Flash

by AnOrdinaryWriter

Some Secrets...

The two fillies stood on the dirt path outside the town borders, staring at the once-thriving wasteland.

The earth pony with the rose and white mane and cyan coat spoke first. “We couldn’t have come sooner? You know, when the sun was out and it wasn’t pitch black outside?”

“I didn’t know it would take this long to get here,” the pegasus with the purple coat responded with a scratchy voice, running a hoof through her red and yellow mane, stripes of blue and green in between. “Besides, the place isn’t completely dark, and we’ve got flash.”

“The flash on that camera isn’t exactly enough to make our pictures look much better,” the cyan pony said, pointing to the average sized digital camera hanging from around her friend’s neck.

“Our teacher’s an easy grader, we have nothing to worry about,” the purple filly responded.

“That’s not exactly what worries me.”

“Huh?” the purple filly inquired, turning to face her friend. “What’s up then?”

The earth pony looked downward, almost nervously. “I dunno. It looks kinda creepy, don’t you think?”

“Ah, you’re scared.”

“Am not! I was just… pointing something out.”

“Don’t worry Cotton Candy,” the pegasus said, wrapping a foreleg around her friend’s neck, much to the earth pony’s displeasure. “Your old pal Spectrum Blaze is here to comfort you.”

“Got it,” Cotton grunted.

“Through the highs and the lows, through the trials and—”

Cotton quickly squirmed out from under Spectrum’s grip. “Point taken. Thanks.”

“No biggie,” Spectrum Blaze said with a grin, starting down the path and toward the town. “Come on, Cotton. We won’t get anything done if we just stand here.”

“Coming, coming.”

The two fillies walked together down the path, dirt and gravel being audibly crushed beneath their hooves. The air surrounding them was silent, save a couple crickets chirping in search of a mating partner. The moon loomed overhead, large and pale, casting a faint light on the ground below the duo.

“You know I was just thinking,” Cotton began, “we could have done this project somewhere that wasn’t miles away from home.”

“Yeah, it’s not like you told me that over a thousand times already,” Spectrum mumbled to herself.

“But of course you’re my partner so we have to go the extra mile.”

“If you’re complaining so much, why’d you partner up with me?”

“Because you’re my only friend in that class.”

“That would be your own fault. Besides, I go the extra mile because I like to be adventurous. This town is abandoned, and no one’s been here in the last twenty or so years.”

Cotton didn’t say anything.

“Oh, and you agreed to this.”

“Yeah, ‘cause knowing you, you would have kept bugging me about this until I finally agreed to come along, and if I didn’t you would have found a different partner. And unlike me, everpony in that class likes you.”

“What can I say? This mane of mine must be really attractive.”

Cotton rolled her eyes.

“Honestly though, our classmates don’t not like you, you just don’t talk to them. You’d probably have a lot more friends if you got out of your comfort zone a little more.”

“Just what I needed. A lecture from a moron.”

Spectrum stopped in her tracks. “Woah, check this place out!”

Cotton took her eyes off her friend and was too captured by the sight before them.

The old town truly was a wasteland. Houses lay collapsed into a pile of rotten wood and straw, emitting a foul stench that made both ponies cringe. Dust particles and moisture hung airborne and drifted past idly, intensifying the already strong feeling of eeriness.

The two ponies walked forward, glancing at the fallen homes on either side of the cobblestone road below them while each step of theirs echoed across the quiet landscape. It was like a warzone. Heaps of rubble and debris everywhere, trash littered and strewn about, blades of grass poking through the cracks in the road. Neither of the fillies could picture there having once been a town here. It was bizarre, and especially fascinating.

“This place is like a junkyard,” Spectrum commented.

“I know,” Cotton concurred. “What happened to this town? Whatever it used to be, there’s barely anything left of it.”

Spectrum’s eyes remained memorized by the scene as she talked. “Besides folklore, there’s not a lot of history on this place.”

Cotton turned her head. “Really?”

“Yeah. Oh right, I probably should have mentioned, we’re sort of trespassing. We’re not exactly supposed to be here.”

“Wait.” Cotton’s brow furrowed. “Why are we doing our photography project here then?!”

Spectrum held up a hoof. “Relax, we’ll just tell our teacher we went to Hollow Shades. That place is pretty much run down at this point, she won’t tell the difference.”

“Still though…”

“I was curious. And don’t pretend you aren’t either. Besides, no one’ll know we came here, and we don’t have to tell Miss Dahlia where we went. We’re good.”

“Fine,” Cotton sighed. “You were saying?”

“Huh?”

“About the history and old folklore…”

“Right, right. ‘Kay so there isn’t a lot of history on this town, but I think the last thing on record was some sort of war that took place between this town and some other ancient beings.”

The duo came to a stop after crossing over a bridge and reaching large circular space where what they assumed used to be a tall building was now destroyed. The structure—which couldn’t even really be called a structure—was just a few supports that had managed to remain standing holding up patches of insulation, allowing a view of the inside which wasn’t much different than what the two fillies had already seen of this town. The roof, meanwhile, appeared to have fallen off the side and dug itself into the ground next to the decimated building.

“Is that all there is on this town?” Cotton inquired of her pegasus friend.

Spectrum nodded. “I’ve taken a look at most of the recent books on Equestrian history, and they all seem to be the same: a chapter detailing Ponyville’s foundation, its social and economic progression and a single sentence dedicated to its downfall.”

“Maybe the authors are trying to hide something?”

“What would there be to hide?”

“I suppose we’re going to find out.”

They proceeded toward the crumbling building, scanning it from top to bottom.

“Hang on,” Spectrum said, stepping back before using the tips of her wings to lift the camera around her neck. Lining up the shot as perfectly as she could, she took the picture, a flash of light briefly illuminating the decrepit building. Cotton approached her friend and stood next to her to view the shot.

“It’s not that bad, see?” the purple pegasus remarked, demonstrating the image on the screen of the building, lit up better than the two of them had expected. “One picture taken, four more to go.”

“That’s pretty good. Do you know what this building is?” Cotton questioned.

Spectrum switched the camera off and let it rest on her chest, folding her wings back against her sides. “Town hall, one of Ponyville’s main attractions.” She pointed a hoof toward a stone bridge to their right. “And I think that way are a few more cool buildings. Let’s go there next.”

“Alright, I’m following you.”

The two friends trekked across the bridge Spectrum had gestured to, and continued down the path ahead. Once again, broken down houses lay on either side of the road and an odor of moist rot stung their senses.

At one point, the two reached a fountain statue stained in rust and cracked in multiple areas. Spectrum stopped to take a picture.

“I’m surprised this statue is still standing,”

“Somepony might have cast a spell on it to slow its corrosion,” Cotton noted.

Spectrum chuckled. “Nerd.”

“Look who’s talking, history geek,” Cotton shot back with a sassy expression.

In that moment, a black figure shot past their peripherals. Both ponies turned in unison.

“What was that…?” Cotton whispered shakily.

“I-I don’t know…” Spectrum replied in a similar tone. Cautiously, she began taking small steps forward.

“What are you doing?!” Cotton hissed, keeping her voice faint. The purple pegasus didn’t respond, approaching where she saw the shape disappear. She drew closer to one of the destroyed houses, a few of the foundations still standing. Her heart rate quickened, eyes darting in her sockets as she searched for whatever they had seen.

The shape suddenly appeared in Spectrum’s line of sight, causing her to jump with a high-pitched yelp.

“Spectrum!” Cotton Candy shouted, running toward her friend, who had fallen back onto her rump. “What happened?!”

“Hoo!”

Both ponies’ gazes shot upward in alarm, only to spot an owl with an orange beak perched on the support of the old cottage.

Spectrum stared at the animal in shock, her face quickly growing red in anger. “Oh come on!” she exclaimed, picking up a tiny stone and hurling it toward the owl. The owl’s wings shot outward and it took off from the support beam, flying off into the night sky as the stone impacted the wooden foundation and fell to the ground.

“Spectrum, are you okay?” Cotton asked concernedly.

The pegasus filly stood from the ground, brushing off whatever gravel had gotten stuck in her fur. “I’m fine. Stupid owl!”

Cotton grinned maniacally. “You were pretty scared, huh?”

Spectrum shot a glare at her friend. “Shut up.”

This only made the cyan filly laugh with glee. “You should have seen the look on your face—oh and that scream. Priceless!”

“Hey, you were scared too, shut your mouth!” the multicolor maned pegasus growled, an obvious rose hue on both cheeks.

“Come on, Spectrum,” Cotton insisted.

“Ugh, fine. I was a little scared. Happy?”

“Couldn’t be happier.” Spectrum grunted. “Aw, don’t worry, Spectrum, I don’t think any less of you.”

Spectrum rolled her eyes. “Come on, let’s go.”

“’Kay.”

The two ventured toward a left turn. At one point, Spectrum had asked Cotton Candy to take a picture of her standing in front of a house that was still partially standing with exposed insulation and decayed walls covered in creepers.

“What for?” Cotton said, taking the camera from Spectrum’s hoof.

“Just for a friend. Hurry up.”

Cotton raised the camera, catching Spectrum and the house in frame, and took the picture. A brief flash and the camera rendered the result.

Spectrum took the camera from Cotton’s extended hoof and examined the picture. “Sick, thanks. I look badass in this one.” As the pegasus stared at the image, her expression began growing uneasy. “Um… huh, weird...”

“What is it?” Cotton asked.

Spectrum blinked, and then strapped the camera back over her neck. “Probably nothing.”

The comment confused Cotton, but she did not question it, merely shrugging it off and continuing alongside her pegasus friend.

“Woah, what the hell?” Spectrum said, speeding to a gallop.

“Hey, wait up!” Cotton called out, rushing to catch up with the purple filly. The two ran over another bridge and up a dirt hill, passing by a particularly creepy looking forest with vines strung from one tree to another and ragged branches that gave the trees the appearance of large beasts of the night.

Eventually the two came to a stop, and Cotton now saw in its entirety what had put Spectrum in a state of bewilderment.

A hospital building stood large and tall over them, a structure similar to that of an old mansion with two chimneys protruding from its brick roof and a billboard on the front displaying a white plus sign with four hearts between its corners. That was not what caught Spectrum’s attention though.

The building was in almost perfect condition.

The outside walls bore barely a single crack or spot of worn paint. As a matter of fact, the building looked brand new, as if it had been built only a couple days prior to the fillies’ arrival. The only differences were perhaps a few tears, resulting in the exposure of insulation or a couple cracked windows but other than that, the building contrasted heavily with the rest of the town.

The two fillies simply stood, awestruck at what they were seeing.

“No way…” the pegasus uttered. “How? The Ponyville General Hospital was constructed only a couple years after Ponyville was founded. It should be run to the ground like the rest of Ponyville right now.”

Cotton and Spectrum began walking toward the building, but instead of heading for the front doors, Cotton strayed off toward one of the outside walls.

“What are you doing?” Spectrum asked.

“Hang on.” Cotton lifted a hoof and pressed it against the wall while her friend watched in confusion.

“There’s a magic current running through the building. That’s what’s keeping it standing.”

Spectrum lifted an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

“If something has a magic current going through it, you’ll feel a vibration,” Cotton explained. “It’s not necessarily the building vibrating; it’s the reaction of magic against your fur.”

The purple filly stood with a blank expression.

“Advanced Sorcery class. You learn about that stuff in the first term.”

“Oh… well, why would somepony cast a spell on the hospital?”

Cotton looked down in thought. “Well this particular spell judging by the condition of the hospital would be a preserving spell, which could be used just for the purpose of slowing deterioration, or as protection from something.”

Spectrum’s eyes widened. “Like a war…”

The purple pegasus suddenly jumped in front of Cotton, making her recoil slightly. “We have to check out what’s inside!”

“Wait, what?!” Cotton Candy shouted.

“Think about it. The last thing recorded in Ponyville’s history was a war, and this hospital is the only thing standing in the entire town. Maybe we can find answers to what happened here!”

“Uh, excuse me, we’re not reporters, we’re photographers,” Cotton retorted.

“Aw come on, where’s your exploration spirit?”

“Where’s… your common sense spirit?” Cotton cringed at her own failure of a comeback. “Look, let’s just take a picture of the hospital, snap a random pic of something else and get out of here.”

Spectrum sighed. “Fine, then.”

Relief coursed through Cotton’s veins.

“You stay out here, and I’ll go in and check the place out.”

That relief was short lived.

“Spectrum, don’t do this to me, please,” Cotton pleaded.

“What’s the harm in being alone for, what, the next twenty minutes? I’m going inside,” Spectrum disputed, before turning her back on Cotton and walking toward the front doors of the hospital.

Cotton watched Spectrum disappear through the entrance of the building and exhaled. It was fine, she thought to herself. She could just wait out here for her to come back, and then they could leave.

Somewhere in the night, an owl hooted. Cotton jumped, looking back, and was faced with the sight of the menacing forest surrounding the hospital and heavy mist obscuring anything past it. Her defence of self-reassurance fell, and nervousness built up in the back of her mind.

“Maannn…” she whined, and then dashed toward the front doors after her friend.

***

Spectrum turned her head when she heard the sound of the front doors bursting open, and spotted her cyan friend making her way toward her.

“Hey, you decided to join me after all!” Spectrum said buoyantly.

Cotton sported a glare aimed directly at her friend. “Whatever, let’s just take a look around and then get out.”

Spectrum grinned. “Quick look around, then we dip. It’s a plan.”

With a roll of her eyes, Cotton joined Spectrum by her side, and the two walked down the short hallway following the main entrance, ending up at a lobby room with rows of seats on the left side of the room and a reception counter at the far end.

“Okay, this place looks a whole lot better on the outside than it does inside,” Spectrum observed, referring to the missing areas of drywall and cobwebs throughout the room, and bits of concrete and white dust dispersed across the floor.

“The spell on this building doesn’t work as well on large structures, so it’s likely only taking effect on the outside and not so much on the interior.” Cotton’s explanation did not sound as upbeat this time.

“Huh, interesting. You know, I’ll give it to you, you’re pretty damn smart when it comes to certain topics.”

“Thanks…” the earth pony said gruffly, her expression unchanging.

Spectrum swung a foreleg around Cotton’s shoulder. “Come on, lighten up. This is fun.”

Cotton grunted, pulling her friend’s leg off of her. “Sure, whatever. Let’s just do what you wanna do already.”

Spectrum sighed. “Look. I’ll buy you a slice of pizza for lunch tomorrow. Cool?”

Cotton looked up at Spectrum. “Two. And ice cream.”

“Deal. Forgive me?”

“No.”

“’Course you do,” Spectrum teased, ruffling her friend’s mane. Cotton sighed, unable to help but smile at her friend’s attitude.

Spectrum began walking through lobby room with Cotton following behind, both fillies’ eyes sweeping across the decor. At the left side of the room was an opening into another room, so Spectrum started toward it, stepping over broken and missing tiles in the process.

The next room they entered was large and tall, and didn’t fare much better than the lobby room. The strange part was that the long tables that would have made it a cafeteria were either up against the wall, or blocking the windows, giving the place more the appearance of a shelter.

“This is so weird…” Spectrum said. “Its like these ponies were preparing for some sort of apocalypse.”

Cotton looked at Spectrum. “You did just say there was a war here.”

“True. Hang on, let me take a picture.”

As Spectrum positioned herself to get the right angle for her photo, Cotton left her friend’s side to explore the room a little. The entire room was practically empty space aside from the tables, fragments of shattered dishes and bits of concrete on the floor like the previous room. On the right side of the room, a counter sat against the wall holding coffee machines, napkin dispensers and creams. She moved on, understandably not in the mood for thirty year old coffee.

As she patrolled the room, a slightly large dark stain at the far corner of the room caught her attention, striking her as odd. She stepped toward it to better make out what it was, and as she inspected it, a thought crept into the back of her mind.

Is that… dried blood?

“Done.” Spectrum’s voice briefly startled Cotton, but she relaxed when she realized where the voice had come from, and turned to see Spectrum approaching her. “Three down, one more to go. Come on.”

Cotton obeyed, and the two proceeded toward the door in the room. Turning the handle, Spectrum swung the door forward, and watched as it opened into a long dark hallway.

Cotton gulped. “That’s not creepy at all…”

“Yup.” Spectrum said back with a slight hint of nervousness, unbeknownst to Cotton. “Let’s go.”

Cotton took a deep breath, and the two began walking. Ahead of them were several doors on either side of the hallway, a few chairs resting against the wall beside each door. From overhead, light strips hung off the drop ceiling swinging leisurely, and thick cobwebs strung from the tiles to door frames. Parts of the floor had even fallen away in some spots, leaving sizable enough holes that the little ponies weren’t all too keen on finding out the consequences of stepping in one.

Spectrum stepped in front of one of the the wooden doors, thin strips of its surface peeling off. Inside, a hospital bed, IV, heart rate monitor and sink were spread out in the manner of a typical patient room. Going to the next door along and opening it, she found the same type of layout inside.

“Just medical rooms,” Spectrum remarked, turning out of the room where she found Cotton opening a set of double doors on the opposite side of the hall. “Hey, what’d you find?”

“Check it out for yourself,” Cotton said, stepping into the room she found. Curiously, Spectrum headed toward the room her friend had just entered and went inside.

The room was huge and dome-shaped, rows of wooden seats around the circumference, forming a ring that surrounded a small space at the center of the room, where a chandelier appeared to have fallen and shattered, shards of glass scattered across the floor.

“Damn,” Spectrum said, expressing her astonishment. “This place has seen better days.” She climbed the stairs next to her up to the seats. Cotton, who was following behind her noticed that stains similar to the one she had seen in the cafeteria were also splattered across the seats.

Spectrum also noticed this. “What is that? Blood?”

Cotton nodded. “I think.”

“I’m no expert but I know for a fact they definitely wouldn’t put patients here.”

Cotton thought for a second. “Maybe they were keeping injured ponies here temporarily. If they were preparing the hospital for a war, they probably needed to move everypony into the building.” she stared at the dried blood splotches on the seats. “I don't really want to think about what happened to them.”

Spectrum pondered on this in fascination. Could the situation really have been that bad? And if so, how many of these ponies had died…? Spectrum found herself shuddering at the thought.

“You gonna take a picture of the room?” Cotton asked.

After a brief period of thought, Spectrum shook her head. “Nah. Let's check out the rest of the place.” She descended back down the stairs and out of the room. Cotton, after one last glance at the stained seats, followed suit.

Setting off down the hall from where they left off, the two followed it to a right turn where another hallway, although considerably shorter stood in front of them. On the left hand side, two more halls, one closer to them and one farther along connected to the one in which the fillies currently stood. Cotton and Spectrum went toward the nearest one but stopped once they saw the blockage of rubble and stray wires hanging from the ceiling, preventing any possibility of getting through.

“Well that’s not an option,” Cotton stated. Spectrum nodded in agreement before the two fillies went to inspect the second hall. This one stretched toward a closed door at the end, held two doors on either side and opened into an upward staircase around the corner. Spectrum quickly checked the right turn at the end of the hallway they were currently in, which led to a long corridor with doors against the wall and a pair of double doors at the very end.

“That I think just leads back to the lobby,” Spectrum said, and joined Cotton’s side in front of the hallway with the staircase. “So I guess this is our only option.”

The entire middle section of the staircase was missing, besides a few steps at the top and bottom and pieces of wood jutting outward from the sides of the resulting hole. Spectrum took a few tentative steps forward and peered over the edge of the gap. The hole appeared to lead into a hallway on the lower floor, but there was enough space between the stairs and the lower floor that falling through would likely result in a broken leg or at least a sprained hoof.

Spectrum headed toward the other two doors and opened them both. “Patient room… patient room…” She finally tried the knob on the door at the end of the hall, but after a few tugs, it didn’t budge. With a sigh, she concluded: “and locked.”

“I guess we just have to go back now, there’s nothing left to explore,” Cotton said, pretending to be disappointed.

“No…” Spectrum said, and walked toward the broken staircase again. She surveyed the distance between the bottom of the staircase and the top. “We can jump this.”

“Are you stupid?” Cotton half shouted. She knew her friend could be daring—it was one of her main qualities—but this was just plain out deadly.

“It’s not a far jump. Watch.” Spectrum took a couple steps back. She then sprinted toward the gap and leaped with her tiny legs. Deploying her wings, she flapped furiously, which did not help much getting her to the other side, but got her far enough that she could grab onto the top steps with her forelegs, her hind legs dangling above the gaping hole in the staircase.

“Spectrum, holy fuck!” Cotton yelled in disbelief, watching as Spectrum swung back and forth attempting to lift herself up.

“Calm down. See, I’m okay,” Spectrum said, grunting as she hoisted herself upward with the help of her buzzing wings and rolled onto the floor at the top of the stairs. Cotton stood mute as the purple pegasus stood and turned to her friend. “Your turn now.”

“No way!” Cotton refused, backing away from the steps.

“It’s a simple jump, come on, I’ll catch you,” Spectrum said, holding out her hoof.

Cotton looked from her friend’s hoof to the wide hole in the stairs, back up at Spectrum. “This is dangerous. You barely made it yourself. Besides, what if you miss?”

“I won’t miss, I promise.”

Cotton took one last look at the broken staircase, and then reluctantly took a step back before charging forward toward the steps and leaping through the air. She looked downward at the hallway below, which appeared to stretch slightly farther away as she sailed mid-air. In the next moment, she felt her hoof seized by a tight grip and looked up to see Spectrum holding onto her hoof, face contorted as she strained to pull up Cotton’s weight. She managed despite the great efforts and lifted Cotton up beside her.

“Wow, I’m surprised you managed that,” Cotton said, rather impressed.

Spectrum grinned, panting. “Hey, told you I don’t break promises. I said I’d catch you, and lo and behold, I did.”

“Alright, I’ll give you that one. That was pretty good.”

“Pretty good? I believe the word you’re looking for is amazing. Incredible. No, I got it. Legendary!”

“Amazing. That’s all you’re getting.”

The two shared a laugh before climbing the next set of stairs ahead of them.

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, the fillies had entered a straight hall with a room visible at the end. Next to them was a door coated in a faded white paint. Spectrum went to inspect it, trying the handle, but it protested against her attempt to turn it. After a couple more fruitless tugs, she concluded she wasn’t getting through.

“Door’s stuck. Forward it is then.” The two turned and proceeded down the hallway. Along the way, a sign hung on the wall that read, ‘Radiology Department.’ In front of them was a small waiting room with chairs on one end, an open door straight across from them and a hall to the left.

The hall had almost everything they had predicted: a couple of rooms with X-ray devices on the ceiling and a dead end with a locked wooden door. Declaring the area uninteresting, they backtracked and went through the open door in the waiting room, entering another short hall.

Just ahead was a pair of cracked windows, thin streaks of blue light streaming through into the hall. The two looked through the windows, and were provided a view of the entire town, from the broken-down houses to the creepy looking forest on the outskirts of the town. Spectrum even pointed out a clock tower that had fallen onto its side and crashed into a house.

“Think this would make a good photo?” Cotton asked, turning her head to the purple filly.

“Maybe. Let’s find out,” Spectrum replied, raising her camera.

The sound of a distant crash made Spectrum stop what she was doing.

The two slowly turned their heads toward the source of the noise. Spectrum was the first to comment on it. “The hell…”

“I dunno,” Cotton muttered in response.

Pondering nervously over what could have caused the strange noise, the two fillies slowly approached the right turn in front of them and peeked into the next hallway down. Yet another short corridor led to a door at the end that was, for whatever reason, boarded up, and branched off into another hall halfway down.

As they traveled down the hall, another noise resonated through the place, startling Cotton and fueling Spectrum’s curiosity.

“That sounded like it came from a lower floor,” Spectrum pointed out, resuming forward.

Cotton stayed put, an anxious expression on her face. “Wait, I have a bad feeling about this.”

Spectrum looked back. “Something probably just fell. Don't worry about it.”

Cotton lowered her head nervously before following Spectrum.

The hall halfway down didn’t have a conspicuous end from where they were standing, but hindering their ability to forge ahead down the hall was a gap in the floor, wide like the last one but that seemed to go an even longer way down.

Spectrum was confident. “Another leap of faith?”

Cotton looked at the hole doubtfully. “I don't know. This doesn't exactly look as safe. This is a much bigger drop and the tiles on the other side look loose.”

After racking her brain for an idea, a light bulb shone above Spectrum’s head. “The wooden planks on that door we saw. Think we could use those?”

Cotton stepped backward to view the boards blocking the door at the end of the previous hall. Turning her gaze back toward the hole in the floor, she formulated an answer.

“The planks on the door are too small, and we probably couldn’t get them off.” It was then that she noticed the longer planks resting on the ground next to the door. She pointed to them. “Those, maybe we could use.”

“Oh, nice. I didn’t even notice those before.” Spectrum ran toward the planks. “They’re definitely long enough. I’ll bring a couple over.” Setting one foreleg on the ground, she used her other hoof to scoop two planks into her grip before standing, holding them under her leg. She carried them back to the hole and set them down.

Carefully, the two of them grabbed a plank and gradually slid the other ends over the gap. Little by little, they inched the boards further forward until they touched the other side.

“That worked pretty well actually,” Spectrum said, moving the planks a little closer to each other to make sure the planks wouldn’t budge as they walked across. “Let’s go one at a time so the planks don’t break.”

“Alright.” With that said, Spectrum was the first to cross. The boards creaked slightly, bending somewhat under Spectrum’s weight, but the wood boards held, and the pegasus reached the other side with no problems.

Cotton was next up, placing her hooves on the wooden boards. She watched with unease as the planks bent significantly more than they had when Spectrum had crossed, but proceeded nonetheless. One leg in front of the other, she crossed slowly but surely. Each step triggered a sound from the boards beneath her, and she had to breathe to calm herself down.

She was halfway across now. Some of her fear diminished and she moved on with less nerves.

Snap!

The boards broke in half, the lack of any support leaving Cotton to drop downward. Her scream filled the corridors, limbs flailing as she tumbled toward the bottom floor.

“Cotton!” Spectrum cried, falling to her belly and extending her hoof over the hole to no avail.

Wind tore through Cotton’s mane, pulling it upward as she fell. Cotton reached out her hooves blindly in an attempt to grab onto something. And by luck, she did. The wind disappeared and her body stopped abruptly, hind legs hanging as she held for dear life onto a piece of wood jutting out of the inside of the hole.

She gasped loudly, hearing the echoing voice of Spectrum demanding loudly if she was alright. But before she could shout back, the board she held onto broke off, and she was falling again.

A pair of walls then surrounded her, and in the next moment, her back struck a hard surface. Pain shot up and down her spine and Cotton groaned loudly, rolling on the ground and clutching her back with both hooves.

“Fuck, Cotton! Cotton, a-are you good?” Spectrum screamed down desperately.

“Do I look like I’m fucking good to you?!” Cotton shouted back, followed by more whines.

Spectrum anxiously scratched the back of her head with a hoof. “I-I mean like is anything broken, can you stand?”

“I—urgh, I don’t know…” Cotton lay there on the ground for another minute, leaving Spectrum breathing heavily, a spectator to her friend in pain. Eventually though, Cotton set her front hooves on the ground and attempted to push herself upward. Needles of pain bit at her back, causing her to grit her teeth, but she managed to place herself on all four hooves, unsteadily, but successfully.

Cotton took a minute to collect her bearings, and examined her surroundings. Behind her, a wall supported a dusty and worn door that was partially torn, leaving a small view of the other side. Cotton turned her head the other way, and saw that the hallway she was in lead into a thick blackness that began only a couple inches away from her.

And oh god, that smell…

“Gimme an update, what’s going on?” she heard Spectrum say from above.

Cotton angled her head upward. “I don’t know, it’s completely dark down here—I can’t see a thing! Can you somehow fly down here?”

The pegasus glanced back at her wings. “My wings can still barely carry me. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ll have to find another way down.”

“You’re going to leave me here?!”

“I have to if I want to get down there.” Spectrum reached at the back of her neck, pulling off the strap of her camera and holding it above the hole. “Here catch this!”

Once the pegasus let go of the camera, Cotton pushed herself onto her hind legs, reaching out her hooves. The camera drew closer before landed flawlessly in her hooves.

“Just use the flash on it. I’ll try to find a staircase or something. See you soon.”

“Wait, Spectrum—!” But Spectrum had already gotten up and left.

Cotton breathed timidly, and turned toward the inky blackness in front of her, which taunted her almost. It was in this case she wished she could be as fearless as Spectrum.

She swung the camera strap over her neck. “Okay, you can do this. It’ll be fine.” She began taking steps forward, allowing herself to be submerged in the darkness of the downstairs hall.

Pressing the power button, the sound of the camera booting to life sounded, and the screen displayed total darkness. She then pressed the silver button on the top of the camera.

Click-click.

The camera’s flash blared twice for a quarter of a second and disappeared, bathing the walls in a bright white light before disappearing. However, it was enough time for Cotton to see a left turn in front of her. Cotton let the camera hang from her neck and pressed a hoof against the closest wall to help guide herself.

Her hooves clacked gently on the floor as she walked. The darkness shrouded her entire body, and the atmosphere down here was thick. It unnerved her to the point where she could hear the sound of her heart thumping in her ears. The putrid smell especially did not help at all.

Her hoof left the wall and Cotton stopped where she was. Raising her camera again, she pressed the silver button.

Click-click.

The light of the camera once again fought away the darkness for a mere quarter of a second before darkness wrapped itself around her once more. Two doors were on either side of the pair of walls in front of her. Cotton inched forward along the wall closest to her until she felt her hoof come into contact with the first door. She brushed her hoof along the surface of the door until she felt the door handle, then she twisted it and pushed it forward. She heard the whining of the hinges as it swung open and she raised her camera again.

Click-click.

A bed with lights overhead, machines beside it to measure heart rate and pump medicine into a pony’s body, and scrubs hanging off the wall. She turned around and walked straight forward from the room she just checked. Her hoof collided with the door, and she fumbled around until she found the handle, and pushed the door open.

Click-click.

The same thing was in this room.

She stepped out and proceeded down the hall.

Click-click.

Ahead of her was an intersection leading four ways. She had also sighted a sign on the wall next to her, but because of the darkness, she couldn’t see it now. Sitting down on the ground, she pressed a button on the front of the camera, and the screen presented the image she had just taken.

The hallway was just as she observed, only now she could read what the sign said.

‘Surgical Units’

Switching the camera back to picture mode, she got up and moved forward. In front of her, she remembered there being a door. She decided to try that first, walking in a straight line until her outstretched hoof touched the door. She tried the handle.

Locked.

“Damn,” she whispered before returning to the center of the intersection. She once again took the camera in her hoof.

Click-click.

One way was connected to a hallway with two doors and a left turn.

Click-click.

Cotton frowned in interest once she took a photo of the last path in the four-way cross.

A short downward staircase sat before a barred door at the bottom. Cotton went back into her camera to view the picture, and her eyes had not been playing tricks on her. In fact, not only was there a barred door.

It was padlocked.

The filly found this rather strange, principally due to the disparity between the door and the rest of what they had seen. But the most obvious of all: why would the ponies who were here previously need to padlock the door? It would seem unnecessary… right?

According to Spectrum, there had been a war here, but if a defense spell had been placed on the building to stop whatever was attacking the town, Cotton cast doubt upon how much more a padlock was going to do to stop the forces of all-powerful ancient beings. There was a chance that the padlock was used as a precautionary measure, but considering the implausibility of that idea, she couldn’t help but wonder the reason behind it. It definitely didn’t belong in the environment of a hospital. The only explanation she could formulate was that there was something else they were trying to keep out, or maybe keep from escaping.

Only, what could that have been…?

Cotton heard a sudden low boom behind her. Drawing in a sharp breath, her body spun around in the direction of the origin of the noise. Her heart accelerated, breathing irregular as she haltingly raised the camera around her neck.

Click-click.

Nothing there…

Apprehensively, Cotton stood in place for a short period of time before working up the courage to press forth.

“It’s fine,” she whispered to herself. “It might just be Spectrum.”

Hoof against the wall, she walked until she felt the hallway turn. She then raised the camera.

Click-click.

Ahead was a rounded hallway, but next to the wall was a set of three chairs, newspaper clippings sitting on one of them.

Curiosity piqued, Cotton went to pick up the newspaper clippings. She took her camera, lined it up as well as she could with the newspaper clippings in the darkness, and took a photo. She flipped the page, and then took a picture of that, and did the same with the next page. Next, she set the pieces of paper down, and then sat on one of the seats. Cotton winced, as this caused a faint spike of pain in her back, but she relaxed in the seat and the pain disappeared. Finally, she went to view the photos on the camera and flipped back until she was on the first page.

On the morning of the 12^th of Thursday, Rarity, a pony well known for owning the clothing shop “Carousel Boutique” and bearing one of the elements of harmony was found dead in her home. The murder was discovered when her younger sister had come down for breakfast, and saw her body lying in the main room. Forensics have reported that her death was caused by a blow of dark magic to the brain which, with input from Princess Celestia, consisted of a spell available only in the royal archives, and no evidence had been left behind as to who the culprit was.

The tragic news hit hard with family and other citizens alike. “I loved her so much. She had such a good spirit and a bright future ahead of her,” the mother of the victim stated during an interview while crying. “I don’t understand how somepony could do that to my precious baby.” Other citizens commented on this as well. “She helped save the town so many times. Without her, we probably wouldn’t be here. I can’t believe somepony would kill her like that,” said one pony who wished not to have his name revealed in the paper. The other element bearers refused the interview, obviously too grief stricken to do so.

The question now remains of what will become of the town due to this unfortunate event. There is no doubt this has caused much heartache, but with this has come an addition of apprehension due to the increased vulnerability of the town and the signs of a ruthless killer on the loose.

Cotton switched to the second page, but all they contained were advertisements and stories of events in other countries. Both sides of the second newspaper clipping had this as well.

The filly thought on what she had just read. There was a murder in this town? Could that have had something to do with the town being abandoned? Spectrum had said there was a war in this town. Was it possible that the murder and the war were somehow related?

What surprised her most though was how Ponyville truly was a fully populated town once. Which meant that the ponies here had likely died or gone missing. And if they went missing, what happened to them?

Then Cotton recalled what she had seen earlier. That padlocked door… what was in there?

Another low boom sounded in front of her. Her heart skipped a beat as she slowly stood from the chair. Quickly, she turned the camera to picture mode and held it in front of her. She then falteringly lifted a hoof to the silver button and pressed it.

Click-click.

A silhouette lit up in front of Cotton. The filly screamed.

“Hey, Cotton, calm down, it’s just me!”

Cotton stopped screaming when she heard the familiar voice of her best friend.

“Fuck, Spectrum, you scared me!” Cotton complained angrily.

“You scared me too. And hang on; let me get us some light so we don’t accidentally kiss each other or something.” Cotton then heard a repetitive light scraping sound, followed by an annoyed grunt, and then a sudden emanation of light that painted the walls around her a golden colour and at last made her friend visible.

“That was fast. How’d you get down here,” Cotton asked.

“There’s a staircase at the end of this hall, I found it pretty quickly. It also leads to every floor in the building, so we can get out through there. Oh, and I also found this.” Spectrum lifted the lighter in her hoof slightly, causing the tiny flame to wobble. “It was in one of the hospital rooms upstairs. Not a bad find, eh?”

“That’s an amazing find, thank you,” Cotton acclaimed. “I really didn’t like not seeing in this place.”

“Hey, what are those?” Spectrum asked, picking up the newspaper clippings on the chair behind them. Lighter in front of her eyes, she began reading the first page. As her eyes repeated the pattern of gliding from left to right, her eyelids rose higher and higher, and her eyes passed across each word faster. “This explains so much…”

“What do you mean, what is it?” Cotton asked inquisitively.

Spectrum set down the newspapers, holding the lighter between herself and Cotton. “’Kay, so you know how this town used to be one of the most popular places in all of Equestria, right?” Cotton nodded to show she was following. “Well, not only was it popular, it was even home to royalty.”

“Really?”

“Yup. You know Princess Twilight Sparkle?”

“I’ve heard of the name. Not sure who she is, though.”

“Well she was actually a pretty big deal back when this town was still standing. She was supposedly born in the old town Canterlot, and as a child she was Princess Celestia’s protégé. Afterward, she sent her to this town to continue her schooling and about a year later, she ascended to regal status. They called her the princess of friendship.”

“Princess of friendship?” Cotton inquired, finding the term humorous.

“Or so the history books say,” Spectrum continued. “Anyways, she also had five friends, and all together, they represented the elements of harmony, Equestria’s most powerful weapon at the time.

“There was only one problem with that though: without all six of them combined, the elements wouldn’t work. Even if just one of the six friends was missing, they would be useless.

“So here’s my guess. If there really was a war, with all the elements combined, the attackers likely would have been defeated before there could even be a war. So something or someone must have killed one of the element bearers so they couldn’t use the elements of harmony against them.

“Since this town was abandoned, nopony has heard from Twilight Sparkle or any of her friends, and nopony knows if the war was won, only that nopony has been around to tell the tale and this town was suddenly off limits to anypony.”

Cotton looked puzzled. “Princess Celestia and Luna are still here today though. Wouldn’t they have said something?”

“Maybe… unless they’re trying to hide something from us. Like for example, there was no news of this apparent war released anywhere. No pictures or anything like that, and even though Princess Twilight went missing along with her friends, there was no funeral for them or anything like that. Not to mention, I think some reporters even tried to get answers from the princesses a couple years after the whole incident and they refused an interview. They might have even kicked them out, I don’t remember that part.”

The lighter’s flame shifted, casting a shadow over Spectrum’s eyes and muzzle, as well as causing the silhouette on the wall behind her to move. “That’s not all though. There have been rumors that something else went on during the war. Something involving sick experiments on the ponies of this town, which might explain why Princess Celestia and Luna wanted to keep the war as confidential as possible.”

Cotton took time to think on what Spectrum had said. Could it have been true? Were the rulers of Equestria really trying to hide something from their subjects? The pieces of information Spectrum gave her branched off toward new questions in Cotton’s head but she had no answers to them, leaving her in a state of confusion.

If there really was a war, especially if one of the princesses had gone missing, it should have been nationwide news. What happened here that was so bad that the princesses feel the need to hide this from their subjects?

Unless the rumors Spectrum had mentioned were correct…

“Yo, Cotton,” Spectrum said, staring at Cotton with a concerned frown. “You alright?”

Cotton was snapped out of her thoughts. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.”

“…Oh, alright then. Well, since we’re here, maybe we could explore this bottom floor, and—”

“Woah, wait a minute!” Cotton interrupted. “You want to keep looking around in this place after I probably almost died?!”

“Yeah, but Cotton, think about it,” Spectrum contended. “Something bad happened here—something the princesses don’t want anypony knowing about. But this could be our chance to expose it.”

Cotton had a counterargument prepared. “But have you thought about how maybe the reason why they kept it secret is because they don’t want anypony to mess with whatever might be here? What if we suddenly unleash something that ends up destroying everything and everypony in the entire kingdom?”

“First of all, that sounds ridiculous,” Spectrum began, “and second, if there really was something that dangerous here, don’t you think the princesses would have dealt with it by now?”

Cotton was not so quick with a retort this time, and she could not think of one before Spectrum added to her argument. “Cotton, the untold story of this town’s history thirty years overdue could be sitting just inches away from us inside this very building. Do you really want to pass this opportunity?”

The bright cyan filly’s eyes sunk in contemplation. She had already hurt herself and could have even caused lasting damage if she hadn’t been lucky. But while her common sense was telling her to leave ASAP, she couldn’t deny that her friend’s argument was slightly appealing. Eventually, she came to a decision.

She hated curiosity.

“Fine, you win,” Cotton declared.

“I always do,” Spectrum said with a complacent grin, bumping her friend in the shoulder. “So hey, since we were on the topic of exploring, did you find anything interesting while you were looking for me?”

Cotton’s earlier find rushed back into her mind, her desire to leave subsiding a bit. “There was a locked door that I found, but it was barred and padlocked, completely out of place with everything else in the building.”

“For real?” The tips of Spectrum’s ears waggled excitedly.

Cotton told Spectrum to follow her, before going straight down where she had come, the pegasus following behind her in anticipation. They rounded the corner and approached the staircase at the other end of the hallway they were in, where Spectrum could now see the barred door for herself.

“It looks like a jail door,” Spectrum observed. “Why would you need that in a hospital?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Cotton responded, descending the staircase alongside Spectrum.

Now with a light source, Cotton could properly examine the lock. It was small, and heavily rusted. It appeared as though one simple bash could completely obliterate it.

“Should we break it with something?” Spectrum asked, mimicking Cotton’s thoughts.

“My thoughts exactly,” Cotton repeated with a smile.

Spectrum giggled. “There’s your spirit. You wanted to leave at first, and look at you now.”

“Oh, I still want to leave, but… well, curiosity is winning me over.”

The two laughed, and then began their search for an object to break the lock. The search ended rather quickly.

“There,” Cotton said, running up the stairs and standing next to a bright red fire extinguisher hanging from a bracket on the wall.

Spectrum grinned. “That’s perfect. Good find.”

Cotton grabbed the fire extinguisher by the lower handle and lifted it off the bracket with ease as though she were lifting a feather, impressing her friend. She then walked down the stairs, carrying it by her side with Spectrum watching behind her.

Standing on her hind legs to hold the fire extinguisher with both hooves, she brought it back, aiming the bottom toward the discolored padlock, before heaving it forward. The resulting impact created a sharp bang that cut through the air and echoed for a lengthy period of time through the dark and dank hallways.

The body of the lock was now heavily damaged, bent almost completely inward, although the shackle still held on strongly. With one more forceful bash—followed by yet another deafening noise, the lock fell to the ground, broken bits clinking against the ground.

“Nice!” Spectrum exclaimed as Cotton was setting the fire extinguisher on the ground.

Cotton placed her hoof on the door and pushed. While it was stuck at first, a simple knock of her shoulder caused the barred door to swing open with the ear-stinging creak of rust. The two friends stared at each other momentarily before going into the hallway before them.

Walking forward, they passed by growths of moss building on the walls and creeping from between the cracked tiles on the ground. Above, the ceiling bulged in spots, thin columns of moonlight spilling through cracks in the drywall which lit up the hallways considerably more, dismissing the need for the lighter.

Most notably, the smell was even worse. A scent that Cotton and Spectrum couldn’t think of any description for it other than rotten eggs mixed with fecal matter. It only got worse as they proceeded toward the corner at the end of the hallway

A door with vines crawling all along the surface stood beside them when they turned, the sign above it reading ‘Supply Room’. Spectrum got up close to the door before grabbing hold of the doorknob and tugging on it. The door opened slightly, restricted by the greenery barricading it.

“This’ll definitely open. Here, help me out with this.” Cotton nodded and placed her hooves on the door, supporting herself with a hind leg on the frame and pulling in unison with Spectrum. The vines began to give and as they did, the door opened further slowly before bursting open, knocking the two fillies onto the ground.

Getting up, they entered the room, which was small and rectangular, a ventilation hatch on the wall at the other end of the room and a long row of metal shelves against the wall. However, what stuck out for them was that the shelves were almost completely empty. Other than a few tools and some medical equipment, it was all empty space.

Spectrum patrolled the room, inspecting everything inside. “Shouldn’t there be like emergency supplies and equipment in here?”

“That’s what I’m thinking, unless they moved it all.” Cotton implied, eyes moving up in down in their sockets scanning one of the empty rows of shelves, a few boxes on some and the rest empty space.

At the end of that row was a cabinet. She stepped in front of it, opening each drawer. Most of what was inside were just documents and records—things of no interest to Cotton. But when she opened the top drawer, she found two instant photos inside, lying on top of a stack of binders.

The first thing that crossed her mind was how behind the times these items were. Then she reviewed the photos themselves and was struck with a second thought.

They really were keeping ponies here…

The photo showed a low quality image of a row of ponies, adult and young, sitting on a wooden bench. All of them were wounded in some way: a scorched foreleg or a bloody shoulder. It saddened Cotton to see the condition the ponies were in, especially heartbroken at the parents caressing their sobbing children. It made her sick to her stomach, and opted to set the picture aside to look at the next one. Her heart then skipped a beat.

This one was blurred and dark, yet she could make out the shape of a pony… at least, she thought it was a pony, but something was off about it. Its limbs were unbelievably skinny, and a glowing pinkish light beamed from its chest—if that was the chest, the contents of the image were too smudged to tell. But it appeared as though the shape was running toward the camera, almost as though the photographer was being attacked…

Cotton then noticed that there was a sticky note on the back. She flipped the image and read it.

Twenty-third of June, two thousand and sixteen. That was almost exactly thirty years ago.

There was so much Cotton couldn’t wrap her head around. Third test subject failed… what did that mean? What was that thing in the photo?

“Ohhh my god, Cotton…”

The earth pony spun her head. “What? What is it?” Remembering she still had the camera around her neck, she snapped two photos of the strange pictures before setting them on top of the cabinet and walking out from behind the row toward her friend’s voice. Cotton found her standing still, staring forward at a tight space between a shelf and the wall.

“There, look.” Spectrum extended a hoof toward the tight corner, and Cotton turned, only to see a literal pony’s skeleton sprawled across the ground, its skull cracked as well as its ribs and one of its forelegs. On the floor below it was a large dark brown stain with similar spots dotted on the wall like paint flung onto a blank canvas.

“Shit…” was all Cotton could think to say in response to what they were seeing.

Spectrum, for the first time in a while, looked somewhat uneasy and uncomfortable. “I’ve never seen a real skeleton in front of me before…” She turned to Cotton. “Well, uh… you’re the science nerd, so you know like… forensics and stuff?”

Cotton’s eyes remained fixed on the skeleton, not fazed by the part-insult thrown at her. “I mean, I guess, but I’m not an expert.”

“Well, what do you think happened to him—her… whoever this was?”

Cotton advanced slightly toward the skeleton. “The ribs and forelimb bones are broken, and something clearly bashed this pony’s head hard enough to cave the skull. But judging by the dried blood, my assumption is that either there was some sort of accident, or…”

“Or somepony killed him…” Spectrum speculated.

Cotton’s eyes trailed toward the photos she had left on the cabinet. “Or something…”

After she said that, some form of a shrill cry reverberated across the halls outside.

The two fillies spun at the sound. “Okay, what the fuck was that…?” Spectrum said, fully expressing her shock. Cotton did not respond, trying to understand what she had just heard.

The scream was not one of anything she had ever heard of before. She had only ever heard something like it in horror movies she had watched in the past, but she couldn’t possibly imagine what it could have come from. It had an unearthly and nightmarish quality to it—like a pony’s scream except… ghoulish and supernatural.

“If that’s another owl, I swear to god,” Spectrum whispered.

“That definitely wasn’t an owl. An owl wouldn’t screech that loud,” Cotton informed with an equal amount of nervousness.

The two listened out carefully, not hearing any signs of movement. Then, they slowly walked toward the storage room door. Spectrum peeked out tentatively, looking left and right for any perceptible danger. Seeing nothing of the sort, she beckoned Cotton out of the room with her.

Neither of them had noticed something move behind the ventilation hatch in the storage room.

Spectrum faced the direction opposite from where they had come and started down the unexplored part of the hallway.

“Oh great, we’re going toward the noise. Great idea,” Cotton complained.

Spectrum looked at Cotton. “That noise could have just been some ceiling support breaking or something. Stop worrying.”

“That’s beside the point!” Cotton argued. “This is what happens in horror movies. Some character hears a strange noise, they go toward it, and then some monster comes out and kills them.”

“Well it’s good this isn’t a horror movie then. Besides, what could possibly be down here that could kill us that has had enough food to keep itself alive for over a quarter-century?”

“Maybe some supernatural monster Equestria’s never heard of that doesn’t need food. Or maybe it’s not even a monster, maybe the whole building is suddenly going to collapse on top of us.”

Spectrum ran a hoof down her face. “Cotton, you are really annoying sometimes.”

The conversation lasted a little longer with arguments shot at each other back and forth, but conclusively, they ended up walking forward, turning along with the hallway. More vines strung downward from the ceiling, and dirt stains were smeared on the walls and floor along with thin cobwebs packed along ceiling beams—some which hung down level with the fillies’ heads.

They came face to face with an iron door that stood at the end of the hall, but what they found peculiar about it was how the center of the door was caved inward. Neither of them commented on it however, and Spectrum twisted the door handle, the lack of resistance proving it to be unlocked, and swung it open.

The next room ahead appeared to be another lobby room similar to the one upstairs but with a closed door on the right hand side of the room and an introduction to another hallway opposite from the two fillies. Only this time, chairs were flipped over and a table was on its side, showing evidence of something bashing into it repeatedly.

At the far corner of the room was yet another skeleton. Except the upper limb and lower limb were separate, severed at the mid point of the spine, and the ribs and skull were completely shattered. A large dark stain was once again splattered across the ground below it.

“What the hell…?” Spectrum muttered with a dumbfounded frown before stepping past the skeleton and trying the closed door. It was locked, but this one was also caved in. Enough, as a matter of fact, that a hole had been punctured through the iron surface.

Spectrum crouched down so her eyes were level with the hole, and pressed an eye against it. Meanwhile, Cotton watched patiently, albeit curiously.

The pegasus filly remained in that position. Wondering what was taking her so long, Cotton’s patience began dwindling.

“Woah, hang on… I see something moving over there—”

A sudden ear-splitting bang pierced the air behind them, provoking a twist of the head from both fillies. A couple of seconds later, the door they had come from swung shut with a resounding slam.

Spectrum’s eyes shot open to their full extents as she jumped onto all four legs and dashed toward the door. Placing both hooves on the handle, she attempted to twist it, but to her horror, it wouldn’t budge. Something on the other side had locked it.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Spectrum screamed, tugging at the door handle in desperation, hoping for it to give way and have just been another stupid little scare. After a few more tugs however, that did not turn out to be the case. Even so, she called Cotton over for assistance, but that made as much difference as if it had been five ponies pulling on it. In the end, the door remained in place, locking Cotton and Spectrum in the downstairs section of the hospital.

Cotton thought this to be the appropriate time to allow the fear in the back of her mind to invade her thought process. “M-maybe… maybe it’s just stuck from the other side; we get it open, right…?”

“The door opened into the room,” Spectrum said, her voice raised. “Someone closed the door, that’s the only explanation.”

“Maybe… I dunno, it could have been a breeze, or—”

“Yes Cotton, a breeze shut and locked the door!”

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m just freaking out—I don’t use common sense when I’m like this!”

Spectrum lowered her head and then shook it. “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be screaming at you. It’s just… fuck, did somepony follow us here? You know what, that would explain the creepy shit we’ve been hearing.” She faced the door again and knocked on it several times with force. “Hey, is this your idea of a joke? Violet, is that you out there? Just open the damn door—I can hear you moving out there!”

Spectrum remained next to the door while Cotton watched her restlessly. Eventually, Spectrum punched the door with a hoof, wandering toward the other side of the room.

Cotton wasn’t sure what the logical thing to say in this situation was, but in the state she was in now, she began spouting the first things that came to mind. “So we’re stuck in here?”

Spectrum waved a hoof in the air in annoyance. “Door won’t open, so yeah, I guess so.”

The cyan earth pony began pacing. “W-well what then? What if we don’t find a way out? What if we’re like… stuck here for good?”

“Okay, yeah, I get it.”

“Nopony knows where we are, we’re locked in a place we don’t even know and who knows what’s going to happen to us.”

“Cotton, you not helping the situation by complaining, just shut up for two seconds!” Spectrum said harshly, glaring at Cotton as she spoke.

An awkward and deafening silence quickly filled the room. Spectrum’s scowl had trailed downward while Cotton remained stationary, wondering whether she should apologize, but ending up saying nothing.

At one point, Spectrum shook her head and sighed. “Come on, let’s see if there’s a way out down here or something to get the door open.” She entered the hallway across from the now locked iron door, and Cotton followed shyly, aware of the tension that currently existed between them two.

The hallway extended for what seemed like miles toward a distant grey mist with doors on either side. Just to the right, a huge hole with jagged edges was carved into the wall, clearly having broken down previously, along with piles of brick and concrete chunks lying around it. The hole led into another hallway on the other side, similar to the one they were in, only dirtier.

“Maybe check and see if there’s something on the other side?” Spectrum suggested in a monotone voice. Cotton didn’t reply, although complied and attempted to step over the piles of debris. While not completely in the other hallway, she peeked her head into it, her eyes gazing into the deep black fog toward which the hallway stretched.

Cotton’s ears fell slightly in fear. “It looks kinda shady over there; I think we should just—”

“COTTON, LOOK OUT!!”

The earth pony spun in confusion and saw from the top of her vision that a huge boulder was falling from above, aimed directly for her head.

With a yelp, she dived into the other hallway, falling onto her stomach as she heard the impact of the boulder against the tiled ground.

Quickly rolling over onto her haunches, she saw that the boulder that had almost crushed her was currently positioned between both hallways. She breathed heavily, realizing truly how close she had come to death or serious damage.

“Cotton, are you alright?” Spectrum asked worryingly from the other side of the boulder.

“Yeah, I’m fine. That was too close…” Cotton replied, coughing afterward from the expulsion of dust seeping into her lungs. She stood, walking up to the boulder whilst waving away the dust in the air. “Where did it even come from?”

Spectrum looked around before her eyes locked onto a spot on the ceiling. “There.” Cotton followed Spectrum’s gaze and saw a missing tile in the ceiling, beyond which was a tube of dirt and rocks that ended shortly in darkness. “I have no idea what caused a rock that big to fall from up there.” Her eyes fell back to the boulder. “Wait, Cotton, how are you going to get back over?”

That had not even been considered by Cotton until it was mentioned, and as she examined her situation properly, she realized that after the boulder had hit the ground, it had rolled slightly, cutting off the space to squeeze through the sides of the hole and leaving a limited space between the boulder and the top of the hole.

Racking her brain for ideas, Cotton proposed the obvious first instinct in this type of scenario. “Try moving it. I’ll pull, you push.”

“Roger that.” Spectrum placed her front hooves on the boulder while Cotton moved toward the side a gripped it as well.

“Three… two… one!” Cotton pulled with all her might while Spectrum put all her strength into her side of the boulder, pushing off the ground with her hind legs and flapping her wings to increase the force she was applying to it.

However, with all this strength combined, they had only managed to budge the boulder no more than an inch before they surrendered to fatigue, the boulder returning to its original spot.

“My gosh, that’s heavy,” Spectrum said, panting. “Maybe I pull and you can try bucking it since your legs are stronger.”

They recovered from their exhaustion and tried Spectrum’s idea. The result no different, leaving both of them breathing heavily again, and Cotton with aching hind legs.

“Okay, that didn’t work,” Spectrum spoke between breaths. “Do you think you can climb over?”

Cotton looked at the tiny space doubtfully. “I don’t know, it looks pretty tight.”

“Well, we won’t know unless we try. Besides, there is some space and with your size, you could probably fit—”

The ear-splitting sound of metal tearing suddenly shot through Cotton’s eardrums, her heart jumping into her throat as she watched Spectrum’s head twist in the direction of the lobby room they had walked out of earlier. No sooner had that sound pierced the air than the exact same scream they had heard earlier sounded from the same place.

Cotton stared at Spectrum frightfully for reassurance. However the pegasus filly’s gaze never left the lobby room. In fact, as she stared, her face began to pale, her ears flattening gradually and her eyes diluting into pinpricks.

“W-what… what is it?” Cotton stammered out, troubled by her friend’s expression and that she couldn’t see what Spectrum was seeing. The multicolor mane filly just continued to stare, her breathing getting heavier and heavier.

Cotton heard the screech again, and as she did, Spectrum suddenly whirled around and sprinted in the opposite direction, out of Cotton’s line of sight.

“Spectrum, where are you going?!” Cotton screamed, before she heard the sound of rumbling. In that moment, a torrent of dirt and rocks burst from the missing tile in the ceiling.

Cotton jumped back, spotting a long shadow suddenly spread across the ground in the opposite hallway for a split second, before the avalanche of dirt and stones filled the hallway, completely sealing off all the parts of the hole in the wall the boulder that had fallen previously hadn’t blocked.

“Spectrum!” Cotton cried out for a last time. The rumbling sound disappeared, leaving Cotton in the dark and silence, separated from Spectrum for the second time.

Cotton’s mind was a whirlwind of thoughts. What had happened to Spectrum? Was she okay? What had scared her so much for her to run off and leave Cotton behind?

The cyan filly stared into the darkness of the hallway.

But most importantly, how was she going to get out of here and back to Spectrum…?

Cotton first tried clearing the blockage. She had managed to get a few small boulders out of the way but her strength was no match for the bigger ones and she therefore came to the conclusion that clearing the cave in with her bare hooves wasn’t going to work. Therefore, her second plan of action came into play: start walking and hope for the best.

With a gulp, her facial features portraying a clear lack in confidence, she started walking down the hallway. The area quickly began to darken, prompting Cotton to grab for her camera. However, she noticed that her hoof was not coming into contact with said camera, and when she looked downward, she realized why.

The camera was no longer with her.

Her heart dropped. She assumed that she had dropped the camera when she was jumping out of the way of that falling boulder, and cursed silently. She would now have to proceed into the empty, dark hallway without a light source.

Brilliant.

Cotton attempted to set aside her nerves, breathing in and out to calm her beating heart, and carried on down the long corridor. As she had predicted, the hallway darkened even further, even as she reached the turn in the hallway where this process continued.

Though, as she was taking another turn, she spotted that at the end of the corridor was a working fluorescent lamp on the ceiling which, albeit flickering, still shocked Cotton with its working condition. There shouldn’t have been any electricity running down here. This raised the question of whether this place had its own working generator, and how if so.

Ahead of the lamp was another turn where another flickering lamp rested on the ceiling. Following that was practically a labyrinth of left and right turns. At some points, she would come to crosses in the corridors but blockages of rubble would close her options to only one path. She would also come across doors which were all locked and IV’s on their sides wrapped in the growth on the walls.

Cotton began losing confidence. Every turn and hallway she went down didn’t seem to lead her any closer to her goal of finding her friend. She called out Spectrum’s name frequently as she walked, but each time she hadn’t received an answer other than the mocking silence of the empty halls, her confidence had been belittled even more.

She began to see gas pipes coming out of the walls, a reassuring difference from the recurring pattern of vines, broken floor tiles and dirt-stained walls. On a hunch that they would lead her closer to an exit or someplace that would help her guide herself, she followed them, taking turns where they turned and hoping she would end up somewhere at least slightly familiar.

Soon, to Cotton’s disappointment, the number of lit lamps she came across became less common, dimming her surroundings to a faint brightness with the aid of some cracks in the wall that made way for outside light to pass in. It was also in this area that she began to see a repetitive theme of scratch marks and holes in the walls which Cotton wasn’t sure how to feel about.

When she passed across a left turn, she spotted yet another downward staircase which, although considerably shorter than the previous one, still made Cotton averse to the idea of descending further into the earth. All she wanted right now was just to reunite with Spectrum and get the hell out of the hospital.

As Cotton stood contemplating whether or not she should go downward, her ears twitched as a sound crept into them. She turned around and faced the general direction of the sound, finding herself staring into a hallway opposite from the staircase which Cotton could not see far into due to the mist in the building.

The sound was quiet, but audible. It sounded like the footsteps of something moving in the hallway, but she couldn’t see what it was. Her eyes remained fixed on the hallway as if waiting for something to jump out at her. She could feel tension rising in her chest as the sounds became slightly louder, but the thought that it could have been Spectrum kept her from running right away.

A sudden screech emanated from the hallway, echoing in Cotton’s direction.

With a whimper, Cotton turned tail, bolting down the stairs. She didn’t know what that was, but she was definitely not going to wait around to find out.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she ran forward blindly. Whatever she had heard, she was not sure if it was dangerous, and if it was, whether it was giving chase or not. She was just focused on getting out of that area, so much so that she barely even acknowledged the appearance of pony skeletons in the hallway.

Soon, after many twists and turns, she slowed to a trot, gasping for air. She turned around, checking to see if anything was still following her, and judged that she was free from danger.

She turned back around, her pace slowing even more so she could catch her breath, and continued onward. However, as she did, she noticed that a short way away, the hallway split into two different directions, one straight forward and the other, a right turn that led into a brighter hallway. It was no question which one piqued her interest.

She followed the right turn, and saw that at the end was a large, brightly lit room. Cotton had no clue what she would find in there, but the fact that she had stumbled upon something other than run-down dirty hallways was enough for her.

She approached the room, which revealed itself more and more as she went. She could see the source of light being a fluorescent strip light hanging from a couple of wires on the ceiling, but as her eyes traced the details of the rest of the room, they began to widen further with each passing second.

To the left of the room, a set of rusty iron bars were lined up vertically and close together from one end of the room to the other with a doorway in the middle but the door itself lying in front of it as though it had been bashed off its hinges. It was a prison cell obviously—a big one at that, but what one was doing down here in a hospital was beyond Cotton. Against the wall to Cotton’s right, a long bench sat, rotten and stained in dark red spots, and multiple cabinets were set up against each wall.

None of those were what shocked Cotton however.

Skeletons… what had to have been over a hundred of them lay scattered across the room, practically covering the entire floor. She couldn’t believe it. The amount of skeletons there were… the amount of ponies that had died down here, either starved to death or killed, their last moments lived in pain, or grief, inside some hospital room underground.

Cotton shivered heavily, but not from the coolness of the place. She began walking forward, trying her best to avoid stepping on bones, cringing when she heard a snap or a crunch. She then stopped in front of the bench, and the sight of it caused her to remember back to the photo she had seen in the storage room. This was the same bench as in the picture, except ruined of course. She then thought about the adults and fillies in the picture, and glanced down at the skeletons on the ground.

She shivered again.

She shook her head, attempting to push those thoughts toward the back of her mind and decided to check one of the cabinets. Opening it up, she found bottles of water and dated, mouldy food rations, as well as medical kits and other supplies for tending to wounds and other health related stuff. This confused Cotton. If they had food and water to keep them alive, then what killed these ponies?

After Cotton checked a few other cabinets, finding the same things inside, she proceeded toward the short hall on the other side of the room, which opened into another smaller and squarer room than the last.

At the dead center of the room was a metal table, but what Cotton found strange was the soot black color staining the entire surface of it. But not soon after, she spotted something that interested her even more:

The pink star-shaped jewel peeking out from behind the back leg of the table.

Cotton frowned in curiosity, circling around the table to inspect it, when she found five more jewels laying beside it, each a different shape and color. A pink butterfly, a blue balloon, a red lightning bolt, a purple diamond and finally, an orange one shaped like an apple. Only, instead of glimmering like regular gems, they appeared to be dark in color and carried barely any sparkle.

Marveled by her find, Cotton sat on her haunches and reached for the star shaped one, rotating it in her hooves as her eyes took in the sight of it.

“What are these things…?” she whispered to herself as she reached for the lightning bolt-shaped one.

Suddenly, the two gems in her hooves began to glow and vibrate, as did the other four on the ground, the star-shaped one glowing much brighter than the rest. In fear, Cotton threw the jewels away and crawled backward. The light emitted from the jewels began to fade, and as they did, the lights above flickered momentarily before returning to their original state.

Cotton stood carefully, unsure of what the gems would do, and instead headed toward the smaller table at the side of the room which held a piece of paper. She picked it up and began to read.

06/21/2016

Our third attempt to bind the element of harmony to another bearer has failed, and we’re becoming increasingly uncertain if we will be able to succeed in repairing the connection between them. As things stand, Tirek and his companions are pushing further into the town. The princesses and the pillars are doing what they can to keep them back but they are failing slowly but surely. I am not sure for how much longer we will be able to keep up our current efforts and if the experiments continue to fail as they have thus far, I’m afraid we will have to resort to extreme sacrifices.

The pony’s here are not faring much better. Most are hurt and require medical attention, also clearly devastated by their losses. Luckily, we have managed to transport a majority of the town’s population into the basement, and furthermore, the elements have sensed the danger and we have been able to use them to protect the hospital from attacks.

As far as I’m concerned, we’re safe here for now. But due to the last three failed attempts at finding a new bearer for the element of generosity, the number of willing patients is dwindling, and if we cannot bind the element to somepony soon, I’m afraid—

The writing mysteriously ended there.

Cotton was trying to wrap her head around this new information. So there were experiments going on down here, and there was a war in the town. That much was officially confirmed.

What she found weird though was the mention of a third failed experiment. She remembered how the second picture in the storage room was labeled the same thing and on the front was a photograph of that equine-shaped… thing.

There was so much that she still didn’t understand, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to understand. Everything seemed to point toward something twisted and dark that she would regret messing with, and so Cotton, with the aim of leaving, began to turn around.

Only to have her interest caught by the gems again.

She walked up to them for a second time, looking at each individually. It was safe to assume these were the elements of harmony. Cotton wouldn’t deny that she was indeed fascinated by them. These gems, according to Spectrum, were the most powerful weapon in the world at one point in time, and they were just lying here in front of her.

As she got closer, the star-shaped element began to glow again, as did the rest of them, but this time, something was different. She could have sworn she had heard some sort of voice…

You have to leave!

Cotton gasped lightly. It was quiet, but she definitely heard a voice that time. Her eyes shot towards every corner of the room, only to land back on the elements again. The voice didn’t seem physical; it almost seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. She reached a doubtful hoof toward the star-shaped gem, taking it in her hoof. Almost instantly, she felt the powerful energy radiating from it.

There’s something dangerous down here!

There it was again…

The gem began to glow more intensely as the voice spoke. It sounded feminine and even somewhat soothing, but the speaker sounded fearful and agitated. Was it coming from the element…?

She held the element up closer. “W-who are you…?” she whispered in an attempt to communicate with the voice.

Get out of here, quickly!

In that moment, the gem in her hoof shone a blinding white light before generating an electric spark that flashed through the air. Cotton dropped it immediately, stepping back as the gem landed on the floor with the others, rattling slightly before going still and darkening back to its original lifeless color like the other elements.

After that, the lights above went out, plunging the room into darkness.

Cotton stepped away from the elements quickly before running out of the room, across the skeleton-covered floor—now uncaring of the bones and skulls she stepped on, and back out into the hallway.

She stopped running once she reached the intersection from earlier, looking back into the room in fear of what had just happened. A fresh coat of perplexity painted the inside of her mind as she opted to start going down the unexplored hall with the goal to make her distance from the brightly lit room.

The whole way, Cotton thought about the voice she had heard. Whether it was coming from the elements or somewhere else was a complete mystery, but it sounded like it was trying to warn her of something. Though, she wasn’t sure what, and frankly that didn’t matter to her right now. All that mattered was that she was done with this place. She just wanted to find Spectrum and leave. She had seen enough crazy stuff for today.

She kept walking until the hallway turned again, and she followed it. That’s where she stopped for the umpteenth time that day.

She could see a far off silhouette within the mist and darkness of the hallway. A silhouette that appeared like a pony, except longer and larger, and looked to be facing the wall.

Cotton kept her gaze focused on the silhouette. It was unmoving as far as she could see, but as she took a few steps forward, a purple light became visible, shining from the center of the shape.

“Spectrum…?” she lightly called out. The shape didn’t respond, just remained immobile. Cotton could feel sweat breaking out on her brow, but against her body protesting for her to turn back she took yet another few steps forward.

A bad feeling sprouted from within her stomach. Her eyes didn’t move from the silhouette, watching for any signs of movement. Something about it wasn’t right. It could have been her eyes playing tricks on her or something along those lines, but those ideas didn’t make her any less afraid.

She took another few steps forward.

The silhouette moved. Whatever its focus was on was on before had clearly lost its interest, as it had turned to face Cotton’s direction.

“S-Spectrum… is that you?” she said more silently, taking another step forward.

The door beside her burst off its hinges.

Cotton screamed, recoiling as she was showered by wooden planks and sparks. As she backed up, her eyes contracted in sheer terror, watching the long and skinny creature that walked out into the hallway on four legs, the bright purple light at its chest blinding her. The large creature’s head suddenly snapped in Cotton’s direction.

It screeched.

Cotton turned and ran. She didn’t care where, as long as it was away. Adrenaline flooded her veins, pushing her legs to move faster, propelling her down the hall at high speeds. She heard the creature bellow again before giving chase, its steps thumping through Cotton’s body.

She didn’t dare looked back, only forced herself to sprint faster. Wind whipped at her mane due to the velocity at which she ran, but her fight-or-flight response made the strain unnoticeable. All she felt was the determination to stay alive and escape that creature, which translated into yet another increase in her speed.

Her hooves began to scramble once she reached a turn, almost causing her to trip and fall, but she remained on her hooves and continued running. The monster chasing her roared again as she heard the sharp ring of a collision, and the thumping on the ground stopped. Only for a moment however, as a few seconds later, they had started up again, this time faster and accompanied by angrier shrieks.

Reaching an open door in the hallway, Cotton rushed inside and threw the door closed behind her with a foreleg, all the while refusing to stop running. She had no time to study the room she had entered, only enough to spot a filing cabinet, screech to a halt behind it and crouched to the ground.

Cotton was panting by the time she stopped running, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her heart hammered at her ribcage faster than it ever had in her life. She tried to compose herself, but she was quickly failing that task once the creature outside had begun to bash against the room’s door.

Each blow against the door made Cotton jump. Once she realized that she was making noise, she immediately put a hoof in her mouth to silence it. All the while, she was scared for her life. Whatever that thing was out there, it was trying to kill her, possibly in the worst way imaginable. She didn’t want that to happen to her. She didn’t want to die, not this way.

Strike after strike caused the ground below Cotton to rumble, until the door finally succumbed to the constant abuse, breaking apart and falling to the ground in a pile of destroyed wood.

A blood-curdling roar filled the air before Cotton heard the creature begin its patrol. Its breathing was rough and ragged, like that of an old stallion, and the creaking and cracking of its joints each time it moved made Cotton tremble violently.

Hoof in mouth, she silenced her shaky breathing to the best of her ability, made uncomfortable by the demand of oxygen from her respiratory system. Her eyes then went to the round spot of purple light on the wall next to her, which moved after each creak of the creature’s limbs. She watched it intently, hoping that whatever that thing was would not walk over and see her.

The purple light on the wall disappeared. After that, the sound of metal being scratched entered her right ear, followed by a deep grumble. From behind her hiding place, Cotton suddenly saw a cabinet fly across the room before hitting the wall on the far side of the room and dropping to the ground.

The creature drew in a deep breath. The light on the wall appeared again, and the creature’s footsteps got louder.

Stay still, don’t make a sound... Stay still, don’t make a sound…

The footsteps continued. The light became brighter.

Stay still don’t make a sound, stay still don’t make a sound!

And then she saw it.

The creature emerged from behind the cabinet. It was a horrid abomination—something out of somepony’s wildest nightmare. Its skin, dark tan with bits of color missing like peeled drywall, looked stretched beyond its limits—most noticeably at the ribs, which protruded further than the hungriest pony, and spine, which bulged outward to the point of forming a hump on its back that ranged from the neck down to the pelvis.

As Cotton stared at it with shrunken eyes, only one thought surfaced past the rest:

What the hell is it…?

It sucked in another breath through its sharp, fang-like teeth which pierced through its top and bottom lips. Its body lurched, the purple light embodied in its chest glaring in Cotton’s direction, inciting her to squint.

Thankfully, the creature had not seen her, and had faced away to search the wooden boxes and drawers on the other side of the room.

Cotton remained at her spot on the ground, quivering in panic. She wasn’t sure whether to run or to stay in place. If she stayed where she was the creature would certainly turn around and spot her, but if she ran, the creature would once again give chase and likely catch her, which left her with little to no options at her disposal.

The creature hissed, poking at the wooden boxes much like a curious cat, except not so much curious as pissed off. Cotton pondered her situation. Could she be able to sneak out of the room while the creature was distracted over there…? She doubted it heavily, but decided it was worth a shot if she didn’t want to be brutally murdered.

However, she didn’t even make it to standing up before her tail brushed softly against the cabinet beside her.

She heard a snarl and looked up to see the creature slanting its head, ceasing its prior action. Its ears twitched, and its head slowly began to turn in Cotton’s direction.

She backed up, pressing her back flat against the wall as if that would hide her anymore than she was already hidden, and cowered. That was it. In a mere second, she had accepted death, and images of her family and friends flashed through her mind in a nanosecond.

Click-click.

With an audible snap, the creature’s head twisted toward the room’s exit, a resounding screech erupting from its mouth before it galloped out of Cotton’s line of sight. She heard its footsteps grow fainter and fainter, along with screams that became more and more distant. Then, silence fell.

Cotton removed her hoof from her mouth and instantly fell into a fit of gasps and hyperventilation. While relief flooded her system, her inability to process how close she had just been to death left her in a state of shock.

She couldn’t wrap her head around what that creature was. A tsunami of thoughts flowed through her mind to the point of bursting, like where it had come from, or what it was doing down here. What scared her, though, were not the questions themselves, but the lack of answers to them, and the only thing she did know for a fact:

That creature was roaming the basement, with the intent to kill.

She simply sat there breathing heavily for another minute before finding the courage to inch out of her hiding place. Gazing in the direction of the room’s exit, the creature was nowhere to be seen. She was safe.

With shaky breaths, the cyan filly stood up from the ground, still hyper from adrenaline, and fearfully made her way toward the now broken door. While her surroundings appeared safe, she was still apprehensive that that creature was still close, and slowed her walk to gradual steps, not wanting to make too much noise.

She stepped silently over the broken pieces of the door the creature had destroyed, and poked her head into the hallway. First she looked left and right, spotting only darkness both ways. Next, she listened carefully for any noises that would signify danger, and with no indication of one, she finally left the room entirely.

The hallways felt significantly colder than they had before, goosebumps trailing all along Cotton’s fur. That thing could have been anywhere, but the question of where was the concerning part.

Cotton reflected on her encounter with the creature. There was a noise out in the halls that caused the creature to leave, and if she was not mistaken, that was the sound of Spectrum’s camera. Was she nearby? Cotton wanted to call out her name, but if the creature was also nearby, she didn’t want to draw its attention to her location.

If she recalled, the noise that had distracted the creature had come from the direction where she had been chased. This meant that if she were to go that way, she risked running into that thing again, but if she were to go back, she would wind up nowhere. That left her with only one choice.

Cotton cursed, facing where she had come running from and backtracked stealthily as she was once again submerged in the darkness.

She reached the cross in the hallway, coming across a large spot in the wall where the wall sank inward, the stone within forming a web of cracks as a result of a powerful impact.

Cotton was not sure which way to go this time. She couldn’t hear anything that signified that something was after her, but she had a strange feeling that was a bad omen. She sent a wary stare down the right hallway, before directing it forward. Both ways held a deep sea of darkness, and she wanted to avoid the left hallway where the creature had come from in case it had gone back.

After a quick peek over her shoulder, she began walking into the hallway in front of her.

She stopped abruptly when a purple light appeared at the end of the hall.

Her blood ran cold as she backed up and turned into the right hallway, but now standing not far away was another one of them, focused precisely on her and ready to give chase…

Which it did not a second later.

Cotton took her cue and galloped in the opposite direction, her ears falling victim to the thunderous cacophony of roars behind her. The walls, ceiling and floor around her were suddenly shaded in a bright purple, aside from the stretched out shadow on the ground in front of her, mimicking her every movement.

Her only aim now was to create as much distance between her and those things as possible. Daring a look behind her, she saw that the creatures were gaining on her. Fast.

Doubling her efforts, her legs moved faster, and she reached the door that had been broken down earlier. Skidding against the floor, she darted into the room, which was small and filled with coats and crates piled on top of each other. Thinking fast, she set her hooves on a pile of crates next to the doorway and tipped it, the stack falling over and crashing in a heap in front of the doorway.

Facing the rest of the room, her mind was working in overdrive trying to determine her next course of action. She immediately started running toward the door at the other end of the room, and as she ran, she noticed a support pole with a jagged end lying on the ground. With a foreleg, she snatched it off the floor, and with her other foreleg, she gripped the handle on the door and pushed it open.

She heard the creatures screeching behind her, and with a sudden crash, wooden bits and pieces flew in her direction, some piercing her skin but going unnoticed due to the adrenaline in her blood. She continued running, kicking the door closed with a hind leg and continuing down the corridor she was now in.

She already heard one of the creature’s attempts to break down the door. The hallway turned left and she followed it. Greeted with another door which looked more solid and stiff than the rest in the hospital, she paused to try the handle.

It wouldn’t budge.

“No, no no no, fuck, FUCK!” Cotton shouted, slamming down on the handle again and again to no avail. The continuous beats against the door down the hall behind her paired with the shrieks of the monsters made her heart beat ever harder as she fruitlessly begged for the handle to submit to her attempts of turning it.

And then she heard the door break.

Cotton froze. The creature at the end of the hall screeched again, and Cotton crouched down to the ground against the wall.

Thump… thump… thump…

Its steps rattled her body harder than her own fear. She knew she had to think of something but she didn’t know what to do. The door behind her was locked and by the time any plan of hers were to have worked, the creature would have turned the corner and saw her.

Thump… thump… thump…

Cotton’s eyes then fell to the pole in her hoof. That would be the only way out of this situation. She would have to attack that thing if she wanted any chance of getting out of this situation alive.

Any deep breath that Cotton took stuttered quickly. She had to be brave. It was a hard task, considering her scenario, but she knew that if she gave up now, she would certainly die. The thought of Spectrum came into her mind. For her own sake, she needed to be as brave as her friend right now.

Remaining next to the wall, the filly approached where the hall turned as quietly as she could manage, remaining on the tips of her hooves whilst firmly gripping her weapon with a foreleg. Stopping just before entering the hall the creature was in, she waited, listening carefully for the creature’s steps.

Thump… thump… …

The rumble of its steps was mysteriously discontinued. She could hear it breathing slowly and viciously, the dripping of saliva tapping the ground. Why was it just waiting around? Was it looking at something? Tension welled up within her system as she waited for another movement.

The monstrosity hissed, taking sharp breaths at random, but as far as Cotton could tell, it was standing in place all the while. She heard another cry, but this one was farther away. That might have been the second creature that had chased her, but she couldn’t be sure. Her concern now was on the creature she was prepared to attack.

…

…

Thump…

…

Thump… thump…

…

Thump… thump… thump, thump thump THUMP THUMP

Letting her instincts take over, she rose to her hind legs, gripping the pole with both forelegs, before bringing it back and swinging it with all the force she could muster.

As she swung her weapon like a baseball bat, the pole suddenly stopped, and a cry cut through the air loud enough to cause ringing in the filly’s ears. At the same time, a wave of pain shot through her foreleg, making Cotton grunt loudly. She had hit it.

The creature’s screech gradually became weaker before its voice went silent, and the pole slipped from her hooves, disappearing behind the wall. Finally, the resounding sound of flesh colliding against the ground was the last to occur before silence took back its place in the cold, misty air.

She fell onto all four shaking legs, and stepped forward to view the result of what she had done.

The creature lay on its back, static, the irregular end of the pole sticking through its head deep enough to penetrate its brain. The purple light in its chest had disappeared.

Cotton still stared at it skeptically. Did she kill it? The damage was clear in front of her, but this being a supernatural creature she had never seen before, she couldn’t be sure.

She went closer to investigate, meanwhile sustaining a cautious approach. It seemed to be dead. It wasn’t breathing and it made no sounds. She then turned her head towards the room past the door the monster had destroyed and saw that the other creature was not in there. She assumed it had lost interest in her and had gone a separate way.

Plopping onto her haunches, back pressed against the wall, Cotton breathed heavily. She couldn’t believe she had just killed that thing. She could have very well died, but she somehow managed to beat it. She was still alive, and Cotton couldn’t have been luckier.

She then thought about Spectrum again. Where was she? Was she okay? Surely she was still looking for her, but then again, one of the creatures might have gotten her. It was by sheer miracle that Cotton had made it out of that scenario alive, but whether Spectrum was having the same luck worried her. For all she knew, she could have been hurt, or even... she shook her head. She didn’t want to think about that.

She wondered how many creatures were down here. She had seen two so far, unless those weren’t the same as the first one she had encountered. She examined the one in front of her again. Its skin seemed a deeper brown color than the bright tan of the first. However many there were, she would have been happy to avoid them until she could regroup with Spectrum and get out of the hospital.

Breathing slower now, Cotton pressed a hoof to her forehead. She had a headache. Her fur was matted with sweat and she was thirsty. She was supposed to be on the way back home right now, but instead she was stuck underground inside the home of a bunch of supernatural monsters hell-bent on killing her.

She couldn’t wait to tell her parents about this one.

Cotton stood up from the ground. She wished she could sit back down but she had to carry on. Walking toward the crate-filled room, which was now a mess of broken boxes and pieces of wooden planks scattered across the floor, she proceeded through the room to get back into the hallway.

As she walked however, she stepped over one of the white coats on the ground, and looked down to see something peeking out of the front pocket. She stopped, reaching to pick up whatever it was, and discovered it to be a small box of paperclips. She set it in her mouth, deciding it might be useful later.

Ready to leave, she raised her head toward the doorway leading into the hallway…

Just in time to see a round purple light spread across the wall outside.

“God fucking damnit…” Cotton whispered in frustration and dread, backing up back into the hallway with the dead creature. She reversed all the way to the locked door, watching as the purple light in the hall grew brighter before the creature came into view. She prayed it would just keep going and not turn into the room, but instead of doing the former or the latter, the creature simply stopped at the doorway and didn’t move.

Cotton took a breath. She did a run-through of the positives and negatives of her situation. For positives, the creature wasn’t moving and hadn’t seen her yet, so she was safe for the time being. Negatives, there was no way out of here, and the creature could start walking in her direction and she would be screwed.

She considered that her best bet would be to wait until the creature outside left, and then she could resume her quest of finding an exit.

Out of the corner of her eye, a purple light flashed.

Cotton’s eyes shot downward, landing on the creature she had killed. As she stared at its corpse, a purple light flickered again at its chest before shining with a glaring brightness, prompting Cotton to squint.

A low growl escaped its mouth.

All color left her face as she backed up until her rump hit the wall. The creature’s limbs started to twitch abnormally with audible creaks as more sounds came from its mouth. What was going on? She had killed it!

As the creature’s movements became more frantic, Cotton ran back toward the locked door, once again pulling on the handle as though it would magically give and allow her through. Through the box of paperclips in her mouth, she screamed, pleading for it to open, and as she did, the tiny box inside her mouth fell and hit the floor.

An idea sparked in her mind. She quickly sat down, grabbed the box and opened it. Sure enough, it was filled to the brim with paperclips.

She had seen Spectrum do this. All she had to do was match it. She set the box on the floor and took a paperclip, unfolding it so one end stuck out straight. She then bent it so the end of the unfolded paperclip formed small curls. This was hard to do with her hooves, and as such, it slipped from them multiple times.

The growls from the creature on the ground grew more intense, and she saw its head lift from the ground. She also began hearing screeches from the one in the other room.

“Come on, come on…” she repeated as she took another paperclip, unfolded one end and bent it in half with her teeth. She then inserted that paperclip into the lock by the bent end before grabbing the other one and bringing it to the lock. Placing it above the other paperclip, she fumbled around with it, trying to get it passed the pins within the mechanism.

The creature rolled onto its front before placing its forelegs on the ground and pushing itself up, now towering over the little filly. Cotton looked backward, and watched as the creature’s head twisted in her direction, and a distorted screech came from its mouth.

Cotton hyperventilated, shaking the paperclip to get it inside the lock, and at last it slipped inward. She wasted no time in turning the lock, which emitted a clear click before she yanked on the handle, pulling the door open wide. Thump after thump quaked the ground as she stepped through the doorway, watching as the creature jumped forward to grab her. Before it could, she yanked the door shut.