//------------------------------//
// Siren Song, Part 1 
// Story: Siren Song 
// by GaPJaxie 
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I am somewhere between consciousness and dreaming, aware, but not awake. I experience the world, but I can no longer think, no longer act. There is a light above me, the moon, but there’s something wrong with it. The light ripples and sways, long shafts of silver growing dim. Strands from my mane float in my vision, moonlight turning purple to black. A bubble of air floats through them, moving up towards that silver point. I’m weightless, and numb. It’s not peaceful, not quite, but I no longer have any cares. I have not the will to so much as shut my eyes, but I don’t need to. It all goes dark.
 
For a moment, I am aware again. Something heavy drives into my gut, and I retch, though I don’t hear it. I taste salt. There is a pressure on my chest. Something sharp stabs into my flank, but I am too distant to the world to process what I feel as pain. Drifting as I am, I have no idea if this is all happening at once, or if I spend long periods unconscious between sensations. I feel like I am missing time, that things are happening to me only to be forgotten in the same moment, but I can no more experience disquiet than pain.
 
Something rough like cloth but hard like metal drags over my face, pulling my eyelids open. There is a foal in front of me, a unicorn with a white coat and the most unnatural red eyes. Red stains her tattered pink dress, like she’d been weeping blood, but the red is not tears—it fills every part of those eyes. Her horn is too long and comes to a sharp point instead of a rounded tip, like she was a princess. It is also the only part of her not flecked with red, so polished it almost gleams. There’s somepony with her, a brute of an earth pony. I can’t see him directly—he’s inside a brass diving suit with a heavy bubble helmet, studded with tiny windows. The helmet could fit a horn, but unicorns and pegasi don’t get that big. He’s the one holding my eyes open. The rough feeling is his suit pressing down under his hooves.
 
The foal is looking at me curiously, leaning in so close I can make out her irises. She does have them, even if I couldn't see them before. They’re a very slightly darker shade of red, visible only up close. She’s saying something to me; I can see her lips move, but I can’t hear anything, not even my own breathing. It’s like I’m watching a silent film reel of my own life—just pictures, no sound or feeling. She twists her head all the way around to her flanks to pick up something blue and shiny that she had tucked into her dress. She leans down to give it to me, careful not to gore me with that horn. She’s still leaning towards me when the stallion in the diving suit lets go of me, and my eyes shut.
 
The first impression that persists is weakness. Enough feeling returns to my legs for me to understand that I lack the strength to lift them. It should be unpleasant, even painful, but my mind seems as numb as my body. I possess awareness without thought—just feeling and existing.

My eyes open.

I am lying on my left side, and that part of my vision is filled entirely with white stone. There is a puddle on the floor around me, and I can see one of my forelegs and hooves just at the edge of my vision. Most of my sight is occupied by a large metal bin, only faint slivers of the room beyond visible around its edges. I cannot see its top, but orange light shines down around me, flickering and dancing on the floor. My eyes shut.
 
Sound is the next sense to return, an indeterminate time later. I can hear the lap of ocean waves around me, the sound of a fire crackling above me. There is no feeling of heat though, and in the first embers of thought, that strikes me as strange. That thought occupies me for what must be hours. I notice the sound, think of the oddity, and then lose the thought like water through a sieve, only to repeat it all again.
 
Acuity comes with the chill. The fire’s energy dances across me, but my skin is left cold. I try to squirm and find I can’t move, and that fact sets off a dull kind of alarm. The pain that has patiently lurked in the back of my mind abruptly snaps to the front, and I start to violently shiver. Truth comes to me in a sudden surge of awareness—I’m so cold that I’ve gone numb. The fire feels chill because its heat is all that’s giving me sensation. I’m going to freeze. I’m going to freeze! I try to move, sit up, do anything, but my limbs feel like they’re trapped in tar. I need to move. I need to move or I’ll die.
 
“Fire below decks!” I was jolted out of bed by the shout from one of the crew, tumbling to the rough wooden floor in a pile of tangled legs. The impact drove a splinter into my foreleg, and I winced, but the sounds around me made me forget the sting. Muffled yelling came through the door—no, screaming. The smell of smoke was thick in the air, and the air itself was hot, but my cabin was still too dark to see. I scrambled to my hooves, preparing to feel my way to the door, when a flash of light outside the porthole got my attention.
 
My legs twitch, my breath comes in wheezes. Panic compels me to hyperventilate, but my body won’t respond. The shivering is so intense that it’s like I’m having a seizure, and a distinctive chattering becomes audible from my teeth. Bile rises in my throat, and I realize I can’t lift my head. I can’t even pull away as I’m violently ill, a puddle of vomit forming under me. A rank smell assaults my nose, and the world seems to spin.
 
We were at sea. The full moon illuminated nothing but black water, all the way to the horizon. Close to the ship, the silver light played off the tips of waves and made their rippling visible, but in the distance, the sea became a featureless plane of obsidian that defied all perspective. There seemed to be nothing around us that could have caught my eye, but then, I saw it in the distance: a white flash that slowly panned to darkness. The turning beacon of a lighthouse! I stood on the tips of my hooves to see, but looked down when I heard the sound of splintering wood below me.
 
Agony courses through me. As Celestia is kind, so biology is cruel, and I regain full consciousness just in time to experience the torments that have awaited me. My body feels like I’m encased in ice, a cold that ceases to be a chill and becomes a stabbing pain. I shake like a leaf in the wind and realize that the side of me covered in cuts is now the side laying against the pool of sick. I realize I’m going into shock and clamp my teeth together, my breath coming in hisses.
 
There was a crash, a crack, the sound of breaking wood repeated in steady intervals. The sound echoed through the wood of my cabin wall where it was flush with the hull. A sharp crack of impact, then the sound of wood slowly splintering under the weight—a pattern that worked its way upwards. Somepony was scaling the side of the ship with climbing hooks! I pressed my face to the glass to try and peer at who it was, but the darkness prevented me from seeing them. Suddenly, something rose in the glass—the dark outline of a pony face, unnatural and distorted. The eyes were too far apart, the mouth too big and too wide, its features twisted and uneven. I tumbled away from the porthole and hit the floor. I didn’t even hear it when I started screaming.
 
I’m screaming again now, but it’s my heart that pounds in my ears. The steady thumping grows louder and louder until it drowns out all other sound, and I’m convinced my heart must be about to burst. Is this shock? Am I having a seizure? My legs, which a moment ago were shivering, suddenly go so stiff, my joints pop, and my eyes fly open, rolling upwards in my head. For a moment, I can see a high, flat ceiling, and then my eyes squeeze shut again.
 
“Siren!” a familiar voice called to me when I made it onto the deck. Quick Bit, one of the crew who kept me company during the long voyage. Smoke was pouring from the forward hatches, and orange flames licked up the sails. Light blinded me when I looked directly into the flames, and when I looked away, the deck was nothing but a dark pool of motion and noise, my vision full of bright blobs and afterimages. “Siren!” he called again, and I saw his outline barreling towards me at a dead gallop. He seemed to be trying to signal something to me as he screamed my name. I heard a low, feral growl behind me, and seawater dripped onto my neck. Fear froze me to the spot and, like it was all some horrible dream, I turned in time to see the climbing hook rise. It glinted in the moonlight, a glittering drop of seawater running along the inside of the blade.
 
Breath is coming too fast for me to get any air, and I’m becoming lightheaded. I try to rise, but it only makes me spasm more, my hooves uselessly scraping over the wet stone. My neck twists, forcing me to look at the ceiling, my face contorted with pain.
 
Quick Bit hit me before the hook did, hurling me backwards into the railing. His blood sprayed across me, and I heard the sickening crunch of metal slicing through flesh. The railing cracked with the force of my impact, and I tumbled towards the black water below.
 
I gasp down an involuntary, shuddering breath, the ceiling seeming to writhe.
 
I hit the water, so cold it was like daggers against my coat.
 
I can’t move.
 
I couldn’t swim.
 
Mercifully, it all goes dark.
 



 
Every part of me hurts when I awake, but it’s a good pain—like the soreness in your muscles after a long gallop. It’s the kind of pain that lets you know you are alive, not the kind that warns you that life may soon be ending. Joints ache and muscles burn, but my limbs move like they should when I stretch them. The air tastes like salt and bile, and my mouth feels like sandpaper, but I can breathe normally. My left side burns from where I’ve been lying in the puddle of stomach acid and worse, but my right side feels the heat of the fire, and I am warm. Celestia hates it when I thank her for things she had nothing to do with, but I thank her anyway. Thank her I’m alive and I’m warm.
 
There’s something over my eyelids, and after I remember what I’m lying in, I decide it might not be a good idea to open my eyes just yet. The thought should disgust me, but even if my body is warm, my thoughts still feel cold. The idea of lying in a pool of my own vomit elicits nothing more than a mild, dull concern that I might have damaged my eyes. I think I might still be in shock.
 
After a few false starts, I manage to sit up, rubbing at my eyes with a hoof. I can feel more now that I’m alert, or, alert-ish. It hurts, but I think that’s a good thing. When Cirrus Cloud snapped her wing, she stumbled around in a daze for a good five minutes before she started screaming. Better I hurt a little now than feel fine only to discover that my horn snapped off.
 
I fumble at my forehead with a hoof. Horn still there. Right.
 
There’s a strange, rhythmic pounding in the air, quiet, but omnipresent. It makes the floor tremble ever so faintly, and me as well. I have no means to tell the time, but it seems that pulse comes about once a second. The spacing of the beats is too regular for an earthquake or footfalls, but not regular enough to be machine, and I struggle to identify it.
 
There are other things I didn’t notice before. The air around me is warm, but it is also still and stagnant, and I can feel cold licking against my flanks where I am furthest from the flames. The room is chill, I realize. The air is just too stagnant to carry the fire’s heat away, and so a bubble of warmth has built up around me. I scrape my forelegs across my face and neck until I feel fairly clean, and finally, vigorously shake myself off. The motion makes my muscles groan in protest, but it feels good, and I open my eyes.
 
For a strange, fleeting second, I think I’m back in Canterlot. It’s the only place I’ve ever known with buildings this large, and the room around me is made from white stone reminiscent of the capital. I’m on a dock of some kind, a stone pier that juts out into the dark sea. The scale of it would boggle a lesser pony, but I take it all in stride. There was never any danger of my rolling off the pier in my sleep—it’s at least fifty paces across, maybe more, and so long that the largest ship in Celestia’s navy could dock here with room to spare. There are more as well, a half-dozen in front of me, and possibly more behind me, all made of white stone. Their sheer size is intimidating, as is the architecture. Each one is a perfect rectangle, with sharp edges and sharp corners, the bases capped in metal so the stone won’t be washed away by the lapping of the waves.
 
It’s that that snaps me out of my dissonance. No matter how familiar it may superficially seem, it’s obvious to as brilliant an architect as myself that Celestia would never build something that belligerent. The designer must have been angry when he created it.
 
It takes a few false starts before I can stand. I let out a grunt of pain, my joints popping as my legs shake under me, but I don’t seem to have suffered any serious harm. As I suspected, the bin next to me has been filled with wood and detritus and set aflame, and the fire gives me more light with which to assess the extent of my injuries. I don’t seem to be cut or bleeding. My light purple—not pink—coat is still stained by bits of sick, but not by blood, and other than some minor scrapes and puncture wounds, I appear unbroken. Twisting my head around, I take a moment to inspect the rest of my body. My cutie mark, a set of musical notes and a silver star, seems to be the only part of me that emerged without so much as a scratch, resting unblemished on my flank. My bright red—not pink—tail is waterlogged, but likewise appears no worse for wear, and a few flicks restore it to its usual stiff shape. One more quick pat of my head to confirm my horn is still there completes my self-inspection, and I allow myself to take a slow breath.
 
In a way, taking careful stock of myself has been calming. It is something I can do, to feel more in control and indulge my analytical side. Now that it’s done, though, I can feel panic starting to rise in me again. Quickly, I stumble over to the edge of the pier, focusing on the here and now to keep fear from overwhelming me. I’m covered in vomit and worse. I need to clean it off. I can hear my heart pounding in my ears as I kneel by the edge of the stone, out of time with the slower beat of the building and its strange lights. I reach down to the water so I have something to wash the grime off with, bracing for how cold it will be.
 
My hoof bounces off the water.
 
Given the circumstances, it’s entirely reasonable that I leap back with what might otherwise be interpreted as a squeak of fear, scrambling away, back onto the stone. After a few moments, I bravely crawl back to the pier’s edge and reach my hoof down, more slowly this time. As it nears the water, I can feel a tingling in the air—like when I’ve shuffled my hooves on the carpet—and finally, my hoof meets an invisible barrier just above the surface of the waves. It’s like touching a taut sheet of fabric, except that it won’t yield no matter how much pressure I put on it. That tingling, static feeling rises and falls with the rhythm of the building and the pulsing of the lights. Strangely, this calms me again. It’s a puzzle I can sort through.
 
I think back to Celestia’s lessons on magic, wishing I’d paid more attention to the boring parts. After a few moments, I shut my eyes in concentration, and my horn comes alight with its usual fuchsia—not pink—glow. A faint beam shines down from my horn towards the water, and where it strikes, a shimmering barrier becomes visible, stretched over the water’s surface. The magic from my horn fades, and I sigh and relax.
 
“Okay,” I murmur to myself, and although I’m only whispering, the sound of my own voice is a shocking break from the stillness around me. “Big forcefield. Right. Probably to stop anypony from falling into the icy water.” The thought occurs to me that it must take a very gifted unicorn to keep up a barrier this large, and that even then, it probably requires regular re-castings. I rise from where I kneel, scraping more of the gunk out of my coat with a hoof. “Right. So. Somepony must keep this place up, and they probably know how I got here. So all I have to do is wait for them to come back.” I glance around the room, swallowing. “Right.”
 
Looking around the room doesn’t fill me with confidence in that theory.
 
I make the mistake of looking left first. That casts my gaze away from the pier and into the bulk of the room, the space that would be used to load and unload cargo. The room is an unadorned box on a massive scale, but it is far from empty. The tattered remains of a garish shanty-town stretch out before my eyes for hundreds of paces. Ruined tents stitched together from bright cloth, broken and abandoned crates, and piles of litter and refuse lie scattered everywhere on the once-gleaming white floor. I realize that the foul, salty smell in the air comes from the camp as much as the ocean, and my nose wrinkles. That little flash of disgust feels good though, a break from the chill. I think I’m waking up.
 
“Or, maybe they’re really good at forcefield spells and haven’t been back here in years.” My heartbeat is picking up again, and I shut my eyes, forcing myself to draw slow breaths. “It’s okay, Siren. Somepony still saved you. Princess Celestia will save you. You’ll be okay.” That doesn’t quiet my fears much. I don’t think I’m buying it, so I throw a little commanding kick into my tone. “Now, you’re going to open your eyes, you’re going to carefully look around the room for anything you missed, and then you’re going to deal with it like the intelligent and capable mare you are.” I let out a trembling breath, and draw it back in. That helped.
 
“Right!” My eyes open.
 
The camp will take a long time to explore, I’m sure, so I start by turning about completely to follow the pier out to sea. I stop barely two steps into the journey though, staring ahead as I try to figure out what’s in front of me. There’s a wall there as well, which puzzles me—the pier doesn't jut out to sea, but actually connects to another white stone wall. It seems like that wall must slide away to allow ships to enter, but I can’t see any mechanisms that would cause it to do so. It’s like the wharf is a box with slats in the bottom, placed over the ocean.
 
Less sure of myself, I turn back around. If I don’t move, do something, focus on some task, I’m going to panic again. I set my hooves in motion without thinking about where I’m going, and after a moment, decide I’m exploring the shanty-town.
 
As I move down the pier, my thoughtful side takes over, and I look more closely at the room around me. Glancing up, I can see that the ceiling completes the box I’m trapped in. It’s perfectly flat and featureless, save for the evenly spaced glowing strips that illuminate the chamber and pulse with that omnipresent pounding. The scale of the room so dwarfs the camp that the collection of improvised structures looks more like a fungus growing on a forest floor than anything substantive. In fact, I think that was the architect's intent. This place is big and made of white stone, but fundamentally, it couldn't be less like Canterlot. Canterlot’s architecture conceals the size of the city, using rounded corners and bright decorations to make one feel at home and welcomed. This room emphasizes its size—the unyielding nature of the stone and metal it was made from. Knowing that this room was meant to make me feel small and fragile doesn't lessen its success in doing so, but I do thank Celestia for teaching me enough to realize that fact.
 
Lost in thought, I almost don’t notice when I pass off the end of the pier and enter the squatter camp, the steady beat of my hooves on the stone unconsciously falling into time with the pulse of this room and its force barrier. It’s the smell that snaps me out of it. Of course, there is no scent of salt coming from the ocean, not with that barrier in place, but this camp more than makes up for it. Though it seems empty now, it was obviously once inhabited, and this chamber was not designed with sanitation in mind. The stench of decay, waste, and brine is overwhelming, and I have to shake my head to clear it. Water drips from the ceiling, forming puddles on the floor, and many of the cloth tents have become waterlogged homes for mildew and rot.
 
At first, I hurry through the camp—there doesn't seem to be much of interest here, and I’m sure breathing that air can’t be healthy—but I slow my pace when I see writing in the corner of my eye. There are signs scattered about the camp, nailed to sticks so that a unicorn can levitate them, or done up with cords for an earth pony. The writing on them is strangely regular, and that catches my attention more than the content. One of them reads, “Let it End! Let us Ascend!” and I squint in puzzlement that every ‘e’ is exactly the same as every other. No scribe is so steady, and I can’t imagine somepony taking the time to create all these signs with a printing press. Another sign reads, “We Aren't Your Property!” I levitate the two signs together to compare them, and find the writing between them identical.
 
There’s writing on the tents and floor as well. A brilliant emerald banner with “FREEDOM” stitched onto it in gold has been used to make a crude cover, and the dips in the cloth are now full of water. Under the cover, I can see the tattered remains of somepony’s bed, along with some broken china, a wrench, and a pile of trash. I lean forward to look more closely, before the smell from the bed forces me to lean back. I consider taking the wrench as well, but I have no saddlebags to carry it in.
 
There are more things to see in the camp, and given the size of it, it’s almost certain I’ll find something useful if I search long enough, but I find myself drawn to the far side. In the distance, a commanding set of stairs seems to rise out of the camp, towards a strange square door, made of steel and covered in markings of some variety. A statue has been carved into the wall above the door—it’s an earth pony stallion, connected to the wall at the waist, one hoof down, another raised, so that the stairwell passes underneath him towards the door. He’s handsome, and the sculptor made him look hard and resolute, but he seems to be faintly glaring down at the room, like that raised hoof might fall to crush anyone who tried to move past him.
 
The sculptor was very skilled—instead of becoming looming and dark, the statue plays with perspective the closer I draw to it. From a distance, he seemed to glare, his hoof ready to strike, but up close, his resolute anger softens, and he gestures me forward. I don’t really go for powerful, overbearing stallions, but I can see the appeal the sculptor was trying to engender, something that has all the traits of a protector, a warrior, and a coltfriend without really being any of them. Even walking under the statue feels diminishing, like I was a foal again.
 
The stairs are as scattered with debris as the rest of the room. Each step is at least three paces deep, and the height difference between steps is sharp enough that ascending this would be more like climbing an incline than using a stairwell. There’s writing on the steps though, stretched out over them so it's invisible to someone on the stairs, but from the base, golden characters are formed. “‘The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.’ With those words, Sine Rider laid the foundation of the first free city in the world.”
 
“Vision.”
 
There’s something carved into the steps, just below the last word—a sine wave and a pair of horseshoes. After a moment’s thought, I deduce that it must be “Sine Rider’s” cutie mark, since the statue connects to the wall before his flank. I start up the steps, since I can always turn around and go back to the docks to wait. The statue casts a deep shadow over the stairs, and I lose sight of the writing as I ascend.
 
The door at the top of the stairs is different from the rest of the room. It’s built on the same scale as the rest, but it distinctly doesn't fit the spartan, hard-edged aesthetic. It’s made of polished steel, dominated by a large gear in the center, to which many joined rods connect, going in all directions. A cap rests over the gear so only the gear’s teeth can be seen. The cap itself is decorated as well—stamped with the word “Securis,” and adorned with a clear gem embedded just below the writing.
 
You can’t grow up in Canterlot as one of those hillfillies who thinks watches are powered by magic, and Celestia has taught me enough about mechanical things that I at least recognize the mechanism of the door—the gear turns to remove the bolts, letting the door slide open. I also know enough about magic to recognize that that clear gem holds a telekinesis spell to handle the extreme weight of it all. None of that, though, tells me how to activate the spell and open the door.
 
First, I try the obvious, turning the gear with my own magic to see if the gem simply enhances manual opening. Nothing. Next, I try pushing on it with a hoof, knocking, and then finally bucking the door.

It occurs to me that steel is hard about the same time that I decide, for unrelated reasons, to curl up on the floor and whimper like a little filly. The shock of impact hits me so hard my eyes water, and every beat of my heart makes my ankles throb. I actually have to feel around to make sure my hooves aren’t cracked, but they aren't, and for all that it hurts, I have to laugh.

“Not your brightest moment, Siren,” I say to myself through the pain, gently flexing my rear legs as life flows back into them. It takes a few minutes of that before I can wipe the tears away and get back up, but no insights come to me in that time. I spend a few more fruitless minutes examining the door trying to divine some secret mechanism I hadn’t noticed before, but it comes for naught, and I shake my head and turn away. Time to take a different approach.
 
“Right, Siren. You’re the kind of pony who would build a room like this.” I gesture to the wharf spread out before me, deriving a surge of confidence from the sound of my own voice. Lots of ponies do that though—I sound very commanding, yet considerate and feminine. “How do you open your doors?” I reach a hoof up to my face, tapping my teeth in thought.
 
“Okay, I’m a stallion who builds statues of himself with pithy quotes below them. Really good statues. I’m compensating for something.” For a moment, I pause, as my mind flashes back to Celestia’s lessons on understanding ponies and art. The pony who made this room was an artist, I’m sure of it. No common pony could have made this space.
 
“No. The statue isn’t the center of attention, it’s just one part of the room making everypony in it feel overwhelmed. It’s not about my ego—I have a point to make, and that point is...” I tap my teeth again, eyes going to the floor.
 
“Who is going to stop me?” I turn back to face the door. “The door isn’t a who. What’s going to stop me?” The thick steel gleams in front of me, but I hardly see it. It’s just a mechanical convenience, and hardly relevant. “Fear of approaching the stairs at all? Fear of this room? Doubt? Giving up.” I look up at the door, drawing a deep breath.
 
“Open!” I shout, but nothing happens. “Activate!” I try, but again, nothing. “Lift! Unlock! Turn! Let me pass!” I wince when I realize my obvious mistake, completely missing the point of the piece. The door doesn't need to let me do anything. “Get out of my way!” I bellow, my voice echoing through the vast chamber.
 
Slowly, the gem lights, and as the gear starts to turn, a grin appears on my face. “Oh yes, Siren, you are good.” I grin, doing a little dance with my forehooves. “You’re gonna be back home safe in—” As the bolts slide out of position, and the door slowly lifts, something dashes out from under the door, rushing towards me. Adrenaline surges through me, and I shriek, scrambling away from the door and blindly beating at it with my hooves. I don’t recall shutting my eyes, but when I open them, the rat is giving me a very confused look just out of the reach of my hooves, and after a moment, it scrambles past me down the stairs.
 
Quietly, I lower myself back to all four hooves, and while I’m quite certain this room is abandoned, I look around to make sure nopony saw that. I clear my throat, and trot ahead through the opening door.
 
The space on the other side is just the inverse of the room behind me, designed to knock me off guard. A stubby, featureless corridor splits to a collection of claustrophobically small passageways, seemingly twisting off into a hundred different directions. None of them are labeled, and the plain white stone is adorned by nothing but the pulsing strips of light on the ceiling.
 
“This is redundant, you know,” I speak to the creator of the space as I pick a corridor at random and trot down it. They all go to the same place, I’m sure. “I get it. I’ve just gotten off the ship, there’s a press of ponies behind me. I have to go down one corridor, and I don’t have time to pick. The shock of the sudden change makes me feel uncertain. There are ponies yelling at me in confusion. You’re trying to make me feel helpless and indecisive.” Talking to myself conceals the slight tremor I feel when I pass out of sight of the main chamber, now enveloped entirely in a corridor that couldn't fit two ponies abreast. My hoof splashes into a pool of icy water, and I look up to see that the ceiling is dripping. I pick up the pace, but only because there’s no reason not to.
 
“No, better—you’re trying to make me feel ashamed that I’m helpless and indecisive. I’m wise to your game, ‘Rider.’ This corridor is going to lead somewhere beautiful. Then you’re going to show me that all the corridors go to the same place, and there’s going to be a little sign saying ‘Well aren't you stupid for making a big fuss out of picking.’” Ahead of me, the corridor twists and turns so that I can never see more than a few dozen paces ahead of myself. I keep waiting for the end, but all I can hear is the splash of my own hooves in the puddles, and the faint beat of the lights overhead.
 
“It’s a really obvious trick,” I assert, just to make myself clear. The passageway distorts sound, giving the false impression that my hoofbeats are coming faster. Cold water splashes against my undercarriage as I trot through a puddle, making my tail lash as I shiver.
 
“Very unsubtle. Just like a stallion.” I try not to be sexist, but I can’t think of anything else to say. The corridor continues to stretch and wind ahead of me. I pick up the pace to a canter.
 
“It’s a cheap trick, too!” I call out, my voice echoing up and down the pathway around me. “Big to small, distant to up-close. Shock is the most plebeian form of art. I bet the room on the other end is going to be really colorful too, just because you’ve had all this plain white stone.” The lighted strip above me is humming, but the beats seem to be coming faster than they were a moment ago. My ears fold back, and I can’t tell what direction I’m facing. The corridor weaves back and forth, but each twist is not quite the same angle as the one before it. Instinctively, I look over my shoulder to orient myself. Somewhere behind me, I hear water splash.
 
I break into a gallop.
 
“It’s just the ceiling dripping,” I say, as my hooves make a steady beat against the corridor. The walls whip past me, moving so fast I have to lean into the curves. “It’s just the ceiling dripping,” I repeat, the rhythm of the lights matched by the growing pounding in my ears. “It’s just the ceiling dripping. It’s just the ceiling dripping. It’s just the ceiling dripping!” I’m panting the words out, struggling for breath. Ice water splashes against my legs as I run through puddles, spraying my chest and belly and running down my tail. Rushing around another bend, I see a flash of bright blue in the distance. Another banner, like the one from the camp! As the tunnel straightens, I put on a burst of speed, and the exit appears as a dark square ahead of me. I almost leap the last few feet, sliding to a stop as I exit the tunnel mouth.
 
I’m on the lowest level of a promenade many stories tall. In front of me are vast windows that contain no glass, just the faint pounding of those force fields. Bright banners hang between each one, decorated with Sine Rider’s cutie mark and a collection of words like “FREEDOM” or “PLENTY.” Garish merchant stalls fill the space in front of me, containing a dizzying array of goods. It’s exactly what I predicted.
 
Except that it’s all horribly wrong.
 
There’s nothing outside the windows but a murky darkness, in which fish can sometimes faintly be seen. The realization that I’m underwater hits me like a physical blow, and my eyes go wide when I see that the walls between the windows are cracked, and have sprung leaks. The banners are tattered and moldy, the merchant stalls upturned, everything inside them rusted, rotted, or broken. The entire promenade is under a hoof’s depth of grimy, oily water, and graffiti covers everything. I see a dark red splatter against one wall, used to spell out “REVOLT” against the white stone. The splatter pattern on the wall is distinctive, and slowly, my eyes are drawn down to the floor below it. The remains of a mare are in the water there, hacked to pieces, and decayed.
 
She’s dead. She’s... I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here! The pounding in my ears drowns out all other sound, and my breath comes so fast I’m suddenly lightheaded. I try to run, but my legs tangle each other, and I fall down into the water. I don’t realize I’m screaming until I feel the water spray out around my mouth, and then I can hear it. I’m screaming and screaming and can’t stop. The taste of oil and far worse things floods my muzzle, and when a desperate breath sucks water down into my lungs, I start to choke. I know I’m flailing, but I’m helpless to stop as I try to do something, anything to get my head out of the water, spitting the grime back up as I retch. The difference in height between the passageway and the promenade doesn't even make it to my ankles, but I grab on like it was a liferaft, pulling myself out of that water and onto the hard stone with all of the desperation of a drowning mare.
 
“Oh no. Oh please no. I can’t be here. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. It can’t... this isn’t real. Please tell me it’s not real.” The fact that Quick Bit and the rest of the ship’s crew are dead suddenly surfaces from whatever crevice in my mind it was hiding in. I tell Celestia I’m sorry I ever left the palace, that I’m sorry I ran away. I curl into a ball and shiver. I promise I’ll never disobey her again if this can just all turn out to be some horrible dream and I can go home. I just want to go home. I just want to go home.
 
“Celestia can’t help you now, little filly.”
 
I look up like a frightened animal, scrambling to my hooves with a splash. My head turns left and right, wildly looking in every direction for the source of that voice and the dark chuckling that follows it. My ears scan back and forth, the sound echoing around the promenade. It’s deep, a stallion’s voice, and the echo makes it hard to tell where it came from. I can hear water splashing around his ankles, somewhere close.
 
“Boo!”
 
I shriek and scramble away in the water, and he laughs, mere paces behind me. He’s big, with a tan coat and filthy mane. For a moment, I think he’s a unicorn—but that’s not a horn on his head. It’s a jagged kitchen knife, stuck to a boxy metal hat with glue and wire. He’s the most powerfully ugly pony I’ve ever seen, eyes not on the same level, jaw misshapen and bulging. His lips don’t quite meet when he shuts his mouth, and his coat is stained by a line of black drool. Even through the terror, I feel the need to shun this hideous thing, disgust turning my head away and seizing my throat.  His torso seems deformed as well, and a stunning collection of tattoos covers his body and chest. Flowers, gears, candles, bats, no two of them quite the same, all painted into his coat in exquisite detail.
 
“Oh, I saw that.” He advances, and when his hooves lift from the water, they glitter. I glance down at them, quick, then back to his face, but the movement is too sharp for me to see what it is. “Pretty unicorn like you too good for a workin’ pony?” He lifts his hoof out of the water for a moment so I can get a clear look at it. A roll of thick tape has been used to strap a collection of broken razor blades to his hoof, now long rusted by the water. I let out a faint gasp, and he grins at me with a mouth full of broken, yellow teeth. The thought of him... enjoying this makes my stomach churn, and I taste bile.
 
I force my breathing down. Having an object to focus on makes it easier to deal with. This is no different than Celestia’s tests; I just need to face it with a clear head. “Buck right I am,” I snap, trying to remember what’s in front of me—some ill-born thug, nothing more. I don’t think my voice is trembling, not too much, and I lash my tail for emphasis. “I’m Celestia’s personal student, so why don’t you back off before I make you eat that hat?” A soft magenta glow surrounds my horn, and I reach out with my magic to pluck the stabbing weapon off his head.
 
A moment later, the light around my horn fades, his hat unmoved. “I don’t think so, little filly.” He twists his leg around for a moment so I can see his shoulder, and one of the tattoos there sparkles. It shows an earth pony, surrounded by a skin-tight blue barrier, and he grins as my face falls. This shouldn't be possible. It isn’t possible. Earth ponies can’t do that! My horn flares as I reach out to rip the blades off his hoof, but the light fades, and nothing happens. I reach out with my magic to shove him away, nothing happens. I try to cast the only “combat” spell I know, a little magic bolt, and my horn splutters like a dying candle.
 
“Don’t worry,” he assures me, taking a step forward with my magic’s every failed attempt. “I couldn't hurt a pretty thing like you.” He’s so close now, I can smell his putrid breath, see those grimy yellow eyes. “Much.”
 
My horn shines again, grabbing the water around my ankles, and I all but shudder with relief when I feel it move. He has enough time to look down and squint to try to see what’s happening before I hurl a jet of the oily broth right into his degenerate face. I turn on the spot and blindly buck behind me. I don’t even know if I hit him, and my hinds no sooner hit the ground than I’m galloping.
 
Water sprays around me as I weave between crumbling stands and rotting fixtures, using my magic to throw anything I can see behind me to try and slow him down. It’s not working. I can hear him gaining, and my back goes tense in anticipation of that first blow. The water is cold, but the surge of adrenaline and effort makes me feel like I’m overheating. I drive the heat up into my horn, and it shines like it never has before, hurling the remains of a fruit stand behind me. I can’t look; I’m not sure if it worked. No blow comes to my back, but I can still hear him gaining.
 
There’s nowhere to hide. The tunnels all lead back to the same place, long corridors for him to run me down in. The debris around us is either too heavy for me to lift and throw or useless as a weapon. I throw everything my magic can grab, and I don’t even miss a step when I realize I’ve picked up a corpse and hurled it over my shoulder. I start to shudder at the thought, but I can’t stop. He’s right behind me!
 
Stairs flanked by banners rise up out of the water before me as we reach the end of the promenade. Some part of me takes bizarre satisfaction in noticing that another statue with a quote under it straddles the stairs, just like I predicted.  A surge of energy rushes through me every time my wet hooves slip on the slick stone, and I’m certain I’m about to tumble back into that knife on his helmet. I can hear his hooves echoing on the stairs.
 
I leap over the last few steps, galloping ahead without looking where I’m going. I’m in a courtyard of some kind, tiles, dead trees, stores all around the edge. There’s a door ajar, straight ahead of me. I push it open with my magic, charging through and slamming it shut behind me. It occurs to me just how stupid it is to think I could hold a door shut against a determined earth pony, but I slide to a halt anyway, throwing myself back against the door. I can’t see a thing, and my hooves fumble blindly for a lock, a latch, anything. I brace for the crash of his hooves hitting the door.
 
Nothing. Not a sound.
 
He’s waiting for me to let my guard down so he can kick open the unbraced door.
 
I force myself to focus, to pay attention. I light my horn, enough to see by. There’s a lock, and I turn it. There’s a deadbolt—I close it too. I brace my rear hooves against the floor, and press my forehooves to the door like I’ve seen earth ponies do when they push heavy things. I squeeze my eyes shut, my body shaking with the tension, waiting for that shudder of impact.
 
Nothing. He’s waiting for something, and I won’t be able to hold up this effort much longer. I’m not the kind of pony who runs mareathons! My legs are already shaking. He’s going to hear me collapse, know I’m not holding the door, and kick it in. I can’t keep this up. I can’t.
 
“Please, no,” I whisper. “Please, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” My legs are shaking—the strength in them is gone. I’m barely holding my own weight, much less the door, but I keep pressing until the muscles burn. I realize I didn’t check what was in this room before I locked myself inside. It could be full of thugs, monsters, worse. He’s not pounding on the door because there’s another way in. He’s not pounding on the door because he’s going to come up behind me any moment. I can hear sounds in the darkness around me: a door opening, hoof falls, things moving.
 
“I’m sorry, please don’t. I just want to go home. I just want to go home.” My legs buckle under me, and I slump to the floor. It feels like I’m shaking, but after a moment, I realize it’s sobbing. My face is already so wet that I can’t feel the tears. Do tears attract degenerate ponies? Is he listening to my sobbing, just waiting for the right moment? My back tenses as I curl into a ball. I can feel his hooves brushing over me. My horn touches the hard floor, and I can see the two of us facing each other. We’re two lovebirds, my horn scraping over that blade in a gesture of affection. I want to retch but I don’t know if I can.
 
I should never have left the palace. It’s not fair. I just want to go home.
 
I just want to go home.