Chapter Three - Fan Out
There hadn’t been much else of use amid the body of the warrior. Most of the cloth she’d been able to find was well on its way to rotting, and disturbing the bones of the fallen warrior had felt … wrong. Even though she’d never known their owner in life. In the end, she took the knife, and then the firearm. The former she’d kept for herself, while the latter she’d placed at the statue’s base as a marker and reminder to which side she’d fallen though. Just … in case she forgot.
Still, with a marker in place, there was nothing keeping her from staying by the statue. And I need to explore, she thought, eyeing the overgrown tops of buildings around the courtyard. Find somepony I can speak with, maybe learn what happened here.
Or maybe just a tent, she thought, her eyes turning to the sky. The sun wasn’t quite in the same place it had been when she’d arrived. That and the greenery around her said that there still had to be some sort of authority in place for at least managing the day-night cycle. Weather could manage itself if needed, but the sun? And the moons?
So there has to be somepony—or someone—out there capable of doing that, Sunset thought as she finished checking her bags, hiking them up around her shoulders once more. The feeling of the sudden weight so high up on her new form sent her reeling for a moment, but she recovered before tipping too far to one side. So, she thought as she stabilized. Whatever they were fighting over, there’s someone left who can move the sun and moons. That meant there was some sort of central authority, somepo—someone she could speak to.
Someplace she could embrace her destiny. Learn what she would need to become a ruler, and return to Equestria with the power and station she deserved.
She took a deep breath, pushed away the doubts that swam at the edges of her mind like curious fish, and gathered up her knife.
It would be a useful survival tool. And a weapon. If it came to that. She took another deep breath, wishing again for a moment that her new ears were as flexible and useful as her pony ears had been. She could hear birdsong from somewhere nearby, and the gentle sound was soothing … but she couldn’t quite tell what direction it was coming from.
Maybe with more practice, she thought, exhaling. Then she looked up at the statue, its finger pointing up at the sky. “Okay Sunset,” she said aloud. “You’re in unfamiliar territory, and alone. The first thing you should try to do is get up high and see if you can recognize any landmarks.” She bit back a nervous chuckle at the last bit of the statement. Not likely. “If nothing else, get a lay of the land.”
Prin—her former teacher had seen fit to give Sunset a well-rounded education, even when she’d resisted it. But the Guard had taken their duties very seriously. Now it seemed like the knowledge would be useful.
“So,” she said, looking around the courtyard. “First step, get out and up.” The courtyard sat in a depression, so it was hard to see much other than the rooftops of the buildings around her. Still … The ones on that side seem higher than the ones over there, she thought. And it’s as good a direction as any.
As a bonus, it happened to be in the same direction the statue was pointing. An omen, perhaps?
Get out, get up, get a look around. She began walking in the direction of the buildings, her pace slow as her unfamiliarity with her body kept getting in the way. Climbing over the wall of the fountain for the third time was easier than the first two, but she still was forced to set her knife down and use both hands.
Ugh … I feel so weird. Her hips kept wanting to sway back and forth. Not too dissimilar to when she had been a pony, but different enough that it kept throwing her off, forcing her to take smaller steps. She forced herself to pull her focus away from her changed form, to the path ahead across the cobblestones and toward the steps on the far side of the courtyard leading out and up.
“Figure out where you are first, Sunset,” she told herself. “Then worry about shelter.” Shelter and a place she could finally examine her new body closely. Part of her had wanted to strip off her new clothes right at the fountain … but her common sense had prevailed. Anypony that had wandered by would have found her in a very confusing situation, if the clothed status of the statue was anything to go by as well as the fact that she’d come through the portal wearing her new garments.
She hadn’t gone far when she spotted water. A small causeway had been left along the sides of the path she was on, a miniature canal choked with leaves and small twigs. Still, the bottom was full of water, if stagnant and green.
Nothing she would dare drink without a quick cleansing spell. Or a filter? She frowned as she remembered her lack of a horn.
Still, it meant that there was water enough for both the plants and the small drainage canal. Which means that even if I have to collect rainwater, I should be able to find something.
She continued onward, the coverings on her feet making small scuffing noises against the stones. Twice she tripped, almost falling on her face and once coming dangerously close to drawing her blade across her hand. Knees aching, she resolved to lift her … not-hooves … a bit higher with each step.
It was at the end of the next bush that she found the second body. Like the first, there was little left but bone, decaying cloth, and the scarred, damaged armor. A further sign of some sort of fighting. Unlike the first, however, there was no sign of a weapon. Or of a strange necklace to match the one she’d collected.
Did the necklace indicate a rank, perhaps? A position of power? All the better reason to hang onto the one she’d found. She prodded the bones with her knife. Grass had grown around them in a few places.
The next path over held three bodies, and Sunset took a deep breath, a chill running down her spine as she saw the stunted, misshapen nature of the third. It was lying face down, but something about it felt … wrong.
The armor was different, to start. It was darker and more crude, like someone had battered metal into a rough shape rather than coaxed it. The bones of the creature the armor covered looked strange too, the front limbs longer than the rear legs, the shoulders much wider. She tried to ignore the faint feeling of unease in her chest as she stepped past the two “normal” bodies to get a closer look at the third.
Whatever happened here happened a long time ago, she thought as she eyed the back of the thing’s skull. It’s long-since dead.
She spared a glance at the other pair of skeletons. Like the others, both were wearing armor. One’s head, however, was gone. The other had several holes through the plating atop its chest. She recognized the way that they’d fallen. The one with a head had an arm behind the one that was headless. Two more of the weapons like the one she’d found earlier lay at their feet.
Protecting their comrade, she thought, a faint chill running down her back. Maybe I should have never—
She shoved the thought away with a mental snarl and knelt by the smaller body. So much closer, it looked a lot more like the bones of a jungle monkey. A pet, maybe? She dismissed the thought quickly as it had come. No one armored a pet.
Well, maybe? But even then, the armor didn’t look remotely the same. And the way the bones were lying …
It almost looks like it was reaching for them, she thought, eyeing its long arms. And those look like … claws of some kind, at the end of its hands.
The back of the skull was to her, the creature’s face down. Slowly she reached out with the point of her knife and tipped it to the side.
A wide jaw, gaping with needle-sharp teeth leered up at her. A tendril of ice slid down her back as she stared at it. It was no pet. It was … a monster of some kind. A predator. Nothing else needed teeth like that.
Or dies with its claws outstretched like that, she thought, pulling her gaze away from the creature’s empty sockets. What would those teeth do to your skin? They looked razor sharp.
Suddenly her knife felt very insufficient.
It’s long dead, Sunset thought as she stood once more. It can’t hurt you.
No, her own voice echoed from the back of her mind. But others like it could. And something had killed the other two bodies. If there had only been one of the … things … then somebeing would have returned to take the place she was in back. Right?
Unless they all moved, or there were so few of them left that they consolidated their numbers. Or the monsters wiped everyone out and you’re the last—
She shook her head, taking another deep breath. “They’re just bodies, Sunset. There are a thousand reasons they might have been left behind. Besides, if the monsters won, then where are they?” Not that I want to find out, but … “For now, back to work.”
She moved past the bodies, heading for the steps at the end of the courtyard and fighting the urge to look behind her, skin crawling until she was a good distance away from the remains.
“All right, Sunset.” Her voice was loud against the quiet of the ruined park, but not so much so that the faint sounds of nothing but wind rushing through the trees was any better. “You were Pri—a very intelligent pony.” She eyed the steps as she neared them, eyes sliding up to the overgrown structures beyond. “You should be able to work out a little bit about the species that built this place.”
“First of all,” she said as she reached the bottom of the steps. “Everything is very ornate.” She paused, eyeing the steps and then the railing next to them. The steps looked old and worn, while the railing was carved with intricate patterns and designs. She placed one … hand … against it as she eyed the steps again. No wonder the minotaur delegates used to use them when they’d visit the palace, she thought as she took her first tentative step up the stairs. This is hard!
“So,” she continued as she took another step. “Whoever lived here intended to for a long time. You don’t make something that ornate and then just leave it.”
Another step. “Canterlot was similar,” she added as her eyes moved to the top of the stairs, where the railing ended in an ornate carving of … something. She wasn’t quite sure what. It looked like the statue she’d seen earlier, but more slender, like herself. And with wings.
Another species perhaps? Like pegasi? Or even moreso, a princess?
Her foot caught on a step, and she locked her fingers around the railing, arresting her fall. “Okay,” she said, recovering her balance. “Less staring, more concentrating.”
Still … the strength of her new fingers was impressive.
She made her way up the rest of the steps without incident. The top of the stairs led to a wide alley between two buildings, choked with rubble and glass. None of the damage looked recent, however, and there was still a clear path through it.
She paused and examined the small statued forms at the top of the railings first, comparing their form to her new one. Clearly she lacked the wings, but she could see plenty of similarities as well.
Is this what … she … saw? What I glimpsed? She couldn’t even remember it, the vision in her mind hazy and indistinct.
Focus. She made her way down the alleyway, eyeing the heavy-looking walls on either side of her. The sound of her steps echoed around her slightly, her boots catching a stone at one point and sending it skipping down the alley with a chorus of sharp cracks. It wasn’t hard to see where the rubble had come from. Part of the uppermost story of the building next to her had collapsed, the debris around her what had fallen outward instead of inward.
From the size of some of the pieces, her earlier theory that the place had been built to last seemed all the more sound.
The alley gave way to a street, and she slowed, taking a long look around.
It looks … kind of like Canterlot? The street was decently wide, though there were walkways on either side. Space for carriages … or whatever there were several of in the street. They were squat and mounted on four wheels, but made of metal, and she couldn’t see space for a harness anywhere.
They were also weathered and worn. Some of the wheels looked misshapen, like they’d melted.
Her eyes were drawn to the fronts of the buildings next. Many of them, again, looked similar to what she would have found in Canterlot. Simply … different. And dirty.
Okay, so there are stores. She didn’t recognize the script across some of the faded signs across what were clearly storefronts, but it was a script of some kind. Same as the statue. The levels above, what hadn’t seen the windows destroyed or been overgrown, certainly looked like habitations.
All right, so our worlds are that similar at least. She could see more of the strange metal carriages—or maybe they were caravans—as she ventured further out of the alley. The road was, again, made of patterned brick, much like the courtyard had been, but she could see gratings here and there for some sort of sewer system. All in all, still not too dissimilar from Canterlot.
Save for the dirtiness. And the debris. And the general aura of abandonment. Like the way some of the trees along the side of the street had died, while others had grown enough to push the paving stones aside. Or the grass growing in the dirt that had accumulated at the sides of the street. Or the broken windows in a few of the storefronts.
Still, nothing moved. Nothing with claws and teeth sent up a howl at her appearance. She stepped out of the alleyway, glancing at the nearby buildings in both directions. I need something tall, but stable … That might work!
A tower poked above the edges of the sky off to her right, a framework climbing up into the sky. It was an odd design, more of a latticework than anything else, but it was easily taller than the buildings around it.
“So …” Her voice echoed down the silent street. “I guess I just need to get there.”
She made her way down the street, pausing every so often to walk around some of the large metal carriages. Once or twice she looked inside them, but they were different than the carriages she was familiar with. The occupant’s seats all looked forward, for one.
The wheel on the inside, however, reminded her of the wheel on a ship. Maybe they used them to steer these carriages? But they’d need to be self-propelled.
She’d barely been in this new world for an hour, and already she had far more questions than she could answer. Some of which she desperately wanted to know the answers to, and others … Others that she wasn’t so sure about.
Like why the road ahead of her was cracked and broken, a wide depression scarring its surface like the ground itself had boiled up and then collapsed back inward again. The depression almost looked like a crater left by some kind of explosion, but none of the bricks were charred or blackened.
Her boots kicked something loose, sending it bouncing across the stones with a sharp ping that made her jerk to a halt. She brought the knife up, looking around in all directions before a small glimmer of brass caught her eye. One of several littering the ground around her feet.
“These are … odd …” She bent on one knee—the motion of her new body feeling more and more natural with each passing minute—and poked at one of the small bits of metal with the point of her knife. “Metal … cylinders?” But they weren’t just cylinders. They were open on one end, while the other was ringed by a lip and had a tiny circle in the center. And more of the alien writing.
There were several of them scattered across the street, most, she noted, near the edges, where they were partially buried in the dirt. The ones she had found had been caught in a crack in the stones.
“Just one more mystery,” she said, rising and choosing to walk around the strange depression in the ground. Something about it, despite the smoothness to the soil, just felt … off.
What happened to this place? She continued down the street, her eyes searching every window as they passed her by. Many were crusted with dirt and residue, the grime so thick she could hardly see through them. A few were broken, shattered into pieces that looked to have slowly broken down after … whatever … had broken them. The rooms behind the broken ones were always in worse shape than the others, the countertops and tables scattered and overgrown.
At least it’s all familiar, Sunset thought as the intersection ahead of her grew closer. It’s a city or town. That right there almost looks like a juice shop of some kind. Except that half the windows were missing, and the tables inside had long since toppled. Leafy green vines were growing over a few of them.
A blur of motion jerked in the corner of her eye, and she turned, bringing her knife up with wide eyes to see—
A bird, its feathers grey, winging away from an open window.
It was the first sign of life she’d seen. She lowered the knife, a hot flash of embarrassment making her cheeks burn. A bird, she thought as it darted out of sight. You just jumped at the sight of a bird.
“Still …” she said aloud, her voice filling the empty street. “At least there are birds.” Hearing one earlier had been one thing, but seeing one brought a measure of calm with it now that the initial shock was over. At least everything here isn’t dead.
She moved on, still walking down the street, her footsteps the only sound over the faint rush of a breeze through the vines and overgrown trees. She passed more carriages, some of them showing signs of what looked like damage. Those ones tended to have grey-colored bones sitting in the seats.
She gave them a wider berth after the first. Not as wide as she’d given the strange hole in the ground, but wide nonetheless. It just felt … wrong, for some reason. To disturb them, or even look at them. Thankfully, not all of them showed signs of having been the site of death, but the ones that did …
They were resting places. No matter how unfortunate.
And no one came back and buried them, Sunset thought as she stepped around a particularly large “carriage” with a smaller seating area but large rear space open to the elements. Like a wagon made for shipping, but so tall she couldn’t see over it. Why?
She gave her head a slight shake. First things first. Get up and get a look over everything nearby. Find water. Her throat itched and she slowed, carefully shucking her changed saddlebags and taking another drink from the canteen she’d brought with her. Already the movements were getting easier.
Of course they are. You’re meant to be here.
Ahead of her, the street ended in a wide intersection, meeting at a cross with another. More of the strange carriages were scattered about, doors open.
There were also … barriers … of some kind. Made of stone, or maybe cement, blocking off part of the intersection. Small bags shored up gaps in the line. Sandbags? Was there flooding? Many of the bags were partially deflated, small, weathered holes marking spots where sand had leaked out.
Large, faded red letters had been painted across one of the pieces of concrete, along with an arrow. What it meant she couldn’t say, the script still alien, but it clearly pointed toward a gap in the wall and down the street. She peered down the short street, but didn’t see anything that wasn’t more of the alien buildings.
A checkpoint of some kind? For an evacuation? During some kind of … battle?
A memory of the loud flash and smoke of the minotaur weapon darted through her mind once more, and she shivered. What would a battle with those be fought like?
She took a quick look at the fronts of the buildings around the intersection, her eyes picking out even more damage. Two were clearly corner shops of some kind, though what she couldn’t say. The doors had long since been torn aside, and the shelves were bare. One building had partially collapsed, the front nothing more than a pile of rubble. And down the connecting street opposite the barrier …
Another strange depression in the ground, a gaping hole where the brick that made up the road was just … gone, a smooth depression of dirt in its place. A crater grown with grass and other small plants, none of which were immediately familiar save in shape.
Was the city collapsing? The thought sent a pang of worry through her. But then … nothing had shifted since she’d arrived, and if that had been the case, why the weapons? And the armor? Infighting? Why had no one come back?
Maybe something like a diamond dog? Digging up out of the ground. A wild animal after everyone was gone?
Ugh! I need answers! She scowled, her eyes finding the tower once more and fixing on it. It was still ahead of her, the street widening and growing more expansive, the buildings taller, but not by much. And no less ornate.
She moved on, leaving the intersection with only a single backward glance to make sure she could retrace her steps if needed. One step at a time.
Around her, there were more signs that the city had been abandoned, and abandoned quickly. What looked like a child’s toy lay discarded near the base of some steps. Empty luggage lay abandoned in the street. Trees that had once likely been orderly and neat had overgrown, pushing up the paving stones.
At least their spreading branches offered shade. Her new body had started to sweat. The air was warmer than it had been in Canterlot, though not by much. But it was harder to feel the breeze with so much clothing over her body.
Part of her wanted to remove it, but without knowing how much of her new physique required covering and why …
The tower was close now. The buildings around her looked almost like the apartment buildings back in Canterlot. There might be some someplace I can stay in one of them. If … She eyed another partially collapsed building front, the insides visible to the world and clearly destroyed. If they’re sturdy enough.
The intersection ahead held the building that the tower sprouted from, a large, brightly colored building with a massive sign proclaiming … something. The image was worn and faded, but she could make out a massive smiling face.
Someone important? Even just locally? More of interest to her was the scrawled red paint that someone else had clearly added to it later in the shape that looked just like the flattened gear jewelry she’d found on the first body.
The rest of the intersection had at one point been wide, with cobbled bricks and paint lines that allowed for both foot and vehicle traffic. What looked to have been a fountain with a statue at its middle, much like the one she’d come through, had dominated the center.
Now the statue and fountain both were sunken and tilted, as if the ground beneath them had given way, the arm of the statue pointing up through a sludgy, algae-choked pond. The painted lines were faded, the once-smooth paved bricks twisted and tilted as if shoved up by giant roots.
An earthquake? Maybe it was some sort of earth magic, like the earth ponies had, to be so centralized. Still, the front of the building with the tower on it looked solid enough. And she could see a ladder running up the side of the metal tower.
The front door let out a loud, metal squeal as she shoved it open, the sound echoing back at her from across the intersection. Dust dropped from the ceiling, cascading across the entryway, and she let out a loud sneeze.
Well, if there’s anyone inside, they know I’m coming. The interior looked like a dusty cave, its insides lit only by the sunlight from the door. She stepped forward, into the darkness, reached for her magic—
And paused. It wasn’t there. She didn’t have a horn. How am I going to make light without a horn?
And how could my destiny lie on a world without magic?
Still, her eyes were adjusting, the vague shape of a lobby forming around her as the dark shadows became recognizable objects. There was more light coming through windows as well, just murky and dim.
She took a deep breath, trying not to wrinkle her nose at the dust in the air. “Come on, Sunset. You can do this. Just find your way up to the roof, and get a good look around.”
It seemed so simple when she said it. Just like everything else had before—
NO. There wasn’t time to think about it. “You’re here now,” she said, still holding her knife carefully. “Just … one step at a time.”
A hallway led deeper into the building, and she moved toward it, ignoring the decrepit reception area. There has to be a way up, she thought as her world grew darker. Some way of getting to that tower.
She found the stairs first, almost falling over them in the dim lighting. Thankfully, whoever had built the building had opted for open skylights. Not that they were very open anymore, the glass covered by the grime and debris of who knew how many years. But they let enough light in for her to find a way up the wide, metal stairway without falling.
“One floor down,” she said, the sound of her voice making the abandoned structure feel all the more empty. The stairs up to the next level let out an ominous creak as she began moving up them, and she froze, but when nothing happened she moved up the remainder of them without incident.
At the top she found another body. Or what was left of one. Maybe years ago the smell would have been horrendous, but all that was left now were decayed, desiccated remains stretched over bones.
Sunset swallowed. “It’s just like a Daring Do novel,” she told herself. “Just another ancient body.” Its clothes were more like hers.
She wasn’t sure what had killed it, though the shadowed stains beneath the body in the destroyed carpeting gave hints. Another one of the strange devices that was probably a weapon lay on the ground nearby, though it was different from the one she’d found her knife on.
The upstairs level was small, so small it didn’t take her long at all to find a large, heavy door with a crack of light showing through from outside. She put a hand against it, pushed, and—
The door stopped with a sudden metal-on-metal clang, a familiar cacophony of clicks following in its wake as she let off.
Someone had chained the door from the outside. She could just see the links through the small gap. They were rusted and worn.
Her first thought was to simply summon her magic and cut the links in half, but without a horn, that was impossible. Or at least past her current abilities at the moment.
I can’t stop now. I’m so close. I’m right— The glimmer of the large knife blade caught her eyes, and she hesitated only a moment before jamming the end of the blade between the links and yanking downward. The rusted metal began to creak, and she pulled harder, both forelegs straining—
With a loud pop the weakened links gave way, and she fell to the ground, knees slamming into the doorframe even as her body slammed into the heavy door. It flew open, and she barely managed to throw the knife away and catch herself, the skin on her new hands shrieking in pain as she skidded across the rough rooftop.
Still, she kept her face from striking the ground, and she could feel the breeze moving through her mane, a welcome cool after the hot, stifling, dust-laden air of the building. She pushed herself back up, sweeping a few loose strands of her mane back behind one strange ear … and saw the tower.
It was massive, climbing into the sky, a latticework of metal for what purpose she couldn’t begin to say. Here and there strange, round shapes had been grafted to it, their direction and design as alien as the rest of the spire.
But, she could see the mesh metal platforms around them. And the ladders that led up to them.
“Okay,” she said, rising to her … hooves? Her knife lay a few feet away on the rooftop, and she picked it up. “Now just to …” She eyed her alien fingers, and then the rungs of the ladder. “Figure out how to climb, I guess.” Were her fingers strong enough to grip the rungs? Or would she need to use her joints?
The ladder at least looked sturdy. Really sturdy. In fact, the whole tower looked like it could have withstood a good bucking from an earth pony without moving so much as an inch. At least I won’t have to worry about it falling down. She glanced at her fingers once more. Maybe I could …?
But no, a quick look at the rooftop around her told her that she couldn’t see what she needed to see. The building was only as tall as those around it, and though she could see what looked like green off in the distance past the rooftops, her angle was too low to make out any real detail.
A glance behind her showed that she could climb up atop the housing of the door she’d just exited, and in fact there was a metal stairway nearby probably just for that purpose but ...That’s a lot lower than the tower. She turned her eyes to the structure once more. She could make out two platforms, the lowest easily a good two dozen feet or more above the next-highest point of the building.
Okay Sunset. She took a deep breath. Just … climb. Your new body has been pretty good at adapting so far. She walked over to the base of the tower, her head tilting further and further back as she followed the ladder with her eyes.
And that’s … a long way up. She wasn’t sure how durable her new body was compared to her old one, but something told her that she really didn’t want to fall from so high above ground.
“First things first,” she said, setting the knife at the base of the ladder. Then, after a pause, she moved it around and behind it. “Just in case,” she said, her eyes sliding upward once more. Should I remove my pack? I might want to make a map or— She paused.
“I don’t know how to write anymore,” she said, staring down at her fingers. “Or draw.” Except with my mouth. But even that had changed. She’d seen griffons and minotaurs write with their fingers, but even the one time she’d been transformed into a griffon she’d never tried it herself.
One more thing to learn. She shucked her pack, almost dropping it but catching it and setting it on the ground at the last minute. Another quick gulp from her canteen—Find water—and she was ready.
It was slow going. She had to focus on each hand individually, and watch each … hoof? Maybe it was a paw? No, foot! She made her way up the ladder. The metal rungs were thankfully easy to grip and stand on, but they were also hot, heated by the bright overhead sun, and before she’d even made it a quarter of the way to the first platform she could feel sweat starting to run down her face.
Just … ignore how far away the roof is getting, she thought as she moved a boot up another rung. A breeze stirred, and she let out a faint sigh of relief. Thank … She caught herself. I don’t know. The wind, I guess. She unclenched her fingers and moved her hand another rung up. Around her more of the city was coming into view, but she pulled her eyes away, fixing them on the rungs above her. You can do this, Sunset. You can do this.
You were meant to do this.
The act of climbing was getting easier, the wind whipping her bright mane around her face as the first of the platforms grew closer and closer. She could pick out the pattern in the metal it was made from now, a sort of crisscrossed mesh that had let her through it. The bases of her hands were burning from the heat of the metal, not quite so hot that she was worried she was damaging them, but enough to be quite uncomfortable. She was only a few rungs away, then two, then one …
Then she was pulling herself up over the edge of the platform, one boot slipping and sending her heart leaping into her throat as her fingers locked tight. In a moment her boot … paw … whatever it was … was back on a rung, and she pushed herself the rest of the way up, dropping to her hands and knees on the hot metal.
She didn’t care. She was off of the ladder. She wasn’t even that bothered by both how unnatural and familiar at once the position she was currently in felt.
Sunset waited for her pounding heart to slow, staring down through the mesh of the platform, before looking up and rising at last. The wind had increased in force with every rung upward, and now that she was halfway up the tower, her mane was whipping around her head. She fiddled with it for a moment before blindly shoving what she could down into the neck of her jacket. A few strands had eluded pursuit, but they hardly felt important at the moment.
She could see.
The city, or rather town, stretched around her, easily mile or more in all directions. She could actually see the faint depression that marked the park she’d come out of … and a lot more besides that. What looked like businesses, stores, homes, and even structures she couldn’t identify were spread around her. Each looked solid and stocky, like they’d been built to withstand blows from giants.
But despite that, she could see damage everywhere she looked. One whole section of the city looked to have caught fire. Several more areas looked as though the ground beneath them had collapsed. She took several steps, working her way around the platform, her hands lightly grasping the safety railing, staring at the cityscape around her. Here a building had collapsed. There iIt looked as though several others had been blown apart, like a giant beam from a magnifying glass had somehow worked its way across the city. What looked like a small factory of some kind was half-gutted.
Still, there were buildings that didn’t look damaged, and she noted several of them before pulling her eyes to space past the town’s edge. She could see mountains on the horizon, as well as a massive, titanic road that was wide enough to be a river passing right through one corner of the town and winding across the landscape. And past the edge of the city …
Forests. And overgrown fields. Here and there her eyes were drawn to what looked like homes, even out toward the horizon. Structures of some kind, at least. Some with large, slowly rotating fans—windmills, if a little different looking and battered. What their purpose was she couldn’t say, but they poked above their surroundings, slowly spinning in the wind.
There were signs of damage and devastation out there as well. Charred sections of scarred trees where things had clearly burned some time ago. Gaping openings in the summer greenery that looked out of place. More of the strange carriages on the wide road.
But the thing that struck her most was how little movement she saw. Here and there she could see what looked like birds darting through the trees. But any more of … whatever she was? There was no sign.
Suddenly, she felt very alone.