//------------------------------// // Nothing Lies Here // Story: Fallout Equestria: A Raiders Mark // by Vocal Sonder //------------------------------// It was the nothingness that rose him from his deep slumber. His fetlocks almost tingled it was so quiet. The only thing in his periphery was the faint pitter patter of his heartbeat against the silence. Groggily he opened his eyes and looked out into the... he wasn't actually sure... An endless white expanse stretched before him on all sides, totally and evenly formed save for the gentle ripples and waves that ran along its long surface. Like a long sheet of paper it hovered just in front of his nose and seemed to move with his every glance about. His eyes you flick to the left and the ripples would follow, but change, teasing out smaller waves with each passing ripple and fold. Even though it wasn't touching him, it tingled his fur. The deep haze ebbed and flowed, meandering this way and that with incomprehensible direction. With each breath he, took patterns would become clear within the soupy surface. Like a branch pushed into sand, the creases would multiply until running their course and falling away to nothing against the waves. He snorted through his nose a short puff of air. Little lines scattered this way that in front of his eyes as his breath punched into the white miasma. His glossy eyes wandered, fully entranced by the odd shapes that spread from him into the vast nothingness beyond high above his head. He felt an overwhelming sense of calm deep in his chest. It felt like his lungs and heart were wrapped, like a pillow in a case, or like a swaddled foal in a warm blanket. He felt like he could just wind himself into a ball and just float here for eternity. Smelling the crisp air. Taking in the shapes that played about in the smoke all around him. He looked away from the lines high above as they finally ended their race to the heavens. Turning back with a smile on his lips to blow air again he was surprised when he realized something new had appeared in the perfect sea of white. Slowly leaking a small stream of black smoke into the void like bubbles into an ocean he could see a tiny pinprick of pitch black darkness. Blinking hard, he tried to get his tired eyes to banish the dot and return the immaculate surface that had existed before, but without any feeling he found himself slowly drifting closer. The leak was widening. No longer merely a pinprick the hole was now the size of his hoof. Craning his neck away he tried to pull back, to pull himself away from the spot. He got closer, closer still. Until he stopped Eyes straining to tear themselves away he was peered into the inky blackness beyond and saw... Nothing. Scrunching up his nose he blew a puff of air towards the wisp of oozing blackness, hoping to drive it away and bring back the lines. But before even his breath could fully reach it it had shrunk back as if defending itself from the assault. It receded again to a tiny pinprick as he watched and leaked no further but remained, tiny and dark against the waves. Turning his head away from the blemish he stared into to the open expanse with curious eyes. He could hear something. Somewhere far above, past anything and everything, he could hear a faint warble begin to be played on an old grand piano. His ears shifted forwards to strain against the silence to hear it better and he was just about to just make out the flowing chords of a song when they suddenly ceased to play. He could almost, but not quite, remember. For a time he sat and listened. His body continuing to float endlessly in the mire as the trailing end of the notes wafted past him to the great space below. Straining against the echo he tried vainly to hear the end, but it had faded away into the mist just as subtly as it had arrived. Loosing a disheartened sigh, he leaned back and closed his eyes to block out the white. It was starting to annoy him, the nothingness. Why exist at all if it would just torment him? He opened his eyes and grunted in annoyance. He could hear his sigh being carried away on the ebbing tides of white until he could hear no more than a faint echo. He lay quietly in the tide, the feelings of serene calm permeating every nook and cranny of his previously tired muscles while his mind struggled with the rising annoyance he felt. Like a dichotomy of oil and water the two feelings gelled together in his body and warred against each other; flip flopping over and over enough to make him feel a bit sick. Like he had done one too many somersaults. Like a calm bit of water flowing through a sheet of silk he let the sensations wax and wane until again he was alone in a sea of nothingness. Untold time could have floated by without his caring. He lay still and waited. Every once and a while he could feel his muzzle brush into a particularly thick bit of the white ether as it passed on by. Each soft caress of the fog would spark his mind briefly briefly with an old smell here and a subtle taste there, seemingly to linger just long enough to goad his curiosity in what it was but too short lived to truly identify. The teasing game of cat and mouse with his memory was starting to really get on his nerves. Almost like a drip of water over the course of days that could drive a pony crazy. I was during a taste of what could have only been described as 'sunlight' that he felt a new sensation start take over. Little pleasant tingles sparkled all over his scalp in a cascade of invisible static. Each one almost like a tiny hook of velcro plucking pleasantly at the base of each passing hair. Teasing out every little good feeling he'd ever had and multiplying it against the backdrop of the world he found himself in. It worked its magic to sharpen his senses into something keener than they ever had been here. He inhaled and his lungs filled with the cold, crisp air of an autumn wind. Catharsis washed over his brow and chest with warm feelings of knowing. With it came the wet haze of sodden leaves underhoof on either side of him. Each new breath brought his groggy thoughts further and further into this land of feeling, far away from his start as the pleasant tingles continued. He breathed in and out to keep the smells and sensations within reach; but it was in vain. Shortly the vision faded away from his mind, just as he was beginning to hear the faint start of a scream. He tensed. The small noise echoed into the malaise and he whished it to stop but it just kept on going up, and up, and up , and up. A marble of fear had started to form in his throat as it finally left the reach of his ears. He shivered. He should know. The pinprick of pitch black darkness was almost as tall and wide as he was now. It bubbled and frothed like a cauldron against the white fog that housed it. Pulling his fetlocks closer to his chest he watched as the white void come to life with little fizzling bubbles as the two colors battled away. Almost like a Sparkle Cola shaken too hard the voids fought against one another for supremacy. Small chunks of blackness chipping off white edges that were shorn away to float into their own battles and tides. Eyes wide open now and irises merely a millimeter wide, he slowly reached out with a trembling hoof to the beyond where he couldn't see. Suddenly and without warning the tickle on his scalp that had not yet ceased flared into a frenzy of fire. Flying, falling, jumping, crawling. He felt like he too was slowly able to realize all the feelings rising within him to count the black thoughts that whizzed past. He stretched out his arms to steady himself and ended up touching a small war in the white being fought with the black. The shock nearly killed him from the ferocity it wrought. Crying out in pain and terror he clutched his hoof to his chest in writhing agony until the gnawing pressure lifted from his foreleg. Through gritted teeth he hissed a curse. He couldn't tell why, but he needed to remember them all. All of the smells. All of the good feelings, the bad one too. And the sounds. Especially the sounds. Nothing could to go to waste or be left to forget. He had tried to let go, but something however was desperately trying to hold onto him. Even now. A horrid feeling seeped into his gut. Like a damp, clammy towel it wound its way up and around his hind leg in a vice-like grip. A flash of memory snapped past as a spoiling bubble of black fog tore towards the up. Visions of a monster hoping to clamber up from its watery grave to gnaw at his legs and drag him below burst into being as he struggled against the thing. It held fast against his thrashing, serving to only weaken his legs a bit more as the warring bubbles raced faster. A sudden thought sprang to life throughout the malaise making the white expanse shimmer. The voice was unbidden, booming, full of barbs and talons meant to hold him still. LET ME SAVE YOU He froze. Panic overtaking his struggles as the thing dragged him down, down past the warring bubbles towards the gray miasma that was its domain. He didn't believe it for one second. Snapping from the fear he thrashed, trying to throw off its cold, icy grip as his heart raced. One mighty kick after another yielded no ground as the thing drug him closer and closer to the end. He could almost feel the cold slick mud writhe up to his heels before it was too late. He thundered a bellow so deep it shook the expanse around him and kicked out with a mighty buck striking something solid for the first time just as he neared the bottom. Almost immediately he felt the hold on his leg loosen and with another swift kick it slithered away and left him altogether. As it did, he left the cold confines of the gray and began to float untethered into the great expanse above without direction. Tumbling head over haunches errant tingles still clutched at his mind as he drifted forwards faster and faster. Soon so fast that he was rising in concert with the black bubbles that surrounded him, all of which zipped towards the great white up at blazing speed. He could feel the density around him shift suddenly. With each growing second the white sheet that surrounded his tumbling form became lighter and lighter and pressed in closer and closer. Soon, as it pressed in tighter to his frame, the color of his coat began to rub into it, mussing its impeccable sheen to more resemble the grey rain clouds he sometimes saw over the distant mountaintops. It pressed into his eyes like they were made of water and soon all he could see was the expanse above him. He gasped. Blazing orbs shimmered like a billion stars in the open air all around him and into the distance as far as his eyes could see. Each one a brilliant dot of gold throwing a close halo of light on the canvas of grey. It was hard to look directly at them as they whipped past. There were just too many, and where they clustered the shimmer combined into a frightful glow hot enough to make him squint. His eyes wide in amazement he drifted upwards at a speed he could not define. It wasn't until one of them whizzed by at such a speed as to make a snap that had him cover his ears did he realize how animated they were now that he had entered their domain. They ha begun to rise with him! He merged with a cluster as they all rose together, spinning and twirling around him like a gale of fireflies. He watched as a sphere in its accent wafted close enough to his nose to make him shy away from the glare. Only after letting his eyes adjust was he was able to finally see into depths of its inner coil. The shine muddied the image, but he watched transfixed as deep within the orb a small brown colt was swaddled into a gigantic hug from behind by a mare that he could not fully see. Burning with a sudden need he reached for the image in a lunge, but it was snatched away by an emerging tendril of smoke before his hoof could get any closer than an inch away. Small little pinpricks of blackness had began erupting from the grey all around now. Tendrils of smoke that wrapped themselves around the rising spheres and snatched the glistening orbs from view into the depths of their otherworldly bellies. Stunned, he had only a moment to contemplate the vision in the orb he had seen before he was wracked with a feeling of loss so great it nearly coiled his stomach upon itself. Raw hurt filled his chest and he suffered a whimper as he clutched at his frame in a desperate plea to make it all stop. But he kept rising, even as a tear rolled from his eye and floated away into the gray nothingness. Only his lack of breath finally ended the silence. All that was left was a sound, a terrible sound so far, far overhead. His heart steadily froze as the movement brought him along faster and faster. Upwards towards the unending wail in the heavens. More tears had streaked his face and reflected the blazing orbs around him as he watched the spent tears speed away to the top of the unending vastness of the grey malaise beyond. They collected there and flattened into a thin sheet of glass. He rose faster, and in the unknown reaches beyond the glass a banshee's scream rattled the veil between the him and whatever lay above. His face met the glass at speed. He erupted through the water with a whooshing roar and a scream. Fragments of the glass pane were sent spiraling out into the great storm beyond as the silence he had been enveloped in for so long was replaced with a monstrous cacophony so dense it flattened his ears to his skull by sheer weight of volume. Cartwheeling end over end he flew countless feet as he arced over the waves before splashing down into the endless gray green sea. Huge swells crashed and thrashed as rain and wind pelted his bobbing face in an effort to drive him below the surface. Shards of shimmering glass pattered into the ocean swells around him and cut deeply into the rising tides that threatened to overwhelm him. Far away, a bolt of lightning struck a section of the ocean and cracked a peal of thunder so loud that it almost flattened the roiling waters below. Choking on the waves he paddled as best as he could to stay bobbing at the surface. He was steadily loosing the battle between him and the whitewalls as they relentlessly pounded him beneath the surface again and again in a flurry of bubbles and ash. A shriek from a voice above had him soon staring directly into the mouth of the whirling storm as he came heaving back to the surface for the then countless time. Spitting out mouthfuls of salty brine he watched to his horror as a pair of translucent voids descended from the grey splitting skies above. Monstrous portals through which he watched a slowly clearing picture of a world beyond. One of blood and bone and fur. He pushed out with his front legs to paddle against the cold grip of the ocean to escape the looming windows to another world and immediately regretted doing so. Corpses floated everywhere in the choppy waters now. Having appeared either from the depths or the sky he had no idea, but as he thrashed away from the portals he managed to knock into a few and realized he didn't truly care. Gagging on the water, he was blocked in by a trio of them as they were tossed frightfully in the swells. He could see the nearest of them roll over to reveal a face covered in hair made of gold. He choked back a gag as anguish flooded every nook and cranny of his frame. Directly overhead now the windows blotted out the sky. Growing to such proportions as to block the rain from striking the ocean. The wind could still be felt as bolt after bolt of lighting struck the waters all around him frying white tipped crests to ash in an instant. Craning his neck upwards to stay afloat he bobbed in the surf and could only watch through rain swept eyes as the vision from the lens's finally cleared. It was a nose. Dripping with blood, as somepony screamed past the iron bit stuck between their lips. Flames danced and shook with a impassioned rage past the iron cage that encircled the limits of the vision as another shock coursed through the writhing muscles surrounding his nostrils. Lungful after lungful of air was sucked out of his breast to be thrown to the unknown beyond as he once again heard the wail he had grown so accustomed to. He moved to cover his ears but it couldn't, wouldn't, help. He wanted so badly for it to stop, everything, the tightness of his taut muscles aching with every thrash. He wanted so badly to return down below. To the quiet, to the unknown, to the end. Let me save you Thoughts started to race forwards across his scalp like bolts of lightning. He could almost feel them burn hollow ridges into his skull at they tore back and forth. How long had it been now. Months? How long had he been here? His head ached, the screaming never letting a second go by without its unyielding presence. Pops and snaps accompanied the bedlam. Brain cells fried in an instant with each passing eternity. He bellowed hoarsely into the storm above. Fear lanced at his heart. How long?! What did- How long had he been gone? Wh- when, where was he? He screamed again as another torrent of lightning rained on his skull. With a painful yank he was driven forwards with a blinding speed straight from the ocean; right towards the windowed world above. Faster, faster than ever before, by every hair of his being he was pulled towards them. The heavens thundered downwards in kind, tasting his memories. His brain rung with an endless cacophony of sounds, a mare singing a lullaby. A gunshot's reverberation. An eerie coalescing of angry shouts and tearful screams. The feel of a blade in his hooves, slowly sliding home into yet another chest... fuzzy ears on strings. A morphing face suspended on wire, laced with sand to stare from eternity to the waking island that was reality. A brief yet interminable amount of time before anything or everything could ever occur. He almost could feel the seconds slip by like they were years. They tickled his eyelashes. - "So... to t- than, coming." Suddenly his vision was enveloped by the picture of the world outside his waning prison, like a projection on the inside of a ball. He saw others just like it side by side as it rushed down to meet him. In a blink the world finally snapped into focus. And he was screaming for real this time.