“Are you saying there’s no way out of here?!”
Aria’s voice was a mixture of outrage, disbelief, and fear. But those weren’t the only things that made her yell. Now that the fire had spread to cover the majority of the abandoned factory, the sound of the flames was growing louder. The sizzling and popping as the place burned had gone from being mere background noise into a roar; one which was growing less distant with each passing second.
“We found a back door, but it was sealed shut!” answered Thermal Draft. She was speaking as much to Lex as Aria, seeming to find it difficult to take her eyes off of the injured form of her hero for more than a few seconds. “We couldn’t get it open no matter what we tried!”
“I bet I can blast it off its hinges if I use magic to scream really loud,” offered Sonata.
Nervous skepticism was written all over Nosey’s face. “I don’t know…this didn’t feel normal. It was like it was reinforced somehow.”
Aria grimaced, not liking what she was hearing. “You think that griffon did something to it?”
But Lex was the one who replied. “I’m sure of it,” he murmured, barely able to make himself heard above the sound of the flames. “She went to a great deal of trouble to configure this place so that she had the advantage. Securing any exits would have been a high priority for her.”
Nosey winced as, not too far away, the sound of something exploding temporarily caused the conversation to momentarily halt. “I wish she’d made fireproofing this place a priority too!”
That earned a wince from Aria, but Sonata spoke up first. “But how come she didn’t do that for the front door? It was wide open!”
“Because she was targeting me,” answered Lex, “and she knew I wouldn’t leave until I’d retrieved Feather Duster. She needed to leave the entrance open to draw me in; the other exits were sealed so that, if I managed to get her hostage back, she’d know which way I’d need to go in order to get out.”
“Get out…” murmured Thermal Draft quietly, before her head jerked up suddenly, her eyes widening. “I’ve got an idea! When we raided that bank back in Vanhoover, we had to go down into the basement to get where we needed to go, so maybe we can do the same thing here!”
Nosey raised a brow. “Do warehouses have basements?”
“I don’t know,” answered the pegasus with an impish smile. “But I bet it has something almost as good: a sewer!”
“That’s right!” An excited grin broke out across Sonata’s face. “We got into the apartment building down the street that way, so it’ll totes be our ticket out now!”
“Not if we don’t know where the entrance is,” rasped Lex. “The sewer map I examined before sending you two out confirmed that the sewer connected to this location, but it wasn’t to scale with regard to where in here it is.” One of his hooves twitched, the closest he could make to gesturing toward the fire that was closing in on them. “Even if that assassin hasn’t already found the entrance and sealed it, there’s a good chance that it’s already in the fire by now.”
“Oh well that’s just great! Absolutely superb! Aren’t you supposed to be the guy who comes up with answers instead of telling us why things won’t work?” growled Aria, though by now the anxiety in her voice was clearly outstripping the frustration, her pigtails bobbing as she looked around frantically before settling her gaze on Drafty. “If we can’t go down, then how about up? Can you find some sort of hatch in the roof or something and fly us all out of here?”
Her question wasn’t idle, moving away from the heat that was creeping closer to them, carrying Lex with her. Nor was she alone in doing so, the entire group moving toward the back of the warehouse, away from the encroaching flames. But all too soon the wall of the building was in view, making it clear that they had run out of room, and in a few minutes would be out of time as well.
Even before they’d reached the end of the path, however, Thermal Draft was shaking her head. “We tried getting in here through the roof, but the door was locked up tight. We managed to crawl in through the airducts, but there’s no way we can use those now!” She pointed a wing upward, and a single glance was all it took to confirm that she was right.
Although the flames had raised the level of illumination in the building, the entire ceiling – ducts and all – was completely hidden from view now, shrouded in thick smoke. Even if the pegasus had been able to fly them all up there one by one, it was obvious that they’d choke to death long before they’d be able to crawl out of there. “They’d probably break if all six of us climbed in them at once anyway,” muttered Nosey, before giving Thermal Draft a look. “Isn’t there…something else, that you can do?”
The pegasus glanced at her sharply before shaking her head. “I could maybe fly Sonata or Aria up high enough that they could break one of the windows with their magic,” she answered, her voice oddly tense. “But that would just be the glass; that stuff that runs between the individual panes-”
“The mullions,” interjected Lex.
“I don’t know that they’re called,” admitted Drafty, “but yeah, the mullions or whatever, would still be there, and they’re way too small to squeeze through.”
“Then let’s just knock a wall down!” shrieked Aria. “Even if they’re empty, those barrels are still exploding when they catch fire! Just stack a bunch of them next to the wall and we’ll hit them with everything we’ve got!”
“These walls are too thick for that.” Lex was eyeing the structure as he spoke, and despite how strained his voice was, it was completely free of any trace of doubt. “Anything destructive enough to blow a hole in them would require us to be far enough away that we’d have to be in the flames. Otherwise we’d be too close to the blast radius.”
“So…so there’s no way out?” gulped Nosey, her veneer of calm beginning to crack at last. “We’re going to die here?”
“I have a teleportation spell,” admitted Lex. “But it can only transport five of us at most, and-”
“Oh no!” barked Aria immediately. “No way! Forget it!”
“Absolutely not!” added Nosey. “Don’t even think about it!”
Lex blinked, confusion written plainly across his face. “What are you-”
“They’re saying they know what you’re thinking of doing,” cut in Drafty, her expression darkening. “And so do I: you’re going to pull some heroic self-sacrificing bit where say you want us to get out of here while you stay behind, aren’t you?” Despite the heat growing worse with each passing moment, she stamped a hoof. “Well forget it! Either we’re all getting out of here or none of us are! Tell him Sonata! …Sonata?”
The bubbly mare’s lack of an answer drew all eyes toward her, only belatedly noticing that she’d fallen toward the back of the group. But when they all glanced at her, Sonata didn’t look back at them. In fact, she wasn’t looking at them at all, having quite literally lost her head.
…or at least, that was how it appeared at first glance. It was only when Thermal Draft rubbed her eyes for a moment that she realized that, in fact, Sonata had stuffed her head – along with one of her forelegs – into a small sack…which was quite a disturbing sight, since the bag was nowhere near big enough for her to do that. And yet, she was doing it anyway.
“S-Sonata?” muttered Nosey, going over and gently prodding her.
That was enough to get her attention, as she pulled her head out of the bag with a gasp, coughing a little. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. Did we come up with a way out?”
Thermal Draft ignored the question, giving the Siren a curious look. “What were you doing?”
Sonata tilted her head. “Huh? What Lex told me to do: checking the bag he took from that Dark Streak lady for anything useful.”
“When did he do that?” demanded Aria, before looking at Lex. “When did you do that?”
“When you were shrieking at me to come up with answers instead of just pointing out the flaws in everypony else’s hypotheses,” replied the injured unicorn. “Since you were ranting too loudly for me to make myself heard, I used my whisper-spell to give Sonata my instructions.”
“Oh…” muttered Aria, chastised.
But Nosey had no such issues, giving Sonata a desperate look. “Please tell me there was something useful in there!”
“I’m not sure,” admitted the mare. “It mostly looks like a lot of junk. There’s some rope, a tiny shovel that’s all folded up, one of those binocular things for just one eye, some papers with stuff written on them, a case with a bunch of weird-looking needles inside, a bag full of some tiny balls with spikes on them, a whole bunch of those tiny things you drink stuff out of – for realsies, there’s a lot of those, and they all have different names – some wire, some little clay pellets, a few-”
“The vials,” interrupted Lex. “The things you drink from, what are they?”
“Um…” Taking a moment to stick her foreleg into the bag down to the elbow, Sonata dug through it. “Soothe syrup, wow that sounds tasty. Meditation tea, doesn’t say if it has any honey in it or not. Bladeguard, which just sounds funny; aren’t blades supposed to guard you? Fire ward gel, which I’m guessing is some kinda hot sauce. Smelling salts, which is weird since salt doesn’t smell-”
“Wait!” yelled Aria.
“That last one!” yelled Nosey.
“Get it out right now!” demanded Thermal Draft.
Sonata tilted her head. “What, the smelling salts? Because it’s already kinda dry in here, and-”
“THE FIRE WARD GEL!” screamed the other three in chorus.
Her ears folding back at the yelling, Sonata huffed, digging through the bag again. “Alright, alright, geez…”
A few seconds later there were five metal vials laid out on the ground, each bearing the same three words on the labels affixed to their sides. But despite the bounty, Nosey groaned. “There’s not one more in there?”
Sonata shook her head. “I’m pretty sure. I looked a while bunch.”
“It’s fine,” declared Aria. “Lex just said he had a spell that could get almost everyone out. This stuff – I’m guessing you’re supposed to rub it on, since it’s a gel? – should be more than enough for whoever stays to run through the fire back toward the front door. And you,” she added, pointing at Lex, “are going to be one of the ones who teleports out! And just to make absolutely sure you have to, no gel for you, got it?”
The other mares all nodded in agreement with that, their faces set in stone despite the sweat that was running down them at this point.
Knowing that there was no time left to explain that he needed to be one of the ones who teleported out anyway, due to how his spell worked, Lex simply rolled his eyes and nodded. “Fine. Now all of you start applying that substance to yourselves. Then we’ll figure out who’ll have to exit this place on their own.”
That last part came out bitterly, but the girls didn’t seem to care. Sharing smiles of relief – both that Lex wasn’t fighting them on this, and that they’d found a way out – the mares quickly popped the vials and began pouring the contents out.
The gel was thin, having a clear contrast to it that made it seem like water that had somehow become partially congealed. But as the four ponies began rubbing it onto themselves – with Nosey attending to Feather Duster – its protective properties quickly became clear. “I think it’s working!” gasped Drafty as she coated her face and neck with the stuff. “All of a sudden the heat doesn’t feel so bad!”
“This is great!” laughed Sonata. “We’ll be able to stroll right out with this stuff on!”
“No,” murmured Lex, having managed to get to his hooves enough so that he could lean against the back wall. “There’s no telling how long that material will last, or how much protection it offers. Not to mention that it won’t protect you from smoke inhalation or falling debris. Whoever stays behind will need to run for the front of the factory as fast as possible.”
“So, um…who’s that going to be?” murmured Nosey nervously.
“I’ll do it,” offered Aria, earning surprised looks from the others, which in turn made her look at them in irritation as she rubbed the gel onto her belly. “What? It makes the most sense. I’ve got a tracking spell telling me where Blondie here is” – she nodded toward Nosey before turning back to Lex – “so that means if you teleport her and everyone else back out front, I can use that to navigate my way out.”
“But that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to make it out easily,” protested Thermal Draft as she coated her wings in the gel, gulping before she continued. “I can fly, so with how much light the fire is making, I should be able to make it out easily so long as I stay low enough that I don’t head into the smoke.”
“Maybe we should play rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to stay,” offered Sonata as she brushed the wet substance over her back legs, earning several curious looks and one of annoyance.
“And how exactly are we supposed to do that with hooves, you ditz?” scoffed Aria. “I swear, sometimes you-”
She didn’t have a chance to finish as an anguished wail suddenly rang out.
It was loud enough that it drowned out the roar of the fire, and for a moment no one could move, frozen by the intensity of the wordless howl. The sound was almost like that of an animal, except no animal could have filled their voice with such raw, open grief. The worst part was the end, as it trailed off into a ragged gasp that clearly conveyed that the one making it would have continued screaming if they’d but had breath in their lungs.
A round of horrified glances were exchanged, and no one dared to do anything until Lex – the only one who was apparently unintimidated by what had just happened – snapped at them. “Keep covering yourselves in that gel! The fire’s almost here!”
Numbly, the girls went back to work, finishing in silence. When they were done, Nosey cleared her throat. “I know we still have to decide who’s staying behind, but-”
“LOOK!” screamed Thermal Draft, pointing upward.
It was easy to see what had gotten her attention.
Backlit by the flames was the outline of a griffon, wings beating lightly as she hovered in the superheated air.
Then she dived directly at them.