//------------------------------//
// 26 
// Story: Choice 
// by AnOrdinaryWriter 
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“I figured. You prob’ly wouldn’t survive another day out in that heat. Well, since you’re staying with us, allow me to give you a tour of our little village!”

The old stallion walks past you, and you follow him outside. As he walks into the room with the seats, you notice that stapled on the left hand wall is a row of newspaper clippings. You step closer to examine them.

One of the newspaper clippings describes a war between the town of Noneighm and a terrorist group. You assume that’s what the stallion meant earlier when he accused you of being a rebel. The next newspaper clipping talks of some sort of plague taking the town by storm. Apparently it had caused over 100 deaths over a period of a month. That may explain why the town seemed so empty.

What catches your eye however is the fact that this supposed plague had spread across different areas of Equestria as well. At the bottom of the page is a map of Equestria with a red color indicating where this disease had spread. The red covers almost the entire map besides the frozen north.

You don’t understand how this is possible. You have never heard of such a disease taking over the planet, and if it’s this serious, you’re sure you would have caught ear of it by now.

Wait a second…

As you look closer at the map, you realize that this town is located where Ponyville should be. Ponyville isn’t on the map…

This can’t be correct, you think to yourself, checking the publication date at the top of the page just in case these are old, and this outbreak had actually occurred centuries ago. However, your brain is suddenly swamped with confusion when you see that these newspapers were published only a few months ago.

This is wrong. You can’t think of any other explanation than that the contents of the newspaper are fake. This town is in the middle of a desert that might be miles beyond the borders of Equestria, so it’s impossible that this map is real. If it is there’s no mathematical or magical explanation you know of that could explain it.

“Hey, sunny!” The gravelly voice of the old stallion bursts your thought process and you’re set in reality again. “Ain’t no tour happening if you just stand there like a statue. Come on!” You catch up to the stallion as he leads you out the front door and into the dreadful hot air. You prefer to stay inside where it’s slightly cooler, but this is your chance to get some answers as to what’s happening.

“Where we’re standing now is the town hall. Any official business, town meetings, all happens here,” he explains, gesturing to the building they had just left, as well as the wide open road around it made of crumbled cobblestone that was overgrown with weeds. The stallion then walks along the road, waving for you to follow.

When you’re side to side with the stallion, he leads you along an alley with houses, the one thing in common with each of them being their poor condition, hardly classifying as households.

“Saw you staring at those newspapers on the wall earlier, correct me if I’m wrong,” the stallion says, and you look over at him, interest caught. “I suppose since you’re part of the community now, I should explain. A few months ago, we were under attack by a group of terrorists. For the sake of the community, we tried to reason with em, but they weren’t exactly the type of ponies you could reason with. We found that out the hard way.”

He looked down grimly. “They killed many ponies. Innocent ponies who didn’t deserve to be off’d like that. Soon after, the plague started to spread, and even more ponies started dying. I could never forget the panic in everypony’s eyes.” He shivered. “Unfortunately, ‘cause of the rebels, we weren’t in any sort of wealthy position, so we couldn’t supply everypony with the treatment they needed.

“Then, something like last week, we were all woken up in the break of dawn by some sort of noise coming from somewhere nearby. I can’t even describe what it was; all I can say is that I’d never heard anything like it before. We went to try and find where it was coming from found out it was coming from directly below the town’s old castle. After digging underground to find the source, we found ourselves in a wide open cave we never had a clue was there.

“The whole room was bathed in a blue light, and at the center of the cave, a pyramid shaped rock with a flat top jutted out of the floor, and resting on top of it was this blue, shining orb that emitted a magical radiance that was beyond any existing magic in Equestria, or at least that I’d seen. I’d go out and say it was downright otherworldly.”

You find yourself completely invested in the story the old stallion tells you. You’re not sure why it’s caught your interest so much. In fact, as he describes the blue orb and the ethereal force of magic it projected, you question why some part of you knows what he’s talking about. As unbelievable as the story is, somehow, you know he’s telling the truth.

“I was the only one who dared to touch it, and when I did, all I heard was a massive explosion that nearly blew my eardrums and for a moment I saw nothing but white. Then, everything went back to normal.”

“We left the cave after that, and suddenly we were taken aback by the intense heat, and as soon as I looked around, I realized that the town was no longer in a grassy field beside Canterlot, but instead in a desert in the middle of nowhere.”

As he says that, you remember back to the map on the newspaper clipping earlier, and it suddenly makes sense. However, at the same time, it doesn’t. How is it possible that this town used to be in the place of Ponyville? Better yet, how is it possible that Ponyville never even existed?

It’s as if you’re in a completely different universe.

“That’s the reason I didn’t give you any more water. That’s all we got left, and when we run out, its game over. For all of us.” He shut his eyes tightly. “We barely got enough food rations neither, so ponies are starving…” He sighs. “It’s a crappy situation. We have yet to have an ounce of good luck. Now we’re just trying to stay alive.

“If I’m gonna be honest, I can’t believe you made it here alive from… wherever you came from. I mean, we’ve scouted for the past week, and we haven’t been able to find any sort of civilization beyond the endless sand. On the off-chance that you were one of them rebels, I had to ask, so I apologize for being unfriendly at first. What matters is that I trust you. For now at least. This way.”

You follow him down another road, still trying to process and figure out the information you have just learned. Yet, you still can’t make sense of it all. As the two of you walk, you pass by a graveyard. Rows of graves stretch too far for your eyes to spot an end. As you stare at the countless amount of cracked graves engraved with names upon names, laid out across a landscape of dry dirt, it hits you just how many people had died here. This used to be a largely populated town, almost like Ponyville. Now, though, the town was damn near desolate.

As you gaze upon the depressing scene, you spot a small blue filly sitting in front of a pair of graves, staring at the carved slabs of stone with a still posture. She isn’t being supervised.

“Lost her parents to the plague a few ago,” the old stallion says. “Let’s go, leave her be.”

He starts walking, and you follow. Your eyes stay on the little filly as she mourns. Then, the filly turns her head, eyes fixed on you. Her eyes are red, face dirty and rough, her expression a horrible combination of loss, grief and desperation.

You have to fix this.

Focusing back on the road ahead, the stallion shows you where the market is, before leading you to the apartments. After around fifteen minutes, he finally brings you to a large castle that’s at least a few stories tall built largely out of brick. The building looks old, like it was built centuries ago. One of the towers lies completely demolished in rubble on the ground, and the whole structure looks like its ready to cave inward.

“Last but not least, the ancient castle,” he says. “Supposedly it was the first thing to be built before the rest of the town was constructed around it.” He walks toward the front entrance, and you follow. He pushes the large wooden door open and a heavy creaking sound pierces the air as it opens slowly.

You walk inside, seeing that the place is dark, although dimly lit by the light streaming in from the open door and holes in the ceiling. Ahead of you is the entrance hall, a wide hallway littered with debris in piles throughout the place.

The stallion pulls out a lantern. Where from, you have no clue, but you don’t give it a second thought once he starts leading you toward a right turn down a dark and narrow hallway. The walls are covered with vines and creepers, and a murky smell hangs in the air.

He notices your expression and explains. “We’re going down to the cave I mentioned before. I’d like to show it to you.” What you immediately notice is the look on his face. He masks suspicion behind his eyes, and his posture is determined. His movements are quick, placing one hoof in front of the other in quick succession.

The walls give way to subterranean rock at one point before you reach a downward staircase that stretches for what seems like miles. Cobwebs string from wall to wall, and across the ceiling, covering the walls of the small passage in patches of what looks like white foam.

It’s cold down here. No, scratch that. Freezing. You shiver as you and the stallion descend further into the earth, acknowledging the quickly thickening atmosphere. Before long, you two reach the bottom of the staircase, and now, what lies before you is a long, dimly lit corridor, a few candles on the right wall placed at regular intervals all the way up until a room at the end from which a massive radius of blue light leaks into the corridor you’re currently in.

The stallion proceeds forward and you wait a little before following. That must be what he described: the cave lit up with blue light. Suspense rises within your chest as you get nearer to the room.

When you reach the room, you are quickly bathed in a cyan blue light, and you have to cover your eyes for a second as to not be blinded by the bright shine in front of you. When your eyes adjust to the change in lighting, you look around in disbelief at what you see.

Like the stallion described, the cave is wide open, shaded entirely in blue, and the source of the light is at the top of a small pedestal at the dead center of the room on top of which rests a radiant blue artifact of sorts.

“This is it. The orb that left us stranded in the middle of the desert. Brought you down here in case you didn’t believe my story, and on the off-chance you may know what it is.”

You don’t. However, seeing the room in person, you realize that you do recognize it. You’ve never seen it before, you know that for a fact, but from somewhere in your mind, an image of what you see is in your memory, and you feel a strange, but strong urge to approach it.

So you do.

“What’re you doing?” the stallion asks, but you pay him no heed as you take slow steps toward the orb. For some reason, you feel it calling out to you, urging you to come closer. You don’t understand it, and yet you step closer without a single doubt in your mind. It’s like a magnet, pulling you toward it like you and it are connected in some way. Like you recognize it and in some weird way, it recognizes you too.

As you get closer, the orb rattles slightly, and you feel a strong magical force reaching out to you. The blue aura of the orb then begins to stretch as though being pulled, and reaches slightly toward you. It brightens, as if it senses you, and without thinking about your next actions, you lift a hoof from the ground and reach out toward it.

You almost end up touching it before a frailer looking hoof swats yours away from the orb. You step back, staring at the old stallion who eyes you with a stern, forceful stare.

Beside you, the orb goes still, returning to its original state.

“That thing just reacted to your presence,” the old man says, a hint of nervousness in his voice. “Y’know, when I talked about finding this cave, it looked like you knew what I was talking about. I brought you down here to confirm my suspicions, and seeing you walk up to that thing like you were reuniting with an old friend confirms ‘em.”

His stare turns into a glare. “I knew there was something off about you. It was strange enough that you just popped up while we were stranded in the middle of nowhere, but with you going up to touch that thing and it reaching out to you, I think I’ve seen enough.

“You caused all of this.”

He turns his head toward the entrance of the cave. “Seize this pony!”

You stare in the same direction, seeing a pair of guards you hadn’t notice walk in, and they walk toward you, grabbing you by the forelegs and dragging you toward the entrance of the cave. You try to struggle, but their grip is too strong.

“I knew I was wrong in trusting you,” you hear the old stallion say before a hard surface suddenly slams into your front, and the grip on your forelegs is gone. You look up when you find yourself lying on the ground, and see that you’re now in some sort of old bedroom with a window allowing a view of the daytime sky outside.

You hear a slam behind you, followed by a click, and you turn around, seeing an old wooden door that had been shut. You get up, rushing up to the door and tugging on the handle, but it’s locked. You’re trapped.

That definitely took a turn for the worse, and now you must find a way to escape.

You walk up to the window, looking outside. It seems that you’re on the second floor of the castle. On the other side of the window, just below is a small ledge that you could stand on. You could climb out and down that way. Or, you could find a way to get the door open and sneak out through the castle.

What will your approach be?

Window______________________________________________________________________________________________________Door