"Take your problems and move them somewhere else." A savant.
I wanted to sneeze. It was but one amongst many ailments that I currently felt. The tunnels were very dusty. So were the strange skeletons littering the floor. I had to be careful not to step on them. Something which Cosmo, to no one's surprise, did not bother to do.
The sound it made each time he crushed a bone by stepping on them was utterly atrocious. Especially the skulls.
Looking at the strange skeletons one of the first things I noticed was that quite a few of them had hind legs longer than their front legs. I had never seen any creature with proportions like that, except for Cosmo. Quadrupeds had front and hind legs of the same size while bipeds, like minotaurs and diamond dogs, had front legs or arms as they called them longer than their hind legs. And none of the creatures that were currently trying to kill me had such proportions.
Those however were far from the strangest lying around. Some of the old skeletons looked as if someone had taken multiple bodies and then glued them together. One even had two heads.
I hadn't seen any native creatures from this realm and those were the first remains that I saw. So did they belong to other beings which had the misfortune of getting stuck here just like me. I just had to hope I did not end up like them.
Cosmo then punched an old door out of it's socket. Yeah, my odds of survival were probably worse than theirs. "You first." He said with a very exaggerated wave. Yeah, I was doomed. But I already had an existential crisis in the last 24 hours. Fortunately my missing ear kept me from having a second crisis. The pain more exactly.
I entered the room. It looked like an old maintenance room, with all of it's rusty valves and pipes inside. The first thing Cosmo did was to twist the valves around, ripping multiple of them out of their sockets. The pipes rumbled as water and what sounded like stone flowed through them. Felt like they would burst at any moment. I quickly moved out of the room though another door and he quickly followed once there were no more valves to turn.
The next hallway was cleaner and with less skeletons around. Cosmo created a light into the palm of one of his hands. I had to squint a bit because of how bright it was. Once I got used to it I could see some drawings and patterns engraved into the stone walls. They were unreadable to me. They did look interesting. Like if they were telling a story with missing pages.
I quickly continued moving through the hallway. I kept looking at all of the inscriptions with the hopes that one would give me useful information. Like a map. And in the one and only bout of good luck that I had in the one or four last months I actually found a map. A very big detailed map engraved into the stone. It was half broken, but one of the not broken pieces was colored in red with multiple arrows on it. It felt like one of those "you are here" signs that were on maps in malls.
The area around the red arrows was relatively intact. I tried to see if there was a way out shown on the map. Cosmo also saw the map, but he simply put one of his clawed fingers on top of the map. I stared at where he was pointing. It showed like it was an exit. I stared at him, but he was grinning mouthlessly. It was already strange that he could make his mouth appear and disappear at will, but the way he expressed himself without a mouth.
The way his jaw and cheeks moved around was unsettling, so I looked back at the map. From my surprisingly extensive knowledge of maps, which I got from getting lost so many times, I deduced that there was an exit not too far away. Around an hour when looking at the scale of the map. I took a mental picture of it and then continued on. Cosmo started humming again.
Which made me wish that I had lost both ears.
After around forty-five minutes, as there was no way for me to verify, we reached a big wooden door. It was slightly rotten and looked like it had been reinforced with some kind of metal. For once Cosmo actually stopped in front of the door instead of walking or punching through it. Like he had done with every other door. "What are you waiting for?" I asked with a mild amount of both irritation and fear. "I'm waiting for you." He nodded towards the door. "It should be no trouble for someone as great as you to open it." He had a mouthless, three eyed smile as he said that. Which was very creepy.
A calm and responsible mare would have ignored his provocation. I was neither of those. "Easy, Trixie has turned bigger and better doors into fine dust with ease!" I shouted and glared at him. I then proceeded to shoot at the door with a blast of powerful raw magic. Instead of turning into dust like I had wanted it bounced back and hit me in the chest. I was thrown on my back on the floor.
He laughed loudly. I simply stood there fuming and boiling with hatred. The realisation that that blast should have killed me and the only reason I had survived was because of the chestplate that he had made, made me feel even worse. He simply kept on laughing. I silently hoped that he would choke. He then started coughing and wheezing. His laughter stopped, which made me slightly less unhappy.
As I stood up I heard a loud clang. I saw a mace lying in front of me. Cosmo had thrown it in front of me. It was clearly the same one I had used earlier. He did not need to say anything for me to know what he wanted me to do. I grabbed it.
And I very violently and brutally smashed it into the door. Repeatedly. Slowly twisting and tearing the door apart. Cosmo was chuckling, but I couldn't hear him because of the loud sounds of me smashing the door apart.
As the door came apart I could see that there were lights on the other side. Once the door fell of it's hinges I simply entered the room, mace raised ready to use. It was a wide big room, with massive pipes multiple times my size, filled with all kinds of platforms. There were multiple working lamps, meaning that the room was fairly well lit.
I took every detail in. From loose wires to empty barrels, the room felt... modern. The way everything was laid about reminded me of the extensive sewers of manehattan, which I had to hide in after a failed show. Multiple times.
As I looked around I saw it. Those same gleaming eyes with black pupils that I had seen back onto the bridge, they actually looked like they were glowing. It was also no wonder I couldn't see it in the dark as it was... dark. It looked like a three dimensional shadow, literally. Its whole body was pitch black, except for it's eye and their strange glow. It also didn't look very solid, as its body kept slightly shifting around.
Its appearance was also strange. Its upper body and head looked like it belonged to a tall and slender pony. But its legs instead of ending with hooves like mine, had clawed hands. Its lower body also did not belong to a pony. It had six legs and reminded me of a crab. But not as wide as a crab. It reminded me of those silly centaur stories, except someone had glued a pony on top of a crab.
I would find that funny if it weren't staring at me so intensely. Cosmo simply jumped down onto a large drain pipe, ignoring the shadowy creature. Said creature tilted his head slightly. It looked curious, its attention also seemed to be focused on Cosmo's instead of on me.
Against my better judgement I waved at it. It noticed and waved back. It moved slightly closer, crawling over a safety rail with six of its eight legs. Well, technically its two front legs would be arms since they had hands onto them instead of hooves or paws. But that wasn't important.
It stopped getting closer around a dozen meters away from me. It then showed four of its fingers in what I assumed was its mouth. I couldn't actually see it, he might not even have one for all I knew. It then whistled before I could think about anything else.
A whole bunch of shadowy creatures then started popping out of every nook and cranny. Some crawled out of pipes and holes in the walls. Others came out of the many doors in the room. Some slithered and crawled over the staircases. Some had pony features, but most did not. Also a sizable amount of them were wearing ragged clothes, had hats or helmets on or were even carrying tools around. All looked like pitch black shadows. And all looked around with their glowing eyes and black pupils.
They did not look hostile. They all looked curious, some actually looked scared. They weren't just staring, some cowered behind barrels and boxes and others looked like they were whispering though I couldn't hear anything. Both me and Cosmo stared back. I with fearful curiosity and he with a mischievous smile.
I jumped down onto the same pipe that Cosmo had jumped on and huddled closer to him. The... Shadows just kept staring. They all looked different. They were similarities, as they all had a pair of hands and all fairly thin and slender upper bodies. All had a tail, though the size and lenght varied. They also all had a similar size. However some had very long necks, four or even five eyes, multiple heads, horns, all kinds of different animal-like heads and more.
The bigger and more obvious differences all were on their lower body. Some walked on two legs while others crawled on all fours. Some didn't even have legs and instead their entire lower body was a long tail, like the body of a snake. Some had four, six or even eight long spindly legs similar to those of crabs and spiders. It was a strange sight.
I noticed a bipedal one whose legs looked like they were longer than his arms. Just like the skeletons I had seen earlier. Actually, a lot of them looked just like the strange array of bones and limbs I had seen earlier. Like the two headed one.
The silent starring match was interrupted as screeching could be heard from the door from which we had come. After a few seconds a whole bunch of them bursted through the busted door. They then stopped and stared at the shadowy creatures.
I sweared internally at their sudden appearance.
Their silence didn't last long as they screeshed and slashed their claws in the air. They did not attack though. The shadowy creatures answered, not by screaming, but by pulling knives, bows and all other kinds of weapons out of their pockets and bags. One even had a long wooden stick that looked like a blunderbuss. They were brand new and very rare in equestria, more common in griffonia. And I definitely had a bad experience with them (they hurt like tartarus).
A lumbering muscle, bound creature walked through the broken door. It was covered in dark green fur except for its front legs which had grey fur. It had a pair of long sharp horns on the back of its head. Said head was long and lizard-like, very similar to a dragon's head, but with fur instead of scales. It had two very big exposed snake-like fangs on the upper part of its jaw. Its tail was long and thick, almost as long as himself which ended in a very sharp and hooked blade. All of its legs ended with big four fingered paws with very sharp claws. Its front legs looked like they were bigger than me. Its neck was oddly long and slender when compared to the rest of me.
It then spitted a large reddish blob, which fizzled. It hit a spider-like creature which was hanging precariously off a pipe straight in the face. It fell hitting multiple pipes and railways on the way down. It landed on a metal platform head first. Its body twisted in a very wrong way, spine definitely broken. The rest of the shadowy creatures stared in disbelief at the broken and twitching body.
A brick was thrown into the face of the lumbering creature.
And then all the tartarus broke loose.
Both sides leaped at each other. I could hear more whistling and more shadowy creatures appeared through all the holes and pipes to join the fray. A wave of non shadowy creatures were pouring through the door, crawling all over each other.
One jumped at me. I hit it with my mace, which I was holding with my hooves instead of with magic for some reason. Three more leapt at me and met with the same fate. However as a fifth one leapt at me, my muscles strained and I dropped my mace. The creature was then crushed with a barrel before it would impale me with its sharp claws.
A sixth creature ended with an arrow into its knee before it could reach me. Those shadowy creatures weren't attacking me., they were actually on my side.
Which was very reassuring as Cosmo simply stood there staring around. I grabbed the mace with my magic and tried to move. My left leg hurt terribly, so I would walk with a limp. I would worry about that later. First focus on all the fighting around. It looked pretty evenly matched. Except for where the burly and lumbering creature was.
I could see multiple pitch dark bodies laying limply around. The lumbering creature was busy fighting a shadowy creature with the lower body of a spider. It was actually taller and used its long arms to stab the bulky beast with its very sharp claws on its hands. Unfortunately for it, the lumbering beast grabbed one of its legs and pulled on it. Not only was that leg ripped cleanly off, but the spider fell on the ground. Its head was then pulverid in one swipe by the beast.
I also saw that the shadowy being, who were clearly sentient, could bleed. Their blood was red, but much, much darker than normal pony blood.
Another being which was bipedal and looked like it had feathers, was throwing daggers, wrenchers bricks at the beast tried to run away once its companion had been slain. Unfortunately for it, the beast leapt after it. The beast slammed the feathery being on the ground. The being tried desperately to crawl away, but its legs did just there limply and the beast kept one of its massive paws on top of the beings back. It then lifted its other paw ready to crush another head.
Before it could strike it was hit by a big blue bolt, pushing it back. This allowed the being to crawl away. The lumbering brute turned towards where the bolt had come from, staring directly at me. That spell had been taxing on me, as exhausted and I already was. As it stared at me with hate filled eyes, I took all the courage I had left and put on a bravado. And I shouted out the top of my lungs.
"COME AND FACE SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE!"