Twilight walked through the streets, careful to stick close to the alleys. The clothes she had found in an abandoned house, an oversized white shirt and brown pants that only stayed on her due to a rope that acted as a belt, were caked in mud, dirt and worst of all, blood.
After she was sure the zombies had left her previous hideout she had searched through the house, finding her current clothes. Unfortunately there was no water or food to be found, however, when looking out of the busted attic she saw a couple of castles deeper within the city. She reasoned that a castle was bound to have an emergency storage of food and water, and probably some tactical information as well, information which could relate to the zombies. Going for the castle also saved her a lot of time and energy over looking for the town hall in the expansive city.
She had picked out the closest castle and set off towards it. But when traveling towards it she had cast a simple mirror spell in order to get a birds eye view of the city and at that moment a pack of zombies lurking within a basement that had a large hole blown into it ambushed her. The zombies appeared without warning, and had chased Twilight through the alleys for quite some time until she stumbled into an unexpected pile of rotten gore. The smell had stunned Twilight,and while she lay there, the zombies searched all around her, one even bringing one of its slimy appendages over Twilights fur, yet they didn't seem to notice her. It was a miracle that she didn’t scream.
The zombies eventually left, and Twilight had no other choice but to continue, still covered in the grime. At first she tried to ignore it, but the smell and feel of it all was pressing down on her, and she had no choice but to wash the worst off of her with water from a puddle. She stared blankly into the distance as she did so. Still, some stains remained but she could deal with them.
With no other choice she continued towards the castle, her head buzzing.
The closer she got the more elaborate and decorated the buildings around her became. The dull three story stone brick houses were replaced by larger mansions, some with destroyed personal gardens and usually having an overturned and/or destroyed carriage in front of them.
Just as she entered the plaza that held the castle she saw that a wall surrounded it. It was just short enough to be hidden by the surrounding houses, and its portcullis was shut. The houses here dwarfed even the mansions she had passed, and had been much more beautiful as well. Open staircases went around the buildings, stained glass seamlessly meshed together and connected into beautiful pictures which adorned each and every window, the roofs were covered by perfectly smooth obsidian tiles and each entrance was both entrancing and inviting in its beauty.
Of course, had been, was the key takeaway here. Most of what Twilight imagined was once beautiful works of art to rival the Celestial palace in their own right lay now in ruins. Stairways had collapsed, tiles had slid off and embedded themselves into the road, some buildings had completely collapsed upon themselves, now nothing more than a roof laying on a pile of rubble. However there were enough roofs intact to hide this destruction from anyone observing from a distance. In stark contrast to the ruins around it, the walled building seemed to be in good shape, standing tall amidst the ruins.
Twilight found it strange that the level of destruction here was much more brutal than at the outskirts of the city, which she imagined would be the first to be destroyed. Yet she only spared this curiosity a stray thought before going back to the matter at hand.
She scanned the walls for any low-points she could climb through, but found none, and the houses were placed sufficiently far enough from the wall that she couldn’t make the jump.
“Okay Spike, take out the parch…. oh right.” Spike wasn’t with her, she had to remind herself. “I have...I have three options. One, I use telekinesis on the portcullis and slip through before it falls down, however I doubt I have enough magic for it, and the noise of it shutting might attract the zombies.” Plus, she didn’t want to test the capability of the gate at warding off a horde.
“Option 2, I scavenge for some objects to stack upon each other and climb over the wall.” It could work, assuming the objects could be moved without creating a huge ruckus and she had the magic or strength necessary to move all of them.
“Finally, I could search for some rope and try to climb it that way, but I seriously doubt I could find a solid length of rope around here.”
Magic exhaustion, even more magic exhaustion and regular exhaustion or just wasting time. She looked back at the portcullis, frowning at first before she let out an exasperated sigh and walked towards the gate.
‘I hope I still have some mana left in me.’
The further away from the unicorn a spell was made, the more mana and mental concentration it took to manifest it, and currently Twilight needed every last drop of her mana in order to lift the portcullis. She pressed her hands right into the center of the portcullis and began summoning her magical reserves. The metal was cold to the touch but was trivial when compared to the grime still clinging to Twilights clothes.
Her brain, sharpened by years of magical study, instinctively went through the motions of casting, unnafected by Twilights change in appearance. Slowly, purple light began to gather around her hands, and then spread out from the center of the portcullis to also encompass the bottom- right and left corners. By creating three smaller fields it would lessen the load on her brain when casting, as opposed to gripping the entire gate with her magic.
The light in these areas brightened up again, turning from purple to a shining magenta. Twilights face was caked with sweat, and her concentration was almost broken by a pulsating pain growing at the base of her horn. Still, mana continued to gather and grip the cold metal tight.
She was going to run empty at this rate, she had no choice, she had to lift the gate up now or give up. Her spell wasn’t ready, her body trembled and wanted to fall down, but it was too late to stop now. Twilight screamed, pouring every sleepless night spent over a book, every last minute studying magic, every second her cutie mark had brought her joy and all the other stress she had gone through since to get this far into just one spell.
She heard growls, shrieks and a growing amount of steps coming her way from the city, but weaving into the hordes approach was the shrieking of the metal gate going higher and higher. It climbed to the heavens as her mana drained away even faster and she had to fall to her knees in order to not fall over. The sounds of the horde continued to approach. This was it, her last mana, she couldn’t waste it.
Twilight screamed, and pushed one last time at the portcullis with her magic, lifting it just over her head. In the last few seconds before she blacked out she threw herself through the portcullis and a split second later it slammed shut behind her.
x
Pulsating, burning and being smashed into a million small pieces, that was how Twilight’s brain felt when she opened her eyes and saw the moon and several distant stars stare down at her. Feeling vomit run down her muzzle and neck didn’t help either.
“Uugh” Twilight groaned, slightly chastising herself. Even when she was a foal, and way to eager to learn new magic she hadn’t been stupid enough to use up all of her reserves, and yet here she was, grown mare and lying in a pool of her own vomit. She really should have thrown herself through earlier. Now she was dehydrated, probably sick and unable to use magic for at least the next 24 hours.
At least her plan had worked. The zombies must have lost interest in her since there were none near the gate and she was still alive. Additionally, since the noise of the gate shutting would have attracted any zombies inside the walled area, and again, she was still alive, she could explore the building in peace. She wasn’t sure if her current predicament was worth it though.
She lifted herself up with one of her arms. She was surrounded by stone walls and the courtyard she had fallen into was likewise covered in stone. The only feature standing out in the barren courtyard were the tall statues of armored and helmeted bipedes, probably the same species that became the zombies. The castle loomed over her.
‘Please let this place have water.’
Twilight weakly stood up and began shambling towards the building, past the intimidating armored statues that flanked the stony road,each few meters apart. Twilight chuckled as her condition reminded her of the school nurse giving some foals that had suffered from mana exhaustion, even after all the lectures she had done on magical safety, a stern talking to.
“Sorry Amber Slither, but I can’t take three days off school right now, and neither am I available for detention after that.”. Twilight tried to laugh, but could only cough, her dry throat aching from it. Twilight stopped to take a breather, looking up at the sky she had once gazed at with Spike and Celestia beside her. She silently resumed her march.
Unlike the intact walls the gate to the castle was punctured in several places by something the size of a fist and half of the gate had fallen outwards. Splinters lay scattered about and the smell of rotten wood grew strong near it. Twilight stepped through the threshold and into the dimly lit entrance of the castle, accidentally stepping into a muddy puddle. She continued deeper into the castle.
Just as she had suspected the castle was devoid of life, with not even the skittering of mice or the buzz of insects to break the silence, only the rhythmic drops of water somewhere inside could be heard. While the entrance was somewhat grand, with a large wooden staircase leading up and halfway busted magical chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, the stony halls were cramped and dank.
The soft steps of her feet against the wooden floor soon joined the other sounds. Room after room, knocked over chairs, torn curtains, dried up blood, ransacked crates and broken doors. Luckily there were some dim lights she could feel were powered by magic lighting up the halls a bit. Unfortunately if she wanted to absorb the mana from the lamps she had to use her currently nonexistant mana, so she was left with all this mana a hoofs reach away yet completely useless to her.
The first floor didn’t have anything, information, food nor water. So she went back to the entrance and climbed higher on the busted staircase. This time, she saw something on it, a dirty, wet imprint. The imprint was of a set of weird patterns ascending the staircase, similar in shape to her new feet, but these ones consisted of stripes and dots instead of a singular surface like the imprints she left behind. But one thing was for sure, they were too orderly to be from a zombie.
She started following the trail, ignoring all other rooms. A survivor meant food, drink and most importantly information on what had happened to this world. Finally she came to a door that had the steps leading into it.
The hope that had been steadily building inside of her was crushed, completely and utterly. The door was barred, from the outside.
She knocked on the door once, then again, and then she threw both her hands at it, hammering it.
“Please, somepony, are you there! Can you hear me? Please, don’t be dead, I need you. I’m so lost, I’m so alone.” She cried, and slumped against the door. No sound came from it, and tears streamed down her face, some flowing into her mouth and others falling on the floor. Twilight cried. This had all been such a nightmare, from the moment she lost consciousness and woke up on that beach and until now, where her one hope at rescue while inside a city of bloodthirsty zombies had turned out to have already met a fate that she could meet at any second that she spent within this cursed world.
Twilight tried to go back to happier times, closing herself into a prison of memories, time spent playing with her brother while her parents watched. The first lesson she had with Princess Celestia. Looking behind her and seeing her very own Cutie Mark. She forced all her happy memories to play on repeat as her body continued to burn out and dry up. She wanted to go back, she really did. Twilight looked back to the door, it wouldn’t be hard to remove the bars and enter the room, but did she want to?
Two loud thuds, followed by the creaking of the floor resonated through the halls. Twilight meekly pushed the door open. The room was empty save for a couple of windows, but in the far right corner of the room lay a corpse with a festering wound on its leg, luckily not a zombie. She creeped closer, disgust and fear fighting against curiosity, she could finally take a good look at how the inhabitants of this world looked, and maybe even… she didn’t want to finish the thought but she had to see if the corpse had anything useful to her.
The being was covered by padded leather armor over a black shirt and green pants. It had a face covered by a thick scarf that had been spinned several times around the head, leaving only the eyes and the underside of the nose exposed. It’s figure was a bit on the larger side and a wretched stench came from the open wound.
As she unwrapped the scarf Twilight could see the face of the creature, it was sleek with almost no blemishes, moles, birthmarks or any hint of facial hair, although it had pudgy cheeks and its chin was hanging slightly down. It’s eyes were frozen in a state of pain, staring into the ceiling. Twilight thought that the face looked masculine, although she didn’t want to check if her hypothesis was true. Still, at least she didn’t have to call him “it” anymore.
“Oh Celestia” she had already cried away all her tears , but the sight of this poor man hunched over a wall all alone in a forgotten room was almost too much to bear. Twilight could imagine herself all too well in his spot, hunched over, uselessly begging for help while stranded in an unfamiliar place.
“I could, no, I will make sure you get a burial, you hear!?” Twilight shouted at the corpse. ‘If he had any family, I hope they’re alive.’ She thought, and closed the eyes of the dead being. The dead being had a leather bag strapped over his right shoulder, and no matter how much she didn’t want to defile a corpse, right now Twilight didn’t have any choice.
She easily undid the buttons and the contents were laid bare before her. Finally, a smile grew on her face.
“Thank you.” she smiled weakly at the man, inside the bag were two loaves of bread and a large canteen full of water along with some other stuff she couldn’t care less about right now. She undid the cork and poured the liquid into her aching throat. It was stale and lukewarm, it was amazing. Immediately after having downed at least a third of the canteen she bit into the loaf, it was hard and dull but she couldn’t care less.
Twilight imagined herself back home, sitting close to her family and biting into the delicious cake her mother ahd baked her for her birthday, competing with her brother over who could eat the most while her father sighed and her mother chuckled. She genuinely laughed for the first time since coming here.
With her need satisfied and the sun slowly rising over the rooftops outside the window, she checked out the other things inside the bag. There was a crumpled and slightly torn photograph and a sheet with something written and drawn on it. The picture showed the being when he was still alive. He was standing at a counter and looking out over his shop with a smile on his face while some nondescript, rich customers were browsing his wares, which consisted of jewelry and fancy clothes. On the back a sentence had been written in perfect equestrian.
“To my dear Beorn,
we will always love you and be there for you.
Happy Birthday.
Love,
p.s I wish you a happy birthday too dad! I’ll be sure to give you my gift when I get back from school (you were right, the kids here at consilio are great, I already got so many friends)!”
“You know, I have an acquaintance that sells clothes, really nice ones. Maybe you two could have become friends.” She said with teary eyes and wedged the painting between the leather armor and the shirt underneath. Twilight looked back into the bag and took out the piece of paper. As her eyes fell on the piece of paper her hope came back, full force.
Attention survivors of Carmi, we have found a SAFE HAVEN
The eye-catching title promised a lot, but the letter promised even more. It talked of a caravan gathering at a place called “Bell Farm” that consisted of enough survivors to defend against the zombies roaming the countryside, it promised that the survivors had plenty of supplies and would accept anyone as long as they were willing to work for the group. It also told the readers a scant few bits of info about the apocalypse. One of the most important being that water and food didn’t get contaminated and were safe to eat, although it didn’t mention why. Additionally it said to stay out of any major town or “place of power”, whatever those were. But best of all, it had a crudely drawn map showing how to get from the city she was currently in, apparently named, “Carmi” and to the gathering caravan at Bell Farm, with landmarks a plenty.
The letter finished by saying that the caravan would only be there until the fifth of september and after that would depart to an undisclosed location. Twilight looked back at the corpse, he had saved her, and given her a shot at coming back to Equestria. Twilight didn’t care that it was a corpse, she hugged it.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” The corpse was somewhat fresh, which meant that she probably had time to reach the caravan. When she did she could finally find out what had happened here, why people were becoming zombies, where she could find a mage, and how in the world did two worlds manage to develop the exact same language. Twilights mind buzzed with imagination, falling into one of those moods she got when she found a book she hadn’t read yet.
“Spike make a lis, oh, right.” The world came crashing back on her, for the second time that day. She was sitting in a dim room in a destroyed castle in some kind of apocalyptic world. No one: Spike, her mother, her father, brother, Cadence or Princess Celestia were here. She was stranded. But now, she had a goal, she had hope, knowledge that somewhere out there was a group of people that could help her and if there was hope then Twilight couldn’t let herself fail.
“Did you think you could beat me world?” she said staring at the morning sun as it finally cast away the shadows and bathed the city in its warm light.
“Well you were wrong.” she said, smirking.