“A new outburst has thronged the mine with flames and death today. The earthquake lasted for what seemed to be hours. The pit was filled with aching smoke and choking gas. It burnt the colliers alive. I still hear their screams of agony pouncing in my head; blend with the din of the fire.
I don’t remember how I escaped the tunnels. I’m not even wounded or seared. Maybe I used the draining pipes under the mine.
I can’t remember.
The sizzling in my ears doesn’t want to fade away. My hooves shake; I can’t stop it. I’m so afraid.
Is Mother searching for me?
And father… He was also in the mine, but not in the same wing as me. Did he make it out?
I don’t want to go home. Three times this week an explosion broke out in the pit. Always during the night shift… my shift. I’m tired of going down there. I don’t even make a quarter of dad’s earnings and we’re starving at home.
The Direction is on everypony’s back. With the Duma, the pegasi dissolved our union two weeks ago. Aunty has been arrested. We haven’t heard of her since. They reduced our pauses and forced us, earthbound, to do overtimes.
Who’s going to defend us tomorrow?
One says they are searching for something other than coal or gems.
I wish something different could happen. I hate this place so much.
I want somepony to help us… to save me.
I’m going to die someday. I just hope somepony will keep my diary safe. Please don’t burn it as they do with the other books. Please?
I’m so scared.
Please help us.
Candelabra”
Oaks, firs and maples stood high, gathered in a thick, dark, green ocean. Gusts of wind ruffled their leaves. A casual ear would say the forest was whispering ominously.
A young filly was napping between two massive chunks of granite. The clearing and its surroundings were so quiet. She was curled up in a hollow, naturally dug in the cold coaled soil. Withered roots sprout out of the edges of the hole, scratching her flanks.
She paid attention to the swelling of her chest as she gave long and deep breathes. She was eager to feel each itch, peak of pain and shivers running beneath her skin. Her fur creased against the dirt. She moaned as her tickled stiff rubbed on few gravels. She changed her position. Several cuts triggered a throbbing pain as she moved.
A saddlebag hung at her side. She crossed her both hooves on her face. She was covered with a nasty layer of coal and mud. Stains of dried blood had dappled her hooves.
Flickering shafts of light pierced through the the trees. The tender kiss of dusk lapped the filly’s flanks without warming her up. The northern wind had taken care of sweeping away the sun’s heat. The morning dew had started condensing. Dewdrops fell from a leaf on her hind legs. Annoying quivers sparked in her muscles. Her fur rose on her skin.
She moved again, this time with a grunt.
In spite of the shakes of cold running through her body, she lay still. She shoveled up the craving to run back home for safety. She wondered how long she would resist this urge. She pictured the puncturing stares her parents would give her… It was enough to shatter the scraps of courage she had left. She was not going to face them even if it meant a place by a fire.
She shook her head. Coming back home was out of question. She had fled out of the mine during her shift. She would not earn her day's pay. Without these few bits, she knew that a long starving night was coming; dampening her already weakened conditions. She wanted to burst into tears. But, her eyes were completely dried.
A new dispiriting question came up. Did anypony die because she had left her spot this night? She moped in silence. A painful knot tightened up in her stomach.
She eyed the surroundings, bored and ashamed. If happiness had someday filled the forest, it was long gone now. Every tree was crooked. Forced to grow on a blackened soil, acrid and impure, their trunks were bent and twisted, and eerily slender for old trees. The ground itself was blanketed with dead branches and brownish leaves. A slight odor of putrefaction slipped into her muzzle; she frowned.
Yet, the not-so-peaceful clearing had brought the filly the rest she had hoped for months. She was away from her daily worries. Here, she could put aside the traumatizing event of the previous night. At least she tried not to think about it too much. She was waiting for a dreamless slumber to cradle her soul and body. She wished nopony would come and disturb her… Slowly, she got rid of the interrogations jostling in her mind and she fell asleep.
Inhaling once again, the young mare smelled a new bitter, and unsettling, perfume. It was sweat.
“There you are!” a squeaking stallion’s voice exclaimed, ending her rest brusquely.
Scared, the filly jumped out of her curled position. She banged her head against the rock right above her. She cursed the world for letting somepony find her. It has to be there, in this goddesses-forsaken place. Worse of all, she knew this twang-pitched male voice very well. She sighed, in pain.
“Are you okay?” he blabbered hesitantly.
She opened a lid and rubbed her painful forehead. Phosphene danced before her eyes, blurring her vision. Standing on a boulder above, the colt was staring, fretted. He was slightly older than her.
His washed-out navy-blue fur and his dirtiness contrasted with his white smile. Having a bath of dirt could not worsen his condition. Two green eyes plagued with dark rings shined under his messy and greenish forelocks. He was bulky, but his sunken cheeks betrayed a state of malnutrition. In the end, a pair of massive and worngoggles was hung around his neck. Its leather straps shred into tatters.
Yellow reflects beamed from their glasses when the colt stood in the sunlight. He was far from being a stud, but he had still something charming about him. It was a shame his irritating voice was a call to slap him in the face.
A drop of sweat fell off the colt’s chin, landing on his friend’s face. The bead splattered in her eyes. The young filly snapped.
“Fire!” she gasped his name.
Fuming, she rose straight on her hooves and dashed forward, giving chase to this colt who had dared bother her.
Light years from her reaction, the colt laughed and ran away playfully. His green mane fluttered in the wind, and his tail tickled his pursuer’s nose. She sneezed. Fire deliberately gave space to his friend. Bouncing on the opportunity, the filly leaped like a bolt of lightning, aiming to his back. They rolled in the dirt, punching each other.
Laughter burst between the two ponies. It blended with the moans of the wind through the forest.
“Look at you, Candel’, you’re filthy!” Fire snickered with a smile. “I’m gonna hang you out to the laudry room.”
Candel inspected her hooves. Her usually white fur was hidden under a disparaging black layer. She coughed, rasping her voice. Specks of dirt flew off her mane, unveiling locks of red, yellow and orange mane. Fire gently swept the gloomy particles off her flanks, only to get himself dirtier than he already was. No doubt he was lax and was not paying much attention about it. His eyes opened wide. He gave an amazed look at Candel.
“You’ve got it!” He gratified her with a magnificent smile.
She looked at her flank. Her voice turned into an unconvinced whisper.
“Oh, this. Yeah,” she breathed, neutral.
“What? Wait a minute. That’s amazing, I still don’t have mine. You’re the…” he paused, “…the third in the class to get it.”
Candel raised her eyes to the sky, sighed and shrugged.
Right over her stiffs, her sides sported a weird symbol, her cutie mark. It was a small white candle with black outlines. Its wick was consumed by a grim blue and purple flame, contrasting with the hot colours of her mane. It was some surprising colours for a cutie mark. In general they matched or were tone on tone. In Candel’s case, it would raise some eyebrows.
Fire refused to hide his amazement. His smile grew into a grin of joy until it joined his two ears. He laughed.
“It’s gorgeous, Candel! You’ve got the most beautiful cutie mark I’ve seen so far.”
“It’s just a cutie mark, nothing useful. I don’t even know what it means. I woke up with it after…" She hesitated. "Te incident.”
Fire squeaked, shocked.
“You were part of the night shift?” he blabbered.
Candel nodded, unsure if she had to be thankful about it or not.
“Twenty ponies died, and everypony is searching for survivors,” her friend brought forth, alarmed.
Candel winced. Knowing the Direction, the company that controled Murmanesk's economic and political life, she supposed its private security force was focusing on bodies search, scurried to throw them into the Vault. A grim unfitting name for the mass grave located at the north of the mine, not far away from the colliers’ blocks. She knew that everything would be done in a record time. The Direction always wanted the miners to finish the work as soon as possible. And with the political backing of the Duma, it was a matter of time. There was something extremely important down there; something more valuable than mere ponies’ existences.
Seeing her friend’s innocent face, Candel preferred not to mention it. He had the luck not to be a miner.
Fire hugged her, giving her a warm smile. He was happy to find her here. He was now assured he would not find her cadaver at the entrance of the mine, rotting with several other corpses in the culverts.
“You’re choking me, Fire Damp…” she gasped.
She coughed, trying to escape her friend’s grasp. But he was too strong. She nibbled his shoulder. Fire Damp laughed. Releasing Candel, he held her back with his hoof and dusted her entirely. He blew the last remains of coal of her mane. He smiled, Candel’s features was something he would never get bored looking at. White was a rare colour nowadays.
In his contemplation, Fire Damp blundered. His hoof slipped over Candel’s mane and his heel clanged onto two rustic circles of metal. Hung tight to her back, the atrocious contraption was encaing her two atrophied wings. Their deformed shape was revolting. A long captivity from this fetters had them withered and crooked on their joints. Added to this device were two screws pressing on her bones, sparkling a constant pain. It was a wing-cuff sporting the Duma’s brand, a blue edged wing.
Candel winced with a gasp. She shed a tear.
“I… I’m so sorry if I hurt you!” Fire Damp blabbered.
“If you hurt me?” She retorted with a bitter voice.
He tried to ease the pain sparkling in Candel’s wings. He bumped a second time his hooves on the cuffs. Enraged and sore, Candel pushed Fire aside. She cringed and started crying. At the moment, she could only feel shame.
“Shut up,” she cast. “Go away.”
Silence settled between both ponies. Fire Damp refused to move, muted apologizes moved his lips. He had long thought about Candel’s plight. And to be true, reality always backfired. Candel had lived for so long with the wing-cuff she usually forgot about her situation. The only reminders of such condition were the disgusted glances ponies gave her daily. The way back home after her shift was an ordeal.
Fire felt remorseful about the wing-cuff. They were blatantly shining on her back. Even a blind pony would be able to spot them with the clattering they made when Candel walked. Everypony knew, and everypony laughed at her. However, like many of the miners, Fire did not care so much about a pegasus wearing such contraption. Or somehow, he had trained himself not to see it. After all, a wing-cuff was a rare and gruesome garment only a few pegasi were forced to wear perpetually. The contraption was meant to cripple their wings until they were unable to fly. But it was also meant to deal a constant pain. In the end, it was nothing but torture.
Down in the pit, the miners were in the same dark destitution. Without a sky to look at and where to thrive or find a speck of hope, everypony was an earth pony in the tunnels, a filthy earthbound.
Unnerved by the painful silence he had created, Fire Damp spoke, eager to break the ice.
“Come,” he comforted.
Putting his hoof on Candel’s shoulder, he led her to the edge of the forest. The last bits of snow a recent storm had brought were melting with tardiness on the trees. Droplets of water fell on the ground, twinkling in the dusk’s light. They dashed over a stream and snaked through the young sprouts that had grown over the past days. They crossed the border of the forest.
“Follow me,” Fire Damp pressed.
Their hooves crushed a block of ice, shattering it in hundreds of morsels. Under their heels sprawled a hectare of scorched land, burnt for the future crops. Candel swallowed. The field was located behind a spoil tip. It was a monstrous mass of digging rubble, three hundred hooves high.
“Fire, wait, I can’t follow! You’re too fast,” Candel complained.
They crossed an old stone bridge and headed to the tip, and finally stepped on its rough and crumbled hill. Made of uncountable grains of black, dark red and brown, the ground lowered under Candel and Fire Damp’s hoofsteps. They both snatched dust and coal residue with their hooves. The wind took care to sweep the smoke away.
Candel coughed. A tear rolled on her cheek. She could not stop wincing, rubbing her eyes as she tried to wash the burning off her pupils.
“Something in your eyes?” Fire Damp smiled, worried about her.
The ground started sloping. Moving forward became more difficult. They started clambering. They stumbled, toddling between the debris. Their eyes were tearful, assaulted by the caustic cold air and the grating smokes. Subsiding under their hooves, the slope collapsed and rumbled further down.
Candel gave a scared stare behind her back. Her eyes swelled. The height was sickening; she felt vertigo numbing her mind. Everything started whirling. Her stomach ached with a knot. She was going to threw up. She gasped and nearly slip off her steady position. A fateful hoof held her still before she hurtled down.
“Come on,” Fire Damp reassured. "We aren't finished yet!"
Hauling Candel next to him, Fire Damp lifted her right back on her hooves. With a nudge of his muzzle, he pushed her before him, willing to watch over Candel’s clumsy steps. He smiled. Candel’s features were indeed really beautiful, in spite of her skinniness of course. He liked her hazel eyes even more and her smile was worth a gold mine.
Pulling themselves together, they resumed the ascent. They fell, slipped and tripped over the unstable mounds of coal. But, step by step they climbed. They kept moving, straightening up and raising their muzzles toward the top. Whatever the obstacles, the hurting dust or the aching air filling their lungs, they never never strayed from their path.
And in the end, they stomped on the highest chunk of hardened scoriae.
The sun was beaming low in the West. The clouds were transfigured with hundreds of shades of blue, purple, orange, red, yellow and pink; giving to the sky the aspect of a burning fire. The breeze brought the same eerie coldness it had backed in the forest. The freezing northern wind tickled their nostrils and froze the tears on their cheeks.
The clouds shaped a lid over the land. Nopony could see the sky and this blanket of grey and white was stretching infinitely toward the sun. To be accurate, nopony ever saw the sky in eons.
Similarly even darker clouds were stuck in motion thousands of miles in the east, shaped like immobile gargantuan hurricanes. Terrific bolts of lightning slashed through them intermittently. Their flashes reverberated with violence. If they had been nearer, Candel was assured would she have gone deaf.
The spectacle was terrifying. Fire and Candel were glad they would never come closer to them. It was the so-called Frozen Horizon, the Land of the darkness. It was a place from where nopony ever came back, and where nopony was allowed to venture in.
Candel shivered.
“The hurricanes are darker today,” she concluded with a spooked voice, her eyes riveted on the east.
“Dad says it announces bad things,” Fire assured.
“You father is a bigot,” she replied.
Fire disapproved with a loud protest and stuck out his tongue. They looked at each other, blushing.
“It’s beautiful,” Candel mumbled, thankful.
“You see, if you always stay grounded in the mud, you’ll never see the light in the never-ending twilight,” Fire Damp foretold.
Candel gave him a deadpanned look.
“My mother told me,” he giggled. “You know, mother’s things.”
Fire kept his eyes on his friend. Candel’s stare was now lost in the landscape. She had stars of wonder in her eyes. The colt blushed even more. He braced himself and took a deep breath.
“Thanks Fire. You’re a true friend,” Candel cut him off.
Fire Damp’s ears fell flat, dangling before his eyes. He pouted in silence. The hug Candel gave him afterward as a reward brightened his face up. He wanted to reply, but appropriate words failed him.
Candel was called back to reality. The quote of Fire’s mother had been too accurate it was heart-shattering. Candel had now few questions she knew that would stay unanswered. How was the day at noon? What does the stars look like? What is night time? Which colour was the sky? No living pony could answer these queries.
Nowadays, the weather was always messed up. The stories of dawn, noon, midnight or even the night itself were nothing but tales told to fillies during sleepovers. The sun in the West had not moved for more than a century, stuck in the horizon at the same accurate and unsettling position, Dusk.
Candel felt an anchor pulling her heart down. These questions burned inside her, and she would never know. She sobbed.
In the distance, the taiga spread toward the horizon and beyond. The crowns of the trees were still whitened by the dying remains of snow, melting in brown puddles below.
“You’re a pegasus after all, don’t stay glued to the ground!” Fire challenged.
He poked her in the flank, right under her restrained wings. She shot her friend with a daggers-throwing glare. He knew she hated that ponies talked about it. And he also acknowledged she had sent more than one foalish classmate to the infirmary for that matter. Her frail constitution was deceitful.
“Sorry… again,” Fire regretted, lowering his head in remorse.
Candel swivelled on her hooves, ready to go down the spoil tip. But it was so high and steep her head wobbled with vertigo. She drifted toward Fire’s side and cramped herself to his mane.
“Sort of,” she sighed, resigned to her fate. “You know that I will never fly.”
The wind moaned on the top of the pile, blowing through both ponies’ manes. It whizzed unpleasantly and brought a disgusting odour.
Turning over, they looked down. Bordering the forest, a cyclopean city sprawled in every direction, taking space over a scorched and barren land. The buildings were built off the same pattern, repeated over and over again. Three floors high with wall of bricks and wood, all blackened by a lack of cleaning and years of coaled dust accumulation.
“Murmanesk…” Candel growled with a pinch of disgust.
It was a colliers' city as they were so many in the Federation, the only nation everypony was meant to live in. And of this archipelago of nasty towns, den of twisted and coughing ponies, Murmanesk was the biggest and dirtiest.
Dark smokes exhaled out of thousands smokestacks. From above, the city looked like a pony hive. In the north-eastern side of the city, smog was rising from a gigantic hole carved into the bowels of the earth. Similar to a slumbering dragon’s breath, the wind struggled to dissipate it. The accursed pit was dwelling there; the opened mine which tunnels extended under Murmanesk over hundreds of miles. The bordering blocks were dirty and poverty-stricken. On the opposite, the south part of the city shined under the sun, and a massive semi-circular building casted its shadows on the quarter.
“It’s time to get our hooves down on earth, Candel. Your father must me biting his owns down to the quick searching for you,” Fire offered.
“Yeah… he is more interested in the money I bring to him than anything else,” she stated with rancour.
“You’re too mean at him.”
Fire stepped forward on the steep, paving the way to Candel. He stopped abruptly and raised his head, scrutinizing all around.
“Did you feel that?” he demanded, widening his eyes.
“What are you talk–”
The earth shuddered abruptly. Sides of the spoil tips started crumbling down, rumbling like the thunder.
“It can’t be a mining burst!” Fire cried out.
The shakes gained in momentum. A deafening zoom invaded the air. Scared, Candel glanced up at the cloudy sky. Her jaw dropped. Staring back at her, Fire saw Candel’s horrified expression. He looked up too. He could not believe it. It was awe-striking.
“A shard…” Candel whispered.
A shadow passed on their faces, literally. Coming from the east, a massive chunk of rock pierced through the dark lid of clouds. It headed toward Murmanesk. Its shadow covered the city beneath. Ponies’ screams were loud enough to be heard from the spoil tip. The size of a mountain, the flying mass squealed with speed. There was no strong enough word to describe such spectacle, petrifying was the least to say about it.
The ‘shard’ was similar to an inverted mountain. A piece of earth a disincarnated gargantuan talon had ripped of its original location, only to thrust it into the air. The earthquake trebled in intensity, and somehow Fire and Candel felt lighter. Chunks and dust ascended into the air, likely attracted by an invisible pull.
The flying mountain rotated and was now tilting to the left. Candel and Fire Damp cringed. They could hardly believe their own eyes. Completing an ellipse, the tip of the hovering island pointed at its bottom.
The vision was apocalyptic, widening Fire and Candel’s eyes. Powerless, they watched a play that would be forever imprinted into their memories.
The opposite side of the floating chunk was the remains of a plain. Its edges were shattered. A lighthouse was sitting in state on it, Circled by a dried river bed. Its light was still round dancing crazily. The beam passed over Candel and Fire. For a second, it seemed that a mighty eye had aimed at them, seeking for something.
Candel asked herself if gods played Boules. If the answer was affirmative, the balls were entire cities.
In a loud burst, the floating island executed a last rotation. Its tip crashed into the north-west outskirt of Murmanesk, ripping off a whole block of miners’ cottages. Facing an obstacle, the monstrous mass of rock bent and overturned. Now to the horizontal, it shattered in uncountable number of bits. The pieces pounced aimlessly, forming a cone of fallout. The debris cleaned hectares of land in an instant. Spoil tips, buildings, checkpoints and trees alike were annihilated. The picture of a hoof passing over a board game struck Fire’s imagination. He shivered.
He and Candel swallowed, stunned by the devastation brought by the falling ‘shard’. For both of them, it was the first time they witnessed such devastation in such short period. This spectacle of destruction was striking, scary.
They watched the last act of the piece. The last remains of the shard collapsed and the lighthouse, standing still until now, shattered. Its light died inside its compartment. Something strange occurred, a bubble formed over the crash-landing zone, growing menacingly at top speed.
Fire saw the incoming shockwave. He turned back at Candel. She was stunned, glued to the ground, hiding her eyes behind her hooves. He jumped and circled his forelegs over Candel.
The blow hit the hill, wiping the tip out with an ungodly easiness. Its sides slid and crumbled on themselves.
A haze of dust swallowed the region.
And everything sunk into darkness.