//------------------------------//
// Wrong Place, Wrong Time 
// Story: Site 16 - The Tartarus Gate 
// by Journeyman 
//------------------------------//

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Twilight could not help but indulge herself in the morning air. Breathing deeply, she inhaled the scents scattered on the winds: crisp leaves, fresh water from a nearby spring, and the earthy scent of soil and meager grasses. The sun warmed her back as she stretched her limbs to their limits, cracks and pops shooting both up and down her body.

She had slept under the shade of a girthy oak tree with a blanket form her saddlebags. Such rural and naturalistic features were far different than the cozy warmth of her Ponyville home, but such facts did not bother the studious unicorn at that moment. Twilight had a job to do, and she intended to complete it.

The dawn rays illuminated the deep rolling hills and cliff faces of lands far west of Canterlot or Ponyville. The usual beds of flowers or lengthy expanses of greenery were becoming fewer and farther in between the further she traveled. Daffodils, lilies, and other superfluously pleasurable flora were rare finds. Large patches of barren stone and earth were becoming more and more common.

“Big day,” she told herself before releasing a mighty yawn. “The Gates of Tartarus should be near.” Twilight had been escorting Cerberus across Equestria since the previous afternoon. It had been most uneventful, devoid of even local creatures. Strange... why were all the critters and small animals gone? They had been plentiful for the first several miles of her trek out of Ponyville, but ever since she had fallen asleep, they had been missing.

“Strange...” Twilight chalked up the incongruity to the proximity of Tartarus. It was the prison for some of the land's most dangerous monsters after all. If she wasn’t escorting Cerberus, she wouldn’t be caught anywhere near the blasted place.

“Although I could just check out some books in the Royal Canterlot Library to find out more about the place,” she thought out loud. But, of course, there was nothing quite like hoofs-on experience after all.

Twilight cantered over a small hill and smiled; Cerberus hadn’t moved from his temporary bed in the slightest. He had plopped himself down in the center of a large depression between hills. Large for a pony was, of course, just the right size for Cerberus. The dog had rolled onto his back in the throes of sleep. A procession of drool oozed out of its snoring jowls and dripped onto the dirt.

“Wake up, you overgrown pup. We have to get you back to the Gates.” Twilight walked up to the dog and began nudging one of his three head. “Come on.” Twilight looked around briefly and spotted the ball she had used to entice the gate guardian to follow her. Using her magic, she levitated the sphere above his nose. The ball was slathered in drool and she refused to touch it.

“Come on, Cerberus. It’s time to wake up.” Cerberus sniffed the air and kicked one of his hind legs. The action uprooted a small tree. Twilight sighed and nudged the massive head once again. “We have a disaster to stop! My future self said so!”

Next Tuesday morning. That was the deadline her future self had given... herself. To prevent some calamity in the future, she had seen fit to turn back the clock and warn herself about something terrible. The exact context of the disaster was unknown, as Future Twilight hadn’t had quite enough time to to elaborate. However, seeing Cerberus storm into town, it wasn’t hard to discover.

“Wake up!” Cerberus twitched and groaned, licking its lips with its lengthy tongue. “Yuck! You need a breath mint.” Dog breath was bad enough, but dog morning breath? Ew.

Nevertheless, all three of its heads yawned. “That’s a good Cerberus. Come on, we...” Twilight trailed off. Twilight had been rubbing one of Cerberus’ heads to coax it out of sleep. Beneath the blackened fur was a... groove? No... Twilight felt along the skull with a hoof, exploring curiously.

No, not a groove. A scar. Running right along the front of the skull where the frontal lobe was a large, singular surgical scar. The center was what looked like a puncture wound that fractured the skull in a spiderweb pattern.

“...What?” It was a grievous injury, if a fully healed one. The pain must have been agonizing. But how did the wound heal so perfectly? Twilight found it, and only by accident. Such care could have only been accomplished in the most state of the art facilities, not out in the open air of Equestria, far away from any civilization in general.

Twilight didn’t have time to ponder any further. Cerberus rose to his pawed feet and stretched. The popping occurring up and down his spine sounded more like a small explosion belonging in Twilight’s workshop than the displacement of bodily fluids and air. Two of his heads looked around blearily, while one focused on the ball currently in Twilight’s telekinetic grasp.

Twilight shrugged the thought off; it wasn’t as important as getting Cerberus back to the Gates. Whoever repaired the wound knew what they were doing, and for that, Twilight was thankful. Even the hulking, seemingly playful, guardian needed care by ponykind.

Twilight trotted, which quickly broke into a full gallop. The heightened speed was necessary; Cerberus was a medium-sized monster and outpaced her in a few strides. With a sliver of magic from her horn, Twilight linked out of existence and reappeared a good hundred meters ahead of Cerberus. The dog caught up quickly, and then Twilight repeated the process, Blinking out once more.

Even at such a greatly accelerated pace due to her magic-assisted speed, it was exhausting for the young unicorn. Twilight was by no means lazy, but the bookworm’s sedentary lifestyle did not grant her an excess of stamina. Not more than ten minutes at full gallop between Blinks, Twilight was already puffing and panting for breath. Twilight slowed to a meager canter and Cerberus halted in front of her, each head grinning vapidly with tongues hanging out.

“Okay, Cerberus.” Rather than levitate the ball any further, Twilight hurled it through the air. One head barked after the flying object and he scampered off, shaking the earth with each thunderous step.

Twilight sighed and panned her head across the landscape as she caught her breath. She had been paying just enough attention to avoid any precipices of difficult terrain, but the effort to keep running had produced a tunnel vision in which she could not break until she halted. Most of the flora had faded altogether, with the exception of hardy trees coated on tough, gnarled bark. The soil had become more rocky than earthy. Only the most fortuitous plants were capable of surviving in the harsher environment. It was hard to believe that the lush, if dangerous, Everfree Forest was less than a day’s gallop away. The land was slowly dying.

“No, not dying... withering.” Not even the pegasi lived in the area to help control the weather. The rocky landscape was as wild and untamed as the craggy outcroppings and barren land suggested. As unusual as it was, no animals were in sight still. “Odd.” Animals tended to at least take minimal care of themselves, but there were none. No animals, let alone ponies.






“Indeed I do, Red Leader. Primary target sighted. Civvie in proximity. A single pony. Purple coat. Civvie is taking a breather while SCP-284-N is moving forward. Terminate, Captain?” whispered a voice silently.

Up in the skies, hidden from even the most careful eyes, a single pegasus was donned in charcoal gray clothing to become nearly invisible on his cumulous cloud. Slung over his back was a bulky piece of cylindrical metal wrapped in gray cloth to disguise it. The pegasus reached around and shoved a hoof into the empty cylinder. His lined his eyes between two rails in the metal and placed his mouth around the quick release trigger. Each side of the cylinder contained a magical distribution node to propel any object placed between the grooves at blinding speed. An auto-injector accomplished such a task, but any substantially small piece of debris could be propelled with enough force to repaint walls with gray matter.

The pegasus had not yet received a reply from his CO, so he lay prone on the cloud and aimed his magic-propelled rail gun at the unsuspecting unicorn. The pegasus’ earpiece crackled with static momentarily before the voice of his captain spoke. “I see... her? Sending a visual to Command. Line up a shot and prepare to fire.”

“Copy.” The pegasus adjusted his shot to the unicorn’s eye. Unicorns had substantially thicker skull structure than earth ponies or pegasi. While a shot from the railgun would most likely kill the unicorn, there was a chance her skull could deflect most of the pellet’s energy. The chance was minute, but she might survive, unless he targeted the skull where it was thinnest or not present at all.

A small compartment opened on the rail gun and released a tiny, spherical pellet between each rail. All it took now was to bite down on the release, and the unicorn would be nothing but red mist. All he needed was just one, simple word...






SCP Foundation Homesite
Editors: Wolfmaster1337, Maverick Frond