//------------------------------// // Cornered // Story: Not a Word // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// The sudden darkness was so oppressive Lock reflexively recoiled from it. She’d never been in darkness this complete before; it felt like a physical blindfold on her eyes. She lifted up her hoof in front of her. Nothing. She waved it. The darkness didn’t change at all. Her heart leaped into her throat and threatened to pound out her ears. Somewhere ahead of her, Lock could hear the batpony walking down the stairs, but that didn’t matter at the moment. She began turning in place and reached out blindly, batting at the air. “Hey!” she hissed. “Where ar-” She almost jumped out of her skin when the unicorn lightly hit her on the back. “I-I’m here.” “Light,” whispered Lock. “We need light, now.” A small orb flared to life at the end of the unicorn’s horn, throwing long shadows around the room. It was barely enough to see the immediate area, but it was enough t- Twang. A crossbow bolt flew through the shelves between them, burrowing into a barrel and sticking. Lock yelped and glanced into the dark it had come from. She couldn’t see the batpony. But the batpony could see them. Crk-crk-crk-crk-CHKT. “No more light,” snapped Lock, and they were plunged back into the solid darkness. Struggling to find something, anything to do to feel secure, Lock flicked her tail in the unicorn’s face. “My tail,” she whispered. “Bite it or wrap it around your hoof or- I don’t care what, just find a way to stay close t-” Chirp. A strange, high-pitched sound reverberated throughout the cellar. It sounded like a songbird (indoors?), but the unicorn stiffened, like she was going into shock. Chirp. “We need to move,” whispered the unicorn. “Batpony. Echolocation.” Chirp. Frig. Okay, where was the door to outside? Along the wall, somewhere. Where? She didn’t know. The darkness had disoriented her. Whatever. Get to the wall, any wall. “Tail,” she snapped to the unicorn. “And stay quiet.” She felt a slight tug as the unicorn took a hold of the hairs somehow and she began slowly walking down the aisle. She kept her front hoof out, cluelessly patting at the space in front of her. Chirp. It was impossible to tell where the chirping was coming from. The sound bounced around the cellar until Lock could make out at least four different echos. She hoped the batpony wouldn’t be able to make out any shapes, but with the way her luck was running tonight? Not a chance. The sounds of the batpony’s footsteps were constant, steady, and assured. Chirp. Chirp. Lock’s hoof bumped against a corner between the floor and a wall, but it didn’t feel like stone. She patted the wall. Wood. Flat. The backside of a cupboard. Left or right? Eenie-meenie- right. Hugging the wood like it was her mother, Lock slowly moved to the right. The unicorn followed. Chirp chirp. The echolocative sounds reminded her of the drone of tinnitus: high-pitched, irritating, sourceless, and always there. If the batpony was moving around the cellar, Lock couldn’t hear her. She reached the corner of the cabinet, and the security of the wall turned away from her. Reluctantly, Lock kept moving forward and nervously swung her hooves through the empty blackness. Chirpchirpchirp. She took another few steps forward and hit another wall. Stone. Yes! “We’re at the wall,” she whispered to the unicorn, “so we ju-” Twang. A wet thud; the unicorn screamed. Lock’s tail jerked. The unicorn took off down the aisle past Lock, gasping in pain and fear. The light bloomed again and Lock could see a bolt sticking out of her shoulder. “Wait!” Lock whispered loudly. “Don’t!” But the unicorn wasn’t listening. Crk-crk-crk-crk-CHKT. She plunged blindly down the aisle, running for dear life. She jinked around a corner and then all Lock could see was a vague haze bobbing behind shelves. Groaning, Lock ran after her. Chirp chirp. Lock slid around the corner, but the unicorn had already turned another one, and Lock couldn’t see what was in front of her except where shelves and barrels blocked the light. She bit back a yell and smashed her head against a barrel. She ought to cut and run now, while she still had her limbs. It’d be easier, less stressful. If you were going to do that, you would’ve done so already. Lock stood up, brushed herself off, and huffed. “Hey!” she yelled into the darkness. With the maze of shelving, it wasn’t like she was making herself easier to find. “Kill the light! You’re o-” Twang. Somewhere in the cellar, the unicorn screamed again and the light went out. Lock was plunged into blackness again. She heard a distant clip-clopping of hooves, then a solid impact. Voices drifted across the room, barely audible if she strained. “Stay here,” said the batpony in a casual, sibilant voice, “and I won’t rip your throat out with my teeth. Got it?” Crk-crk-crk-crk-CHKT. “Y-yes’m.” “Good.” Crunch. The unicorn screamed. Chirp. Lock gulped. Keepmovingkeepmovingkeepmoving- Chirp. Trailing her hoof along one of the shelves, Lock started walking as quickly as she dared in the dark. She didn’t know if she was going the right direction or even which way she was facing. She just knew she was heading away from the batpony. Maybe. She heard another set of hoofsteps, but the echoes of the cellar made it impossible to tell where they were coming from. Behind her? Right next to her? In a parallel aisle? Chirp. With every step she heard, Lock’s heartbeat increased. Soon, she was sweating. She instinctively glanced over her shoulder to try to get a look and was confronted with solid black. All the while, the hoofsteps got closer and closer and the chirps got louder and louder. Think, THINK! she screamed at herself. There’s gotta be something you can do! Chirp. Chirp. Okay. What did she know about echolocation? Not much. An animal made a sound, it bounced off objects, and they somehow knew what the object looked like based on the echo. And that was it. Except… Hold on… Chirp chirp. What if they couldn’t hear the echo? Lock felt the thing she was leaning against. A barrel, a big wooden one. A cask? She couldn’t remember the terminology. She lightly shoved it. Something sloshed inside. Knowing she was probably wasting several centuries’ worth of work, and taking a petty glee in it, Lock punched a hole through the end, near the bottom. Chirpchirpchirp. Wine resistance prevented her from making much of a hole, even with her earth pony strength, but it was enough; wine began audibly pouring out onto the cellar floor. Just loud enough to be distracting, not pouring out fast enough to be done in seconds. Perfe- Twang. On pure reflex, Lock ducked. The bolt whistled over her head close enough to ruffle her mane. It embedded itself in the barrel she’d just opened. Crk-crk-crk- It was coming from behind her, and close. Within a few yards, at most. Lock turned and lunged at the sound. She slammed awkwardly into a wine rack between her and it. It rattled alarmingly and several bottles fell off, but she didn’t break through. Pain shot through her legs. -crk-CHKT chirp twang. A bolt zipped through one of the holes on the rack, impaling Lock through a front hoof. She screamed a curse, overbalanced, and toppled back. She landed on her rump in a puddle of wine. Her head banged against a barrel. Chirp. Hearing the sound again was like a shock to Lock’s system. She awkwardly punched over her shoulder with her good hoof once, twice, thrice. The third time broke through; wine began audibly dripping from the barrel onto her shoulder. She rolled onto her belly and, staying low, crawled through the growing puddle. She laid the leg of her pierced hoof flat across the floor to keep weight off her foot. Chirp. Chirp. There was something different about the chirp. Maybe it was slightly louder, slightly more… insistent? Lock hoped it meant her stupid plan was working. She passed another barrel, broke it. More drips. More noise. She felt like an olive getting dunked in wine. The place was beginning to reek as simple alcohol overpowered the scents of the different wines. Chirp chirp. Crk-crk. Chirp. Another barrel. Smash. Lock knew the quality of the sound had changed, but she still couldn’t say how. It was more frequent; was the batpony having trouble hearing the echo? Another barrel. Smash. Her coat was soaked through. Lock kept crawling. Chirp chirp. Crk. Chirp chirp. Crk-CHKT. Chirp. She chomped her tongue and imagined she tasted blood as her muzzle banged against a stone wall. Praying for a moment’s reprieve, she bit down on the arrowhead sticking out of her hoof and snapped it off. She tossed it aside and turned her hoof over. As she bit on the shaft, the arrowhead clinked loudly on the floor. Twang. Her teeth on the wood, Lock froze, but she felt nothing and heard nothing except dripping wine and the bolt clattering against the wall several yards to one side, where she’d thrown the arrowhead. She allowed herself a grin; the batpony didn’t know where she was, so her echolocation must not be working right. Chirp chirp chirp. Lock restrained a scream as she pulled the arrow from her hoof. She put weight on it. It hurt a lot less than she’d expected. Adrenaline, probably. At least she could use it. Leaning against the wall for support, she limped through the dark. Chirp chirp. She reached across the aisle, felt a rack of barrels, and punched one; half in the hopes the sound would keep disorienting the batpony, half out of frustration. More drips. By now, the room sounded like a cave, with dripping coming from every direction. If she hadn’t had her hoof on the stone wall, Lock would’ve lost her way in moments. Chirp chirp. Suddenly, Lock felt the wall take a corner away from her. She moved her hoof down the join and patted at the floor. At first, she felt nothing but concrete. She moved her hoof forward a little, and it bumped against a wall. She felt up. It wasn’t a wall; it was a step. The exit. Chirpchirpchirp. Lock slid her hoof up and down the wall, searching for the light switch. Exits always had light switches next to them, right? She couldn’t remember from her first trip to the cellar. But whatever switch there was wasn’t on this side of the door. Lock went to the other side, where- Twang. -she threw herself backward, performing a kind of awkward half-somersault through the leaking wine. A bolt whistled through the air where she’d been reaching. She picked herself up, only for something to slam into her, throwing her back down. She heard the whisking of leathery wings and ragged panting. Chirpchirp. On her back, blind, her head swimming, the world spinning around her, Lock’s addled mind tried to make sense of what happened. She realized she’d been found and kicked out. One of her hooves hit the shin of the unseen batpony, who grunted in surprise. Lock rolled over and lashed out again. Something wooden cracked and she heard a string snap. The batpony yelped and cursed. Lock heard a few splashes as her opponent backed away. Chirpchirp. She charged awkwardly in the direction of the sound, but the batpony batted her aside and Lock plowed into a wine rack. Lock gasped, then grabbed a wine bottle, spun around, and swung it through the darkness. It hit something and shattered; the batpony screamed. Lock tried to push herself to one side, but the batpony was on top of her in an instant. Chirpchirp. Lock landed on her back and instinctively threw up a leg to protect her face. The batpony’s fangs sank into it and pushed it to her chest. With all her might, Lock struck blindly at where she thought her foe’s head would be. Something cracked audibly and broke beneath her hoof. The batpony twitched and grunted. Lock struck again. Crunch. And again. Clnch. The batpony wheezed and went limp. Lock threw the body — unconscious or dead, she didn’t know and wasn’t sure she wanted to — off herself and scooted away from it. She splashed through the wine and small waves added their own splashes to the drips of the barrels. Eventually, Lock stopped moving. Deep breath in, deep breath out, deep breath in, deep breath out… She twisted her ears around, listening. Nothing. Nothing unusual, anyway; she could still hear the dripping of the wine barrels and the sobbing breaths of the unicorn. “Hey!” Lock yelled. “Uni! You alive?” “Yes!” gasped the unicorn. “B-but one of my hooves is broken, and th-the batpony put a n-nullifier ring on me, a-and-” “I’ll come to you. Give me a sec.” First, Lock climbed the stairs. Given everything that had happened over the last… fifteen minutes (only fifteen minutes? Wow), she wanted her exit to be open. The door gave way with a solid shoulder shove and opened into the Canterlot night, later than Lock had been expecting. The moon hung just above the skyline and stars winked in the sky. It was so peaceful out here. Lock took a deep breath of fresh air before heading back into the cellar. Lock felt at the space of wall next to the door she hadn’t explored yet. She found a panel, and she found a switch on that panel, and that switch indeed controlled the lights. Lock blinked and squinted against the sudden brightness; had her eyes adjusted to darkness that quickly? Avoiding looking at the batpony, she pulled herself to the top of a shelf and peered through the aisles, looking for- The door to the rest of the house opened up. Three or four ponies streamed in. “Diphylla?” one called. “Did you get them? You said you would.” Lock silently swore, dropped back to the floor, and pressed herself to the wall next to the staircase. She was never going to get a string of good luck. Never. Was this her karma? She tried to do one good thing, rather than another plain theft, and all the bad mojo she’d gathered came back to her? That really wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even affecting her, it was mostly going after the unicorn. Lock could’ve just cut and run — could still cut and run — and end her own suffering. “Diphylla? Diphylla?” All she had to do was leave an innocent pony to her fate. “She said they were in here. Find her and find them!” With a deep breath and a pounding heart, Lock peered through the shelves again. Maybe, if the other ponies hadn’t found the unicorn yet, there was still a chance- “I… I think I see one! Yeah, it’s the sacrifice! She’s still breathing!” No chances. If she continued her rescue mission, she was dead. Praying they’d be too focused on the unicorn to notice her, Lock scampered up the staircase, nudged the door open, and crawled out onto the grass. The cool wind in her face felt like it came from heaven. She was finally out. “Hey!” wailed the unicorn. “Hey! E-earth pony! Thief! Where are-” “You shut it.” Thud. “We’ll find her.” “N-no! Please…” The unicorn was sobbing. “P-please, j-just let-” Thud. A scream. “I said shut it!” Lock forced herself to close the cellar doors. They didn’t block out everything. Another gust of wind. It felt colder, somehow. Lock collapsed to the grass and simply lay there. For all she knew, the ponies would be coming at out the cellar any second, but she didn’t care. She was sopping wet. She stank of alcohol. She ached all over. The wind was chilling her to the bone. She was bleeding in multiple places. Her heart wouldn’t slow down. She was short of breath. Most of her tools were destroyed. Her head was pounding. One of her hooves had been stabbed through. She’d lost the unicorn. And she was just so tired. The stars winked down at her, taunting her with the peaceful, blissful night she could’ve had if she’d just not tried to be the hero. She wanted nothing more than to run home and crawl into bed, sticky sheets be damned. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not while the unicorn was still in there. As you shouldn’t. But who was she kidding? She was a thief. A coward. She couldn’t do this. You’re still alive. So’s she. What did that matter? You can still try to save her. They’d be on the alert. They’re still confused about what happened. If you can think fast, you can take advantage of that. As she lay there, staring up at the stars, Lock considered arguing with her conscience some more, but her mind was already made up. This was a delaying tactic more than anything; the second she stopped arguing, she’d have to go back inside the mostly unfamiliar house inhabited and staffed by ponies perfectly willing to kill her and bury her body in the back garden. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that was pleasing to the mind. Not like money or jewels or loot or- If you wanted a risk-free life, you wouldn’t be a burglar. That was true, Lock had to admit. Still. Finally, Lock groaned, got to her hooves, and stared at the streets beyond the fence. Still empty. Nopony to yell at for help. The rich socialites that populated this borough wouldn’t be on the streets at this time; they’d be at their destinations already, drawn like moths to a flame. That was even assuming they believed her in the first place; she looked like a particularly beaten-up bum and would be lucky for them to take her seriously, so she couldn’t even go banging on doors for help. Lock glared at one of the flickering streetlamps. The one time she would’ve given anything for somepony to see her and call the Guard, and- Lock stared at the lamp. Moths to a flame. An idea sprang into her mind. It was so stupid, so risky, so audacious, that Lock almost threw it out immediately. But she turned it over, poked at it, mulled it over. She ironed out some of the more blatant kinks, turned it over again. That might work, actually… She kept thinking. The focus on… whatever had come into her head slowly pushed away her aches and pains until they slowed her no more than the weight of her saddlebags: they were there, but didn’t really seem all that important and wouldn’t affect her much. Once she’d settled on a vague course of action, Lock trotted to the outer gate to buy time as she thought it through more deeply. If this all went as planned (ha ha yeah right), she’d want it open once she came out of the mansion. If she followed through on the idiotic improvisation masquerading as a plan, she’d only have one shot at this, anyway. At least it’d be over, one way or another.