//------------------------------//
// 23 - Running and Screaming 
// Story: Evergreen Falls 
// by Meep the Changeling 
//------------------------------//

Ultra Violet - 19th of Harvestide (Nightmare Night), 4 EoH
Monster Infested Maze - Limited Perfection (Subruins)

The burbling and wailing ooze was distressingly fast. It dragged itself along on an ever-emerging crowd of clawed hands, using the extruded and re-absorbed limbs like wheels. Violet drew on her magic, directing it to her hooves to run as fast as she dared on her not-quite-fixed legs. Her mind was filled with little more than the route to the stairs and an endless stream of curses taken from every language she had on file.

The corridor shot by, leading Violet deeper into the facility. The density of ancient corpses increased by the hallway. One or two empty suits of armor here and there at first, then clusters of three to four, and after the seventh hallway, with only four hundred meters to go, entire squads near piles of civilian clothing.

Violet didn’t have time to wonder if anyone had escaped the ancient disaster. Or if the oozing horror behind her was even responsible. 

There was only running.

Taking this right, Violet noted, turning her head to begin turning to the right.

One particular corpse in the hall at the corner ahead stood out to her. Unlike the others which were but stains on the floor and piles of body armor and old cyberware, this one had bulk to it still. Like there was a skeleton holding the old body armor to shape, rather than letting it lay flat like a pile of dirty laundry.

Violet started to turn, leaning into it to preserve momentum. The odd corpse bubbled and twitched. A gray-blue ooze slid from the suit’s neck, rapidly swelling to hideously bloated proportions, screeching with the horror behind her.

“Nonononono!” Vinlot shrieked, back peddling and managing to reverse her direction without falling over on the slick metal floor.

The rusty red ooze behind her sprouted a fanged maw containing an eyeball, the pupil of which in turn split into an inner mouth. Going back is not an option. Violet had to change course.

She picked left, hoping to loop around and get back on track for the elevator. Her cyan aura blazed, clashing with the red emergency lighting, creating a sphere of purple light around her as she ran.

The facility’s holograms flickered and sputtered as she ran past them. A subroutine prompted Violet to recall how something in the facility had been trying to warn her through the holograms. She looked up, ignoring the twin wailing shrieks behind her and the sound of wet flesh sliding along metal to focus on the next hologram as it changed.

[Turn right, next junction.]

Violet looked up, indeed the corridor in front of her ended at a T section. Why right? What’s left? Violet wondered, looking towards the left hoof corridor.

Her answer came as she reached the turn. Another shapeshifting slimy abomination raced down the lefthoof corridor towards Violet. This one was a diseased pinkish hue, like the flesh around an infected wound. It smelled as its color suggested, and seemed to leave small pieces of itself behind on the walls and floor as it drug itself along like a dog without its hind legs desperately trying to reach water.

Violet skidded as she turned to the right, her titanium hooves scratched the metal tiles beneath her as she scrambled down the tunnel, eyes flicking from sign to sign in hopes of more advice from her mysterious messenger.

Please don’t be leading me to the nest… Violet begged of reality.

Violet’s fears were seemingly answered when a puss-orange ball of slime began to drip from the ceiling ahead of her. It sprouted arms and fangs as it oozed from the ceiling vent. Violet yelped, ducked and slid under its reach. The monster slammed into the ground and joined its three counterparts in chasing down their latest prey.

A glint of silver caught Violets eye as she slid. A small cylinder she instinctively knew to be a power cell. She reached out with one hoof and snagged it, then slapped it against the solid silver side of the gun she’d picked up.

“Take it!” She snapped, not sure how the weapon reloaded in the slightest.

The weapon’s case morphed, flowing like mercury to simply engulf the new cell and spit out an old one. Violet grinned and managed to jump back up to her hooves at the end of her slide without having lost too much speed. Yet the monsters had gained ground.

Violet ran forwards as fast as three legs could carry her, bending and twisting to point her foreleg backwards and squeezed her frog to fire the weapon. The emitter at its tip flashed white, firing a beam of high-energy protons down the corridor. The beam caught one of the oozes and blasted a hole clean through it.

The other monsters didn’t stop. The struck one slumped over, but then began to resume at a crawl. It formed new limbs around the laser hole.

“Oh come on!” Violet yelled, going back to a four-legged sprint.

The four monster’s shrieks harmonized into a tonally disaffected C-major chord, creating some of the most dreadful music heard by mortal ears. Violet’s eyes darted in a panic to the holograms, searching for any hint of what to do next. She missed the first hologram, blowing past it before it could change. The next flickered and sparked, shorting out before the message could be displayed.

There was no third message. Only another T junction. Left or right.

If I turn right, I can get back on the route to the stairs.

She pushed more magic to her limbs, gathering up what speed she could spare without overtaxing her damaged body and raced around the corner to the right… Right into a room.

“BUCK!” Violet swore as she took stock of the massive room.

It was easily the size of a gymnasium, minus the space for bleachers, and lined with large transparent tubes connected to nests of cables and hoses on the ceiling with no obvious means of entering or accessing the tubes. A bright cyan light illuminated the rear left corner of the room, clashing with the red emergency lights much like Violet’s aura to make a purple nimbus.

With no other choice, Violet sprinted down the middle of the room, pleading with fate to give her another door somewhere along its length. Her hope diminished with each step, for there were only the tube-tanks along the walls. After a dozen blazing steps the only hope left in Violet’s heart was the cyan light.

Please be a doorway, please please please be a doorway!

Violet reached the light. It did not spill through an open doorway. It came from an occupied tube. The light was, in the most understandable terms, a small star suspended within a vacuum chamber and harnessed by the machinery at the top of the tube. Whether this was part of the facility’s power plant, or some sort of science experiment, Violet would never know.

What she did know was her laser was useless against the oozes, and there was no special punch she knew of that would hurt slime. Their amorphous bodies clearly hardened when they needed to. It stood to reason the opposite would hold true.

My impact gauntlets are useless. I don’t have the space or time for a U turn.

Violet looked over her shoulder. The four abominations surged towards her, claws flailing and maws open with the zeal of predators who knew their prey was cornered.

Violet looked back to the captive star, then to the monsters once more. Their limbs twisted, forming flesh ripping hooks. Their gaping maws honed themselves into barbed fangs. They would fight each other over every piece of their shared meal.

Incineration sounds like a better way to go.

She reared up, increased her magic output yet more, drew back a hoof, and punched the tube in front of her. The ancient transparent aluminum dented inwards under the force of her blow then parted with a metallic shriek as her gauntlet’s amplification more than tripled the impact force.

The cylinder blew apart with a thunderclap. Violet closed her eyes, expecting to burn or melt under the miniature star’s radiance. Its light met that of the aura surrounding Violet and the two magics’ frequencies harmonized. The magic’s intense burst of power passed harmlessly around the distressed android as it radiated outwards, releasing a vast quantity of stasis-stored Cherenkov radiation in a single instant.

The intense UV light washed over the room, reflecting off the metal walls, floor, and ceiling, scarring everything with its burning luminance until the other tubes hoses began to smoke. The monsters shrieked in pain and thrashed, their flesh bubbling and boiling, blistering and popping in mere moments.

Violet opened her eyes, took in the chaos, noted the oozes languishing in rapidly dissolving agony, and pulled the mother of all u turns, not caring about the damage warnings flashing before her eyes as she ripped a few minor myomer bundles in her hind legs as she shot back into the corridor.

Don’t question it, just run. Don’t question it, just run. Don’t question it, just run! Violet repeated to herself, focusing on retracing her steps to get back to the escape route.

Violet retraced her steps, making it through one turn before the monster's pained shrieks became a chorus of wrathful bellows and roars. Her ears drooped back and pupils shrank as Violet realized she’d only made them angry.

I should have shot them. Buck.

She heard the slap-slap-squelch of their hideous locomotion drawing nearer and nearer, moving with much more speed and urgency than before.

They were playing with me… Violet realized in horror. I only thought I was faster. I don’t have the power to go any faster than this if I want to have primary power to climb those stairs. What the buck do I do?

Running was the only option. The monsters enraged echoing bellows closed in on her, starting to sound like they were right on her tail.

Random door! She decided.

Violet began to look for a door with a green access panel. Anywhere to hole up for a moment. Anywhere she might hide, or cut the monsters off from her.

A rusty-red clawed hand grabbed her rear left leg. It yanked, sending Violet slamming into the floor. She screamed. A second, third, and fourth hand grabbed her, digging into her silicone skin, piercing it, and then tearing into the fibers beneath her synthetic flesh.

Pushing through the pain, Violet twisted around and began firing her blaster, praying to anything listening that she’d hit some hidden vital organ. Her blasts punched hole after hole into the abominations as they lifted her off the ground. The gathered mass oozed through the gaps between blasted monstrosities and the walls and ceiling, filling the entire corridor as a block of mutating, oozing, pulsating, hungry limbs, maws, and eyes.

The hands seized her forelegs and head and began to pull in different directions. Violet closed her eyes and grit her teeth, bracing for the pain of being ripped asunder. The monsters began to bellow a warbling victorious cry.

The snap and hiss of plasma burning the air punctuated the monstrous horde’s bellowing. A black blade jacketed in white light plunged through the largest ooze, burning and slicing its way down the monster’s midsection, bisecting it in an instant. Violet opened her eyes just in time to see the blade reach the floor, bounce upwards through the pink slime, and rotate through a lightning fast arc, to cut a question-mark shaped slice through the monster's bubbling flesh.

The oozes collapsed, falling into a pile, shrieking in pain from the burns, entirely unperturbed by being split. The blade and a now slime covered silhouette hurtled through the collapsing oozes, shooting past Violet and hooking her with a long, thick, saurian tail, dragging her along the corridor.

Violet spared a moment to glance at her savior. They were roughly pony sized, distinctly a mixture of crocodilian and canine (though leaning more crocodilian), seemingly eyeless, and covered in thick black bony plates rather than scales. Despite the natural armor they appeared fairly sleek, and moved with surprising speed and grace for something pulling a pony along with their tail while holding a lit energy blade in their mouth.

A glint of silver on her savior’s back caught Violet’s eye. One of their plates had been torn out, and a piece of the long dead biped’s armor had been stuffed into the hole. More intriguing, the sound of this creature’s talons on steel produced the same tak-tak-tak sound she’d heard earlier.

“Thanks!” Violet shouted, twisting back around to try and free herself of her rescuer’s tail to run on her own.

As she moved, Violet couldn't help but notice the formerly four monsters were now eight and hurriedly pulling themselves into more mobile shapes.

Her rescuer responded to Violet’s words with a surprisingly canid noise best describable as the tired “borf…” a malamute makes when they want to just lay down and sleep without you bothering them at the end of a long day.

Violet pulled herself free of its long tail and stumbled slightly as her damaged hind legs found their pace despite their new punctures. As soon as she pulled herself free, Violet's rescuer swung its head (and the blade with it), and growled loudly, jerking its head to the right then immediately turning right towards a door and scratching at it with its front talons.

Can… Can it not open doors? Violet mused, no longer sure if their rescuer was a person or a clever animal someone had taught to do cool sword tricks.

Violet glanced down the hall. The oozes had collected themselves and began their hunting shrikes again. They’d be on the two in a matter of moments. She turned to the door her rescuer was frantically scratching at. It bore the label [Transit Station].

Yes please! Violet thought as she ripped the manual release panel open and yanked the lever down.

The door slid open with a protesting hiss and the scrape of rust on rust, but it did move. The space on the other side opened out into a small platform, almost exactly like a subway station, but minus any turnstyles or ticket booths. Violet raced in after her rescuer, who made a b-line towards a small ten person hanging monorail car parked at the station, its doors open and seemingly welcoming Violet with their promise of a way to get the buck out of this place.

Violet turned around and slammed the manual release lever back up to shut the doors then bolted through them as they slammed closed. She reached the monorail just as the oozes slammed into the door. It bowed inwards with a metallic groan, creaking and rattling as the oozes pounded and clawed against it.

Violet raced further into the monorail, noting her saurian friend had sat down in front of the vehicles control panel, weapon extinguished but still held in their draconic mouth. They whined, again, just like a big dog… But gestured to their face then the controls. With the slightly better light and the moment of safety brought by the door, Violet was able to see the poor thing's eyes had been torn out, and small armor plates had been wedged over and into the sockets like crude bandages. The creature had small heat-pits around its nose and eyes much like a snake’s, implying it was navigating by sound, smell, and warmth.

“Oh,” Violet said out loud. I wonder if the oozes did that? Wait, the controls! It wants to operate this, but can’t because it can't read… Uh, assuming it could before the whatever-had-happened.

Violet glanced at the control panel, surprised to see it holding physical buttons and levers instead of a holographic projection. The largest lever had speed markings from positive ten to negative ten. It was set to zero. Violet slammed it forwards to positive ten.

The monorail hissed as its ancient air brakes released. The station door cracked, buckling inwards as the blending colors of ooze started to bubble through the hairline crack they had made. The monorail’s outer doors closed with a little more force than necessary. The car shuddered and began to roll forwards.

The oozes pushed enough of themselves through to start pulling their crack wider. Violet winced, gritting her teeth. “Faster please…”

An ancient speaker in the car’s roof hissed and crackled to life. “Good; evening, and welcome to the Fast-Acting Unilateral Substrate Terraforming Facility Transit System. This automated car is provided for; the security and convenience of employees. Please feel free to move about the train or, simply, sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Despite her core pulsating with terror, and coolant pump working overtime, Violet couldn’t help but look behind her at the monorail’s rear… Where there was no other car.

“Thanks but… One car doesn't make a train, also please go bucking faster!” Violet protested at the ceiling speaker.

The monsters ripped the outer door open and began to surge forth like a tsunami of crayon sewage. The car’s EM repulsors finished warming up and it silently shot forwards at a speed not even magic biology could ever hope to achieve, racing down the long tunnel ahead towards someplace hopefully safe.

Violet sighed in relief. Her saurian companion proceeded to curl into a ball next to Violet, and growl lightly as she moved away slightly.

Okay, probably cold blooded. He can have my waste heat. Least I can do. Violet thought before looking back up at the speaker. “Thank you. Uh, is this dude your friend or pet, or what?”

The speaker crackled again. “The time is 2047 Hours. Current topside temperature is 8.8 degrees, with an estimated high of 11.2. The F.A.U.S.T. compound is maintained at a pleasant 20 degrees at all times.”

“Okay, but—” Violet began, stopping as she suddenly realized she was talking to a recording.

The holographic display board at the top of the train flicked on, scrolling text past the windows to indicate where the train was going followed by [Get off at the next stop. Bring my friend with you.]

Violet nodded slowly. As far as I know, it hasn’t steered me wrong so far.

“This train is inbound from Sector C Test Labs and bound for Sector A Control Facilities. If your intended destination is a high-security area beyond Sector A, you will need to return to the Central Transit Hub in Area 11 and board a high security train—”

Violet turned the speaker out and simply laid down to minimize the work her poor overtaxed and nearly depleted self-repair systems and power bank had to do to patch up her mangled legs and neck.

Let’s hope things are better wherever we wind up… Or that I can find a motherbucking charger and a big pile of nanite food. Or some robot painkillers because ow…


 ⁜ ⁜ ⁜


Junebug - 19th of Harvestide (Nightmare Night), 4 EoH
Divine Forgeheart - Limited Perfection

Sam, June, and Trixie burst through the lilac door, nearly getting stuck on one another as they forced their way through, their armor scraping and scratching against the door frame and each other. The three made it into the hallway just as they heard the inner doors thud open and the saurian beasts' canid-like braying began in earnest.

“Ten doors!” Sam recalled taking off at a dead sprint for the room which Trixie mentioned containing a back passage.

Trixie ran after her, prompting June to take to the air and shoot past her friends.

“Fly you fools!” June shouted.

Sam snapped her wings open and took off. Trixie shapeshifted in a blaze of light, emerging from her transformation already in the air. The three flew down the corridor, bank-landing sideways in front of the tenth door down. 

“Left or right?” June yelped, spending a moment to look over her shoulder back down the hall.

The reptilian monsters were sprinting after the three, braying and hissing as they ran with extreme speed. They’d covered a quarter of the distance between them already.

“Right!” Tixie shouted back.

June looked to the door. It was the locked one she’d tried to open earlier. June didn’t think, she simply took her axe from her back and swung it vertically down onto the bolt between the two doors.

The axe sang as it whistled through the air, leaving a visible blueish white arc of magic behind it, then cleaved into and through the door bolt with a mighty pang! of shattering steel.

June reflexively checked the axe. It was fine. The feeble door latch was not.

Sam kicked the doors open and waved everypony through. They had just enough time to dash through the open doors and slam them shut behind them before the creatures reached the door. The three mares braced the doors with their backs, rearing up to put as much force on them as they could. The creatures began to push, and scratch, and ram the twin live oak panels over and over.

“Doors need backup bolts!” Sam shouted over the cacophonous din of barks, growls, and thuds shaking the door behind them.

“Yep!” June agreed.

“Can you two hold it without me for six seconds?” Trixie asked.

“We can try,” Sam stated.

June shifted to her hindlegs to brace herself better. Sam did the same and Trixie pulled away from the group. Each shuddering slam suddenly hit that much harder. Sam and June closed their eyes tight and spread their wings, doing their best to strain against the pounding.

Trixie shapechaged back to her usual form, closed her eyes, lit her horn, and focused. Clearing her mind she directed her telekinesis to the door handles, pushing against them, through them, and pushing a flourish of magic into remaking the severed bolt.

“That will hold for a minute, maybe. Get out the climbing kits and chain them shut!” Sam ordered.

Sam hesitantly pulled away from the door. The beast's assault continued, shaking the doorframe, but not kicking them in. June took a deep breath to be brave and pulled away as well. The door bucked and shook visibly, but remained shut.

“Okay, piton the walls, chain across the door,” Sam said decisively, digging her climbing kit out from her bag.

June followed suit, taking out the small wooden box from her saddlebags she popped open the lid and looked for chains. There were none.

“I only have rope.”

“It will have to do,” Sam said as she swore under her breath. “I only have rope too. Buck it, just go!”

Trixie took a piton from June’s kit and used her telekinesis to start pounding it into the wall. “Hurry! I can hear the wood snapping!”

The three worked frantically, each scrape, thud, and howl sent a shiver down their spine. The door creaked and groaned, threatening to break open at any moment. June slammed one piton home in the time Sam had gotten two into the wall. The moment Trixie finished her own, she grabbed one of the kit’s ropes and wove it through the pitons, tying it tightly in a double x pattern over the doors.

The saurian hounds continued their assault, the door creaked and groaned, straining against the ropes as the sound of gouging and splintering wood filled the air.

“It won’t last longer than three more minutes at this rate,” June noted out loud.

“Yep…” Sam agreed, drawing in a sucking hissing breath. “Guess the projection wasn’t on our side. Would have mentioned those things if he were.”

“Unless he did,” Trixie said quickly. “He did say get snacks… Or at least, June thought he did. What happened to your translator talisman?”

June closed her eyes and sighed. “It’s back at the lab. We came straight here from a walk out to the old quarry. Why would I have brought it? Why would I have been wearing the translator link I made?”

“Fair,” Trixie said with a weary sigh. “Sorry. Stress.”

“It’s fine.” Sam said, gritting her teeth and reaching into her saddle bags. “I have an idea… My guns don’t hurt them. Magic might. That axe might. June, Trixie; step back from the door. Guard it. I’ll look for the hidden passage. After one, last, little, touch.”

Sam’s hoof finally found what she was looking for. She withdrew a canteen full of water from her bag and set it down. Then a ziplock bag full of walnuts. Then some duct tape…

June frowned and looked at the assortment of items. “What are you—”

Then Sam took out two breaching charges and began to wire them up. “IED,” she answered.

“Improvised Explosive Device,” Trixie translated into civilian, then snapped her head around to Sam. “Are you crazy?! The back blast could—”

“Few alternatives,” Sam objected as she taped the walnut bag to the canteen then slapped the breaching charges to the other side.

“How far back do we, uh, step?” June asked, her tail lashing as she nervously whinnied.

Trixie picked June up with her magic and set her about a quarter of the way into the room. “Here, and put on your ear pro if it isn’t already.”

June didn’t need to be told twice. She fished the ear plugs attached to her helmet kept via a pair of strings out of her breastplate and slipped them into her ears.

The door continued to buck and groan. Sam slapped the IED to the door, taped it in place, and set the detonators up as pull wires, pinning them to the other side of the door.

“Okay,” she said calmly. “Trixie, June, keep us covered… Also, where should the passage be?”

“Uh, rear wall. Not sure how to get to it. It’s in the center,” Trixie reported, biting her lip nervously and staring at the very crude bomb in front of her.

“Those are shaped charges, right?” June asked, nervously fidgeting with her axe.

“Yes. But that doesn’t mean what you think it means, and shrapnel bounces,” Trixie commented idly.

Sam disappeared into the back of the room. June turned her head to see where she went, learning for the first time that the room was lined with bookshelves. They were all empty, but she could see how the weight of books or scrolls had bowed the shelves down over ages.

At least if we die, it will be in a library, June thought to herself, doing her best to stay focused on the door. I’ll bet this place was really cool once. NO! FOCUS!

The door bent inwards, straining against the ropes and the upper hinges. She could hear the creak and groan of wood as the hinges started to fail. June’s eyes laser focused on the trip wires. They were slack.

“Trixie, the door won't open. It will fall,” June said, pointing to the hinges with her axe.

Trixie looked, understood immediately, and with a blaze of arcane light cut the ropes. The doors burst open a heartbeat later, pulling the wires, triggering the detonators, and detonating both silenced charges. The fireball was enormous, but the blast was silent other than the shattering of wood and splintering of hardened flesh, which it turns out is quite loud.

The water, being incompressible, carried the explosion's energy evenly into the door and the bag of walnuts. The middle of the door vaporized into sawdust, blasting the bulk of the monstrous hounds with fragments of oak and walnuts.

The fragments blinded and lacerated a dozen of the creatures. Pained yelps echoed through the hallway as several of the beasts fell to the shrapnel. Many others turned and ran, their ears bleeding from the silent explosion and their noses overwhelmed with the smell of their own kind’s blood.

Another dozen, on the other hoof, were pissed right the buck off.

They burst through the ruined door before the flames cleared, howling with their maws open wide as they raced for the two mares. June hesitated for a moment, swearing she heard Sam scream in pain. Then the beasts were on them.

Trixie grabbed the lead beast with her magic and slammed it into two of its brothers, using the creature as a living club. Her assault kept some at bay, but three rushed past the flailing improvised flail and headed straight for June.

June reared up and raised her axe. The weapon’s spirit seemed to growl as the beast approached. It whispered to June, telling her what to do without truly telling her. In that moment, for each heartbeat, she simply knew what needed to be done.

She swung the axe downwards into the first beast's skull. The axe blade skipped off its boney armor, but the force laid it out cold. The second lunged for her neck, jaws wide. June stepped back and brought her free foreleg up to block. Its maw latched onto her armored leg, pulling her downwards as the creature wrenched its neck.

June simply swung her axe at her own leg and buried the glimmering blade into the base of the creature’s throat with a wet schlup. It gurgled, let go, pulling free of her axe blade, vomited blood, then fell over dead.

The third hesitated, then bunched its legs and pounced. June dropped to her belly, letting the monster jump over her as she rolled onto her back and swung the axe up into its path, splitting its belly along its whole length, covering herself in the monster's entrails as they fell from its opened guts.

The remainder of the pack began to whimper, then hissed and retreated from the doorway. They remained outside, glaring in through the open door, a few pacing back and forth. Trixie growled and threw her no-longer-living flail through the doors into the wall. It hit the silver plating with a crack and slid down the wall, trailing blood.

This was too much for the beasts. They turned and ran back up the hall without a sound.

“Yeah! You better run!” Trixie shouted down the hall, horn still ablaze with magic.

“Ew…” June whimpered, unable to not think about what she was covered in. “EW!”

Trixie looked over at her sister-in-arms. Her eyes widened. She started to nod, thoroughly impressed, then saw the look of utter panic and disgust in her eyes and flinched.

“EW!” June shrieked as some of the creature’s lower intestines slid off her barrel and emptied bile sludge onto her neck and face.

Trixie quickly wiped June off with her telekinesis. “Good job, June.”

“Ew…” June whimpered, trembling as she climbed to her hooves.

“Help!” Sam called from the back of the room. “S— Second… Time… It was noisy… Boobytrap.”

Trixie nodded to June. “Go help. I’ll watch.”

June silently nodded, did her best to forget the last twelve seconds of tactile memory, and jogged to the back of the room.

“W— What’s wrong?” She stammered, yelping in fright as she saw Sam, standing next to an open bookcase door, but also pinned to the adjacent bookcase by three crystal spikes through her right foreleg.

“Forgot… Own warnings…” Sam said with a weak smile.

“I’ll get them out,” June promised, moving to Sam’s side and examining her leg quickly.

The spikes were clearly conjured magically, originating at small rune plates set into the bookshelf itself at equidistant point on the bottom of the shelf above the door’s activation lever set into the back of the cabinet. The arrangement ensured nopony could reach the lever without getting close to at least one of the rune plates, and more than likely all three of them.

The spikes themselves had clearly flash-grown from the rune plates directly into Sam’s leg, and then through them.

June flinched and looked to Sam. “Those are through bone… I’ll have to cut the spikes from the plates to get them out without— Um… This will hurt a lot.”

“Had worse,” Sam admitted with a faint smile. “D— Do it.”

June nodded, reared up, readied her axe and swung at the spikes. The blade struck the top crystal at the base and a flash of blue light burst outwards from the whole set, which simply widened into blades in response to June’s blow, severing Sam’s foreleg into three even pieces.

Sam screamed and fell back, landing on her plot with a thud and starting to swear profusely as blood gushed from the stump of her right leg.

June’s face went pale, she looked to her axe and to Sam back and forth half a dozen times, trying to work out if she’d swung vertically on accident. “I— I’m sorry!”

“STOP BLEEDING!” Sam screeched through clenched teeth, grabbing the wound with her remaining forehoof to put pressure on it.

“R—Right,” June stammered, dropping her weapon to dig through her saddlebags as fast as possible.

Medkit, where is the medkit, it’s in here somewhere where is it?

“Girls? They’re coming back!” Trixie called out worriedly. “With more.”

Sam took a deep breath and called out. “Get the buck back here, we’ll close the door then tend this…” She trailed off, starting to feel faint from blood loss.

June’s eyes flicked through her bag as she dug. Where is it?! Where the buck is it?! I know it was on top! No, I moved it to get the rope. Where—

Something moved in the corner of June’s eye. Half on instinct, half on panic she picked her axe up and reared up to strike. Trixie caught June’s leg in her magic on reflex, then gasped as she saw Sam laying in the rapidly growing pool of her own blood.

“Buck!” Trixie yelped, grabbing the two mares with her telekinesis and pulling them through the open bookcase door. “How do we close this?!”

“Magic,” June said, her voice trembling. “Booby traps. Sam…”

Sam groaned and pointed with a nod of her head towards an iron lever set into the wall. Trixie cast a shield spell over the three and yanked the lever down. The door swung shut with a deep thud, followed by an iron portcullis which slid down over the entryway, locking into holes in the floor to secure the entrance.

June turned back to her bags, “I moved my med kit,” she said, her eyes starting to fill with tears, gesturing beyond the closed door.

<Touch me to her gem.> the axe said to June.

June hesitated for a moment. Trixie ripped open her own bag and found her med kit after a second. Sam moaned, her grip on her stump loosening as her vision started to dim. Trixie started to open the small plastic box.

June took a deep breath and grabbed the front of Sam’s armor. “Get this off. Axe,” June managed to say through her tears and stress.

Trixie froze for a heartbeat. “She can— June. We don’t need to mercy kill her.”

“Y— Yea…” Sam agreed, starting to slump over.

June shook her head. “Axe said to touch it to her gem,” she managed to murmur as she unbuckled the ballistic vest’s straps.

Trixie decided that understanding was for losers and quickly pulled the underlying spell-resistant armor away from Sam’s barrel, exposing the glowing stone set into the mare’s barrel.

“These should be body gloves,” June murmured as she tapped the gemstone with the flat of the axe blade. “No reason not to cover the legs too.”

June felt her understanding of the situation flow from her mind through the axe into the stone. The gem shimmered, sparkled, then blazed with an inner light. Sam gasped, jolting upright as she felt a deep upwelling of mana flow from her chest through her body, filling her with life. The energy surged a second time, transmitting from raw magic into freshly summoned blood, filling the mare’s empty veins. Another pulse of power and her vitals stabilized. A third pulse from the gem raced through her body, down the remainder of her leg, then flowed outwards as orange light.

The light warped and bent, taking the shape of the flesh which had once been there, then solidified into a smooth crystal replica of Sam’s original limb, but with a claw matching her left manipulator. Sam stared at the crystal limb, reflexively trying out its range of motion. It even unfolded just like the old one had.

“Looks just like a crystal pony’s,” Trixie said quietly, breaking the silence after several long moments.

Sam looked at the gem in her chest, took a quick breath, then tried to stand up, putting weight on the replacement limb. It seemed to work just fine.

“Hurts a little still, but it works,” Sam mumbled to herself.

“I— I’m so sorry,” June said, her ears falling flat. “I— I don’t think I—”

Sam shook her head. “You hit the crystals. Swing was perfect. Booby trap was booby trapped… Like I told you, then forgot,” she said, flinching slightly as she took a step. “I— I really need to learn how to use this. And why does your axe know how?”

June took a deep breath and looked Sam in the eyes. “You’re sure I didn’t buck up?”

“I’m pretty damn sure I felt those spikes turn to bucking blades when you hit six centimeters above my leg,” Sam said in a voice of a mare more than used to her share of exactly this kind of trauma. “Try not to panic. It’s… It’s okay for now. I can get this amputated later. Regen potion will fix it up good as new. Not my first new leg… First time I grew the new one on my own…”

Trixie took a deep breath and pointed to the stairs leading down from the small landing they were clustered on. “Um… Passage is here.”

Sam nodded and began to trot down the stairs, flinching with each step as the crystal prosthesis pushed against the stump. “OW! Buck’s sake… Clearly not healing magic… I think the stump’s still raw. Just, sitting on the crystal.”

June flinched and moved up alongside Sam. “Here, lean on me, least I can d—”

June’s offer cut off as she saw the canal at the bottom of the stairs. It was a simple brick tunnel with a walkway on one side. The canal ran through the tunnel as far as she could see in either direction, and was filled with a murky yellowish-brown-green fluid within which uncountable bits of flesh floated within the backed up and stagnant fluid.

Sam gasped as she saw what she knew to be an industrial body disposal. Exactly the kind seen at a slaughterhouse. “Oh… Oh by all that is holy… Do not, I repeat, do not, fall into whatever that fluid is.”

June nodded instantly. “Yeah, no shit! If it’s kept that stuff from rotting for twelve thousand years, it’s not good for you.”

“Let’s try not to even breath it,” Sam agreed, continuing to limp along.

June side-eyed the toxic river of evil. Or throw up in it… And splash it anywhere…Or break that pudding-like skin on the surf—

June’s stomach failed her. She turned her head away from the canal and managed to throw up on the stairs… And Trixie’s boots.

Trixie made a face, managing to keep her own lunch down and cleaning them both again with a wave of magic.

“Sorry…” June apologized.

“It’s fine. Bad day for everypony,” Trixie said as she made her way down the stairs. “Come on. Not far now.”

Sam stared into the stagnant canal for a few moments, swearing that one of the eyes she could see just under the surface was looking at her.

“Girls…” Sam said slowly. “There might be a monster in there. I don’t want any more slip ups. I’m dizzy. I’m thirsty. I know this gem didn’t give me all my blood back, just, well, enough. I might fall over. I might slip. I’m a casualty right now. I’m not walking next to that crap. Hell, I don’t want any of us walking near that crap. Trixie, morph. Now. Were not even touching that walkway. We’re flying right up the stairs we need to go up, getting to the throne room, opening its hidden passage, with magic so nopony loses anything important, then getting this the buck done. Okay? Okay.”

The others nodded in agreement. There’d been enough accidents and errors for today.

Trixie shapeshifted once more and the three flew after her down the canal, taking care to not touch the walls, floor, or even ceiling, just in case.

June took a few steps down the stairs, looking down at the edges of the canal, eyes searching for any sign of creatures. Just because we’re in the air doesn't necessarily mean we’re out of reach of anything living in—

A series of scratches in the flagstones caught her eye. Half an hour ago, she wouldn’t have thought too much more than ‘something’s walked here a lot’, but with the monster’s she’d just faced, her mind’s eye filled the scratches in with the monster's claws immediately. They were a perfect match.

They come back here… Why? June mused. Oh, duh. Food. There’s all that preserved pony meat in the… River…

“Oh…” June whispered to herself, realizing exactly how the factory above had worked. “First Kingdom Sages perfected their bodies, then were made into parts to be used to make alicorns… Buck…”

Sam cleared her throat. “Sorry that the history books are wrong, but we need to keep moving.”

June nodded. “Yeah… Those dog-lizards come back here. We should move.”

“Right.”

June opened her wings and took off, arriving a short time later on a landing much like the one they’d left a hooffull of seconds before. She returned to her unicorn form before the other two mares even landed, and pulled the iron lever at the top of the landing.

No trap went off, and as Sam and June touched down on the landing just as its portcullis receded into the ceiling and the stone bricks of the wall in front of them simply folded down into the floor like a deck of shuffling cards in an elegant display of telekinetic sequencing.

A tapestry rolled upwards after the bricks folded down, giving the three a view of what was, very technically, a throne room. It was seven-sided, made from a solid slab of black marble trimmed in gold, with a large vaulted ceiling, and a raised dais in the center of the room where a throne sat.

The throne was also gold, and likely solid. Its arm rests were studded with hundreds of carved gemstone switches and buttons. It had plush crimson cushions which matched the throne room’s seven long carpets perfectly. The carpets ran from the dais outwards like spokes, each ending at a large archway containing a black marble door.

The room was also lit by a series of crystals set into the ceiling which mimicked the stars in the night sky. Not accurately, but artistically. There were plenty of other decorations too, tapestries, sculptures, and paintings, but June didn’t give a buck about them for one simple reason.

The throne was not centered on the dais. It was resting to one side, revealing a large trap door, big enough for two alicorns to use. The trap door was also open, its hinged doors having swung upwards to accommodate a simple bronze elevator car, open topped and sided, which simply rested there. Waiting for use.

“They didn’t close the passage,” June said, a tear coming to her eye. Finally, some luck!

Sam shook her head. “I don’t like it. Trixie? Scan it.”

Trixie lit her horn and cast no less than four detection charms. “Amazingly… It’s clear. As far as I can tell. I can throw something onto it.”

“Please do,” Sam instructed.

Trixie trotted out onto the white marble floor, her footsteps echoing widely around the room. She took a glow stick from her saddlebag, activated it so the stick would have a magical signature nothing could miss, and tossed it onto the elevator car.

Nothing happened.

“I don’t have anything alive to throw,” Trixie warned. “But I think it’s safe.”

Sam nodded to June. “Let’s go. Safe as we can test for will have to do.”

June nodded in agreement and began to walk to the throne, then paused. “Wait, Luna wanted the city’s teleport interdiction disabled. So we can save Violet.”

“Right,” Sam grunted thinking back. “She didn’t mention how. Hold on…”

Sam pressed down her radio button. “Luna, come in Luna. We’re at the stupid chair. Which of the hundred buttons turns off the teleport wards?”

Amazingly, Luna’s voice came back almost immediately. “The one labeled teleport interdiction,” she answered. “June can read it. We’re doing better up here, but it’s still a dire situation. With all due haste, Sergeant”

Sam nodded once. “Right.” She let go of her radio and gestured to June.

June walked over to the throne while Trixie hesitantly and tentatively stepped onto the elevator car.

Nothing happened.

“Clear,” Trixie called as June reached the throne.

June opened her wings and flew upwards a meter to hover at the right height to read the throne controls. Her eyes flicked between the labeled controls, searching for—

“Oh. It’s one of the illuminated ones,” June said as she took note of several buttons glowing, one of which was labeled [external teleport restriction].

Or, in Equish… June pressed the button. “Teleport interdiction.”

Sam pressed down on her radio again. “You can teleport as needed now, Princess.”

“Understood.”

“Come on,” Trixie urged. “We’re at the last leg… Before we have to escape this hell.”

June winced and flew over to the elevator car, landing as she asked. “Did you have to put it that way?”

Sam stepped onto the car and pressed the obvious ‘go down please’ button on the elevator’s control panel. “Yes. Today is definitely one of those days,” Sam muttered bitterly, mad she forgot her own warning about traps.

The car shook for a moment, hummed, then began to quietly creak downwards into a brass walled elevator shaft.

Well, here goes… Hopefully nothing, June thought to herself. Who am I kidding? It’s going to be all mutant t-rexes and giant golems for the next hour…