//------------------------------//
// Chapter 11: The Last Train Car 
// Story: This is the Last Train Car 
// by Unwhole Hole 
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Soon, they were all sprinting. None of the three were athletic ponies; not one of them was a farmer who spent every day tending crops, or a Pegasus with an occupation in the hearty fields of weather management or athletic performance. They were a teacher, a merchant, and a manager- -but they still ran. Toward something and away from something, and yet toward and away from a series of identical rooms, escaping from each toward a place that was exactly homologous, each praying to every alicorn they could name that they would see the glass apple and the exit.

            Train cars passed by quickly now, one after the other. Aisles, seats, doors, repeated without any among them counting how many passed. Every single one was the same- -and yet Berry began to notice them changing. It was the same way the smell had come, and the same way it had continued to grow into something fetid and unrecognizable in the deepest of the cars. Each car looked the same- -but somehow, Berry began to realize just how much the benches resembled the pews in some strange church, and how the ceilings looked like the arching vaults of a dim cathedral.

            The cars were bigger than normal train cars. Massive, even. Far greater than any train should have been able to carry. In fact, they barely looked like train cars at all- -and yet they were still identical. The same as they had been the first time Berry had seen them. Identical in every proportion, color, and design- -and yet somehow Berry had just never realized, nor could she now comprehend how she had never noticed that this was no longer a train at all- -and that it never had been.

            There were other riders. Berry never saw them, and never looked at them- -but she could feel them. They were watching from the seats behind, their heads slowly turning as the three ponies passed by. Even though Berry never once looked back, she knew that they were slowly standing, rising from their seats as though they were trying to disembark- -but she never once heard the sound of their hoofsteps. There was no sound apart from the rapid hoofsteps of the three violet mares, and their heavy breathing and occasional whimpers of fright and desperation.

            Then the train shifted as if it had struck a bump in the track. Except that if what Sparkler said was true- -if the train was not moving- -it could not have. Yet still it lurched and shifted. The lights began to flicker.

            “NO!” cried Sparkler. “Not again!”

            Just as the crystals faded, she ground to a stop and with a tremendous effort lit her horn with the brightest and most dazzling glow that Berry had ever seen. Both she and Cheerilee had to shield their eyes from the glow, but as bright as it was it was barely bright enough to illuminate the seats closest to the aisle for two rows in front of and behind them.

            Beyond Sparkler’s glow was darkness- -except that it did not seem to be a lack of light. Wherever Sparkler’s touched, the train car was a train car. It had semi-comfortable seats and a floor with conservative, high-traffic carpet. Where the light did not touch, the train car seemed to end- -and Berry Punch had the mad idea that it did.

            She could not see what lurked in that darkness, but she could hear it. Sloshing, wet sounds of things moving at distance that should not have been achievable in the narrow train car, and the low groans of an unidentifiable material shifting around them. She felt the hot moist air in that darkness, and smelled the familiar scent of a profoundly old pony-made structure mixed with damp rot.

            “Sparkler!” screamed Cheerilee, her voice rising several octaves higher than Berry had thought possible. Cheerilee pointed at the edge of the darkness, and saw that it was getting closer. Sparkler’s light was not fading- -in fact, at Cheerilee’s cry it had only grown stronger- -but it was illuminating less and less. It was as though the darkness were growing thinner and pushing inward.

            “Sparkler, we have to move!” cried Berry.

            “I- -can’t!” gasped Sparkler, struggling hard against the darkness. Tears were pouring down her cheeks. The amount of concentration she was using had rendered her unable to move without risking the glow collapsing completely.

            The darkness pressed forward suddenly, eating nearly a foot of space. Through the fading light, Berry Punch was almost sure that she had seen the surface of the nearest seat change- -but was glad that the darkness obscured it before her brain could comprehend what her eyes were seeing. Had she known what lay beyond that glow, she might have run into it screaming- -and never returned.

            What she did begin to see was the reflection of eyes. Cheerilee screamed when she saw them as well. They were bright specks of white light in the darkness, tiny and wide-spaced, vastly unlike the large and expressive eyes of ponies. These eyes expressed nothing and held no response. They only watched in the silence, seeing the light but refusing to approach.

            There were so many, and Berry saw them moving easily through where there should have been seats. Some stood back, far beyond where the walls of the train car should have ended- -if its walls even existed in the darkness anymore, or if whatever boundary stood in the distance could be considered a wall at all. This was a train, and they were the passengers- -but this was not a train, and they were not ponies at all.

            “Sparkler!” cried Berry, grabbing onto her friend, “don’t give up!”

            “That’s easy for you to say- -” She cried out as the darkness crept closer.

            “Lee!” shouted Berry. “We have to move her!” Cheerilee looked at her sister. Her body was shaking and she had nearly frozen. “LEE!”

            Cheerilee gasped, and looked at Berry as though she were seeing her for the first time. She closed her eyes and nodded. Together, her and Berry picked up Sparkler. As a unicorn, Sparkler’s body was oddly light- -but she was terribly weak, and she felt cold. Berry did not know how it felt to use magic, but it was quite apparent that Sparkler was vastly overexerting herself. She was clearly in pain, and her light was beginning to pulse and falter.

            Outside her perimeter, the eyes began to move. There was a sound of something wet and large shifting, but not hoofsteps. The owners of the eyes moved without sound as they converged on each other. As they did, their eyes seemed to merge and shift. Berry stared, transfixed. She had envisioned them as something like ponies, but the way they were moving and the way perspective was changing around her meant that such a form was surely impossible.

            “They’re like stars,” she whispered.

            “Berry!” cried Cheerilee, “don’t look at them!”

            Berry gasped, and tried to turn away. Before she did, though, she hesitated- -and saw the hundreds of reflective circles merge into a single pair. These did not just reflect Sparkler’s light, but seemed to glow from within. Berry suddenly recalled the way the pure white lights of the station looked through the tinted glass of the train cars: dull red and strange.

            Then, suddenly, she was pushed to the side. Cheerilee had just hit her, hard, and although Berry had barely felt it she felt herself turn away from the train car and toward the door to the next one- -or where she knew that it had to be. She and her sister pushed forward, carrying Sparkler over them like a light- -or a beacon. At first, all her light revealed was more isle and the edges of more and more seats. The car they were in seemed long- -impossibly long. For a moment Berry wondered just how far they would need to go to reach the door- -if this one last train car went on as the rest of the train did, stretching forever deeper into this darkness and emptiness. She felt herself beginning to lose hope, and Sparkler’s weight on her back began to grow heavier as the light around them started to fade.

            Then it came. The door appeared as the darkness receded from it slowly and with great difficulty, barely showing the edges of whatever strange living flesh dwelt beneath it. Berry did not even slow. She shouldered Sparkler’s weight onto Cheerilee and ran straight into the door, slamming it open with her shoulder. It gave silently, but she felt something in her shoulder pop and break. The pain was intense, but Berry barely noticed as she fell headlong into the train car. She then felt another pain as Cheerilee tripped over her, tipping Sparkler halfway into one of the seats beside her.

            Berry unleashed some choice language and rolled over, grabbing her injured shoulder. The pain subsided somewhat after her tirade, and she lifted her head. “Cheerilee?”

            “I’m here,” said Cheerilee, partially standing and rubbing her head. “Ow…”

            “Sparkler?” Berry’s breath suddenly caught in her chest, and she tried to stand up before wincing and rolling back on the ground. “Sparks? SPARKS?”

            She suddenly felt a gentle force across the fur of her cheeks. Sparkler sat up shakily. She was pale and nearly green from exertion, and the glow from her horn had vanished. “I’m here,” she said. “And I hurt.” She lay back down and groaned. “I need to sleep. For a year. Ideally being snuggled by a mare with very soft chest fluff.”

            “We can’t stop now,” said Berry, breathing hard. “The train, the thing behind us, we have to- -”

            The train suddenly jerked again, and Sparkler sat up wide eyed while Cheerilee froze. Berry almost screamed, but instead cried out in pain as something heavy struck her directly in the forehead, causing a blaze of stars and other assorted lights to flash through her vision.

            “Dingleberries!” she swore, grabbing her face. “My face! What in the name of hot buttered Celestia- -”

            She was interrupted by laughter. This only made her more angry. Berry sat up suddenly, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, and was about to scream at her sister and Sparkler when they both pointed.

            “Look!” cried Cheerilee. She was laughing, but tears were also running down her face.

            Berry turned, and she suddenly burst into laughter as well. The object that had struck her in the head lay next to her, having only rolled a few inches down the train car. It was a glass apple.

            “Ha!” she cried, standing suddenly and then almost falling when she tried to put weight on her injured leg. “The- -the apple! We’re…” She looked out the window of the train. The apple had fallen because the vehicle had come to a stop; it had fallen off the seat, just as her punch glass had days before. They had even landed in the same spot- -Berry had been lying in the stain of her spilled punch when the apple had struck her.

            The station outside was not the one in Canterlot. They were back in Ponyville. The train had come to a stop, waiting for them to disembark.

            “We’re here!” cried Cheerilee. “Oh my stars, I’ve never been so glad to be in Ponyville!”

            Sparkler almost agreed, but instead just burst into tears. Berry understood how she felt.

            With a shaking hoof, she picked up the apple and turned to the open door on the edge of the car. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go. Before it starts up again.”

            At that suggestion, Sparkler and Cheerilee both rushed to the door. Berry followed with some difficulty due to her shoulder, but she was still able to reach it. As she stepped down the stairs, she paused and looked back at the last car. It was the same as the rest, identical to the way every other car had ever been. An ordinary commuter car, complete with efficient looking seats and a downright boring carpet with just one red stain in it. But the others had all been the same too. They were all the same- -all identical, down to the last.

            Then she stepped off into the darkness. The night was very cold, and she shivered as Cheerilee helped her onto the platform.

            “Your shoulder,” she said.

            “It’s fine,” said Berry, which was something of a lie. “If it’s bad in the morning, I’ll go to the doctor. But first, I need help.”

            “Help?”

            “The clock. The station has a clock. Every station does. We need to get to it.”

            Sparkler’s eyes widened, because she knew what Berry was saying. “You want to know how long we’ve been gone?”

            Cheerilee’s joy suddenly faded as she remembered that element of riding this particular train. “Oh Celestia,” she whispered.

            Still, she did not abandon Berry. together, they walked to the clock. It was not large, but it was quite accurate. It consisted of a round dial that told the time on a twenty-four-hour scale, as well as a mechanical system below that showed the day and date behind a plate of glass.

            Sparkler lit her horn- -something that quite clearly pained her, even though she was barely able to produce a glow with the strength of a candle- -and Berry looked up at the main clock.

            “One fifty,” she said, confused. Then she looked down at the base of the clock, which indicated the date. She inhaled sharply.

            “Sweet Luna,” said Sparkler. She turned to Berry, her eyes wide. “That’s today’s date. I mean…that’s the day we left.”

            “That’s not possible,” said Cheerilee. “That’s the time we got on the train. The time we left!”

            As she said it, Berry heard the slightest screech of metal moving against metal. She looked over her shoulder, as did Sparkler and Cheerilee. That sound had been the only indication of the train departing, as it was otherwise silent. Berry watched as it pulled away from the station without a sound as exactly five empty cars trailed behind it on their way toward Canterlot. As it left to continue its journey, though, for just a moment she thought she caught the glimpse of a mare standing in the last train care- -watching her as the train departed. Watching, and smiling.