survivors and were easily seen from afar. They were ravaged, barely stood upright, with windows broken and walls cracked. Apart from the howl of the wind and the sound her hooves made in the snow, there was complete silence as she went further out and onto the street. "What happened?" she thought to herself and looked from one end of the street to the other. "Where is everypony? Is this some sort of overblown pegasi prank?" A piece of paper tumbled towards her, propelled by a small gust of wind. Grabbing it as it flew towards her, she recognised that it was an old newspaper, dating back to mid November. She looked at it briefly and then begun reading its headline. She wanted to read it out loud since there was no one to tell her to stop, but something made her reconsider. "Perhaps next time," She thought. "New, cutting-edge power plant set to start its service next week, promises to bring safe and clean power to the whole region. Despite the chances of a catastrophic failure being almost equal to zero, protests against dangerous crystal energy continue to rise in numbers." The rest of the text talked about the power plant in greater detail, such as how much bits it cost to build, the area it covered and even the amount of equines that would get a job maintaining the plant. Unfortunately, all the important parts, like the numbers, were either missing or were simply unreadable due to damage the newspaper had sustained, probably from freezing and defrosting over and over again. Although she still had no idea why the city was like this, the convenient piece of flying paper gave her a good start. Whatever happened, it must have had something to do the unpredictable nature of using crystals as sources of power. Supposedly, as written in the newspaper, various attempts were made in the past, from single-crystal batteries to large-scale generators. Of course, details she would deem interesting, such as the year, date or even the name of the inventor, were simply gone. Thankfully, after a thorought search, she found something of value the location of the power plant. Based on the assumption that something went horribly wrong at the plant, she decided that going there to find some answers is the best course of action. Snow wasn't uncommon in November, but it was never this destructive. "West Manehattan Avenue," she read the location aloud to herself, sighing. "Really wish I had a map." With that said, she tossed the newspaper aside and continued walking. To her surprise, the street signs stayed intact, but were slightly bent. As she got closer to one of them, a mass of snow moved out of her way for no apparent reason, causing her to jump slightly from surprise. "Hello?" She asked. "Is-is anyone there?" The snow, however, didn't respond to her question and instead, remained motionless, only moving on its own when the wind swept it. "Oh dear, it's already started. I'm going crazy from loneliness.." She thought to herself once more. "I need to find someone. Fast." Picking up the pace, she approached the sign and cleaned the snow off of it, hoping to get at least some idea at where she's at. Oddly enough, the sign was completely blank. She closed her eyes and opened them again. Before she pinch herself, something appeared on it. Instead of giving her the name of the location she was currently at, the sign simply stated 'The Right Way' with an arrow pointing to the right. Looking at it from various angles and even biting herself in the hoof to make sure it wasn't a dream, she concluded that what she was seeing was indeed real. This made her think; was she really all alone or was some unicorn nearby just messing with her? She looked around. No, there wasn't. It was just her and an ocean's worth of snow. With a sigh, she looked right to see what all the fuss was about. The street was as lifeless and white as the one she was currently on, but it had one major difference – a stairway that went down into the metro. It was almost completely iced over, but that wasn't anything a few good kicks would fix. Looking to the left, she saw a thick, ominous fog. It was rather odd that it only came from one side of the street, but she didn't pay much attention to it. After all, unless the fog doubled as the world's most silent and efficient blizzard, there was nothing to worry about. The moment she thought that, however, it did do something unsettling – it started to close in. Rapidly. And if that wasn't bad enough, voices came from it. As she listened and the wall of gray went closer and closer, the voice became clearer, but quickly degenerated from barely comprehensible muttering to screams of agony. When silhouettes started to appear in the fog, she figured it would be a good time to stop fooling around and run away. "I now have a level of aversion to fogs, shadows," she thought as she fled the quickly-advancing fog. "And ponies in clown costumes." Unknown to her, a second arrow appeared on the sign, stating 'Death' and pointing to the left. Upon reaching its iced-over entrance, she missed the first step and plummeted down the stairs. By a blind stroke of luck, she didn't break any bone, but the fall left her in a rather uncomfortable position. When she got up and looked the entrance, she only found a large slab of ice. "Great, now I'm trapped," she said to herself. "Here's to hoping this'll lead me somewhere warm and cozy." Lights flickered as she navigated Manehattan's underground subway system, but it was still better than complete darkness. Empty, stationary trains were seen on her right, and even though she could probably start at least one of them up, they all lacked power. That explained the flickering – the lighs were running on a backup power supply for Celestia knows how long and were probably on their last breath. After a while, the cold and the lack of air conditioning finally got to her and she had to regularly stop evey once in a while to harm herself up by breathing on her hooves and rubbing them together. When it became apparent that the trick could only work for so long, she started being paranoid. What if the sign lied? What if the screams she heard coming from the fog were actually rescue teams? They lacked flashlights and talked through one another, but she expected no less from a city so understaffed and indebted that it was a miracle it even survived this long. Many more stops later, her eyes flickered with hope as she saw another set of stairs leading to the surface. Rays of light were clearly hiting the floor and the idea of all this being just one bad dream made her happy. But when she made a single step towards her goal, all Hell broke loose. The lights' flickering became seizure-inducing and after a few nauseating moments, they short-circuited. Not one by one to give her eyes a chance to adjust – all by once. Her idea of a warm bed went away as quickly it arrived and with, the stairs that could have saved her from this nightmare. "No! Nonono!" She let out in desperation, kicking the checkerboarded floor. "Come back!" She sighed as the black faded away and she could somewhat see in the pitch-black darkness. Her heart was pounding; she wasn't this unnerved since that one time she accidentally locked herself in a small bathroom and left the keys on the other side. But even back then, at least it had a light. She recalled on how, as a child, she always kept the lights on, even during the night. Unlike most adults, her usage of a night lamp followed her well into her adulthood, even though she had forgotten the reason why she had it in the first place. Was it nostalgia or just inabilty to let go of her childhood? Now, she knew – she didn't fear darkness, she feared the things that hid within. She wasn't a fan of anything beyond the scope of magic or technology, but what she went through so far made her reconsider. Something was out there and it wasn't looking for a friendly conversation. As walked through the hallway, she noticed a figure before her. She didn't hear it walk and thus, she assumed it must have teleported. But even then, wouldn't there at least be some sound? She went closer. Either her eyesight was really bad or the pony gray skin and closed eyes. Her ears perked up – it didn't even breathe. When she approached it and stopped within a hoof's reach, she finally found out why – it was a statue. Before she could lean in and get an even better look, it moved. Well, calling it a movement would be a overstatement. It simply shifted from one pose to another, now standing on her hind legs, donning a winter coat and holding something in one of its hooves. Unlike the sign from earlier, this one didn't make her jump, but it did make her question her sanity. Taking the coat and quickly putting it on, the other thing the statue had lit up and revealed itself to be a flashlight. Neat. What ruined the otherwise warming event was the wall it illuminated. Written in red, capital letters, the wall spelled out 'GUILTY.'