“Psst! Hey, are you awake?” Jowly Cheek wouldn't give up in his quest to awaken his older brother, “hey, Snaps!”
“What?” Silent Snap hissed back, not at all happy about being yanked back to reality just as he began dreaming.
“Oh, you were sleeping. Sorry,” the white batpony answered unconvincingly before closing his eyes in an attempt to pretend that he had intended to sleep all along. “Good night.”
“Uh, what did you want?” Snaps mumbled back.
“Nothing. It’s silly.”
“You’re silly. Now tell me what is it or I’m going back to sleep.”
As much as he wanted to make good on his promise, he knew his younger brother wouldn’t have bothered him if it weren’t important. The timing wasn’t perfect, but the moment before you go to sleep is usually one of clairvoyance. That’s when the craziest ideas spring to mind and the deepest thoughts are revealed. Jowly might have been two years younger than him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t affected by what had been going on.
“I saw it today.” Jowly quietly said with a hint of sorrow in his voice. “Just above my hoof, at the back.”
Snaps was quiet for a second longer than he should have been. He thought about lying to his brother, saying that it must have been some dirt or that he was imagining it, but he knew better. He had secretly hoped Jowly wouldn’t have caught it. That he would be normal, but it was not to be. There was a speech he had prepared in his mind when the occasion came, only now he was drawing a blank.
“Snaps? I’m scared.” The young one whimpered, holding back the ever greater need for sobbing as Snaps stared straight into the dark.
What could he tell his brother? He remembered all too well the reaction of the community when he told his parents about the condition. With the best intentions and horror in their hearts they rushed him to the doctor, only to see his face turn to dread with every passing minute. A few cases had been observed, none responded to treatment. The step from the diagnosis to quarantine wasn’t long. From the crying of his parents to the quick judgment of the cloaked mayor, there were no words of solace offered to him. None that he could offer.
“I know you are.” Honesty was rarely pretty. “So was I.”
Jowly didn’t expect that answer. His voice betrayed it with a gentle stutter.
“What-what do you mean?”
“Look out there,” he answered, stretching out his wing to point in the distance, “what do you see?”
The distant walls were dotted with glowing blue lines, veins of the subterranean fungi that thrived in the moist darkness of the cave. Above their heads, waves gently clashed at the shore of the lake. During nighttime, the batponies could see it teeming with tiny life, the fluorescent beings scurrying along the shallow lakebed, but now, all was asleep. All, except the fungi and the two batponies hanging from a ledge.
“Stars?”
The answer brightened Snaps’s mood. It was naively wrong, something only somepony as young as Jowly could pull off without it being followed by mocking laughter. He made a mental note to talk to his brother about it someday while wondering if the time was not perhaps already at hoof.
“No, not the stars. What’s hiding them?”
Dark patches, each shaped exactly as the other, hid the stars in random intervals all over the walls beyond. Every once in a while, one of them would sprout sharp triangles before returning to normal. Batponies shifting in their sleep.
“Other ponies?”
“Yes, other ponies. And how many of them were there when we got here?”
No more than half-dozen batponies inhabited this part of the cave when Snaps arrived, not a year ago, Jowly in tow. Now the walls beyond were littered with two dozen batponies and at least as many were hidden from view, either on the same wall as the two brothers or in one of many nooks and crannies found in the irregular sides of the cave. Before the young one could finish counting the shapes, Snaps continued.
“There’s more of us every day. And what of it?” He was fully awake now, comforting Jowly as much as himself, “we’re still here. Even the Blazers are still here!”
He nearly broke his whisper as he quietly shouted that and quickly looked around to see if he had awoken any nearby sleepers. Jowly looked at him with eyes so wide, his brother could see the reflection of blue lights in them. His reaction was bordering on overreaction in the given circumstances, and with good reason. The elders and the town officials had started the panic when the first case of the disease struck not that long ago. Before that, it was the stuff of legends and cheap horror stories.
“We’re different. Yes.” He relaxed his tone and softened his body. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to die. Or starve. Or give up.”
Shortly after getting his cutie mark, a young batpony was taken to the doctor. He had scraped his foreleg during his birthday while catching up to his best friend in a friendly match of Obstacle Flight. He had dodged every stalagmite, flew perfectly through every tunnel and circled every pillar on the path, but a small column near the water surface had evaded his senses. After a large splash and some limping the colt was again in the race. He had finished last, but had no regrets – only a bruise to show for the effort. The day could hardly had gone better. Only the bruise was still there a week later. And the week after that.
“Muddy always says-“
“Don’t call him that.” Snaps snapped at his brother with a calm but authoritative voice. “It’s rude. He doesn’t like it and neither do I.”
“I’m sorry.”
Muddy, as some called him, was the first one to get it. That bruise slowly spread from his foreleg in random patterns. A spot would appear on his back. Another one on his muzzle. By the time the second pony was put into quarantine, there was a spot on every part of his body and more followed in the months to come. When two spots grew close enough together, thin lines began to form between them. By the time the impromptu colony received its tenth member, Muddy had already earned his nickname.
“It’s all right. And don’t worry, we’ll be fine. Just as we’ve been fine all this time. Got it?”
“Yes.”
The loss of the pearly white color was only the first step. Flying became dangerous. He could still make the clicking noises with his mouth, but their power was nil. At first he thought he had lost the ability altogether, until the new arrivals scorned him for his incessant clicking, not only making their ears hurt, but making their own effort to fly past obstacles more difficult through the sheer amount of white noise. The batpony with the now dark fur had gone somewhat deaf.
“I saw you today.”
Snaps had not expected that. He was afraid of the words he knew were coming.
“Saw me where?”
“When you grazed the wall.”
He could offer plenty of excuses, but instead stared blankly on as his brother turned his head to face him. An uncomfortable moment of silence followed; his brother was not sure if he should question him further, but the cage had been opened.
“You couldn’t hear it, could you?”
There was no answer for some time. Snaps had never been able to make the clicking sounds that his brethren used to hear the shapes around them. It took him longer to master flight as a result, but he had found the same solutions as the mute batponies – he tapped his hooves together mid-flight and listened for the echo. He was never going to win any races that way, but it had been enough to make him mobile. At least until now. He knew the condition would only deteriorate, as had happened to the Blazers.
“No. No, I just went too wide, that’s all.” Snaps said in a monotone voice, trying to sound as honest as possible. “I’m sorry, I’m tired. How’s about we talk about it in the morning?”
“OK. Good night.”
He knew his little brother wouldn’t get to sleep for some time, but he needed some time to think. Too much was happening at once and just as he thought he had gotten used to the changes, something unexpected happens. He hadn’t told the truth to Jowly about his run-in with the wall, but he hadn’t lied entirely either. The clicking was getting quieter by the day, not enough to notice the difference outright, but after a few days he could feel himself straining his ears and slowing down his flight to compensate. Then he got used to it and the whole process started all over again. But that wasn’t why he had grazed the wall while flying over the lake in search of algae that had been washed ashore. That was down to something far more terrifying.
“Jowly?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t worry. If the Blazers can do it, so can we.”
“I know.”
He had spotted the gleaming surface of the algae as it was carried to the shore next to a nearly vertical wall. He had dived to retrieve it, his wings flapping automatically, without effort or thought. The hoof approached the algae, when it happened. The rocks beneath the water shifted. The waves seemed to shot up at him. The few boulders sticking out of the lake threw themselves at him. He was startled, so he made a swift turn to his right, away from the water, away from danger. He overshot, but only just. The vision of the attack went away as mysteriously as it had appeared, but he wasn’t surprised. Shocked, yes, but not surprised.
“Good night.”
“Night.”
Muddy was said to be the first who had experienced it. At first the other Trailblazers had thought that he was only pretending, until the same happened to them. In the rare talks with the newcomers, they had described the experience as that of gaining new sight. They spoke of seeing the walls around them and the water beneath them in the same way as the clicks would draw them in their minds when they could still have heard them, only this was more violent. It was more real than the intuition that had guided them through sound, more tangible, only less pronounced. During the daytime, it got even worse, as the walls and boulders, waves and stones and even the other ponies around them got bathed in a vibrance of colors never before seen.
He shifted uncomfortably. The fear of the unknown, but certain, was keeping him wide awake. There was little point in closing his eyes, as the eyelids popped open again at the first sound of the environment. In a way it was reassuring that he could still hear it and that the Blazers could as well, despite their metamorphosis. Their night flying was impaired as the eyes could only adapt to a certain point to the new colors in the darkness and their improved sight could never hope to replace the sense they had once possessed, but they could fly nonetheless. The blue halo of the glowing veins drew shadows on the walls and the glowing creatures in the lake defined the edges of the shore; only the darkest parts of the cave were truly out of reach.
Was there a further step to it all? First the fur. Then the sound. Finally the sight. What about smell, did that change as well? He hadn’t asked any of the Blazers about that. Perhaps it has changed already, or it will in the future. Then again, perhaps not, but how far will the disease go? And how many will it inflict? There were new arrivals every month. Always young and scared. It won’t be long before the makeshift community outgrows its birthplace. The force field creating the divide between the town and the quarantine has had to been moved back repeatedly, the sole horned batpony in the town – the mayor – having the good will and the common sense to expand the borders of the quarantine as its members grew. There was always going to be enough space to go around, but seeing the town so clearly, only a few flaps of the wings away, was a constant reminder of friends and family lost.
Light pierced his eyes in a way he had never felt before, bringing him from the sleep that had started all too late amidst the thoughts of worry and pity. The source was the Sun, he knew that, but while his brother slept on, he could not. Only a few other batponies reacted the same, the Blazers included. Only one group was not surprised by it. He squinted to shield his eyes from the light more powerful than any he had ever seen then turned in wonder to the right, looking past his brother at the source.
The town was slowly becoming visible through the yellow rays, its circular walls extending from the ceiling of the cave, revealing the tops of the largest structures and the long line that held the Sun over the lake. As his eyes adjusted the smaller buildings became visible, along with the batponies flying around. The lighting of the Sun by itself was nothing new. Every morning, the Sun would be lit so that its light could reflect from the water below it and illuminate the whole town. It was part of the traditions that harked back to the days before the batponies took refuge in the cave. A time when the two princesses controlled the movement of the Sun and the Moon. Before Nightmare Moon. Nopony knew what had become of that world save that it must have been turned inhospitable by the battle of the two sisters.
“You’re early.”
In the confusion caused by the blinding light Snaps hadn’t noticed the batpony that had flown up to him and was now hovering in front of him. Tempered Strider. He was speaking as a master to an apprentice, calmly and deliberately saying the words that he had chosen only a moment ago. Snaps saw in his eyes the promise of revelation and serenity, but denial crept into his thoughts before he could pause to allow Strider to continue.
“What?”
Strider smiled at the upside-down batpony, knowing that response all too well.
“Come with me. I’ll explain everything.” As Snaps turned to face his brother, Strider quickly added, “don’t. Let him sleep. He’ll think you’ve gone hunting.”
Snaps stretched his wings in preparation to the flight that should have followed a second later but was stopped dead in his tracks by the sight around him. The strange vision that he had had the day before, the one that had caused his accident, had made a comeback in the morning. He was merely too blinded by the light to notice at first, only now, the vision wasn’t isolated to waves and close-by rock formations. It was pervading every shape and form in all directions around him. The world, it seemed, was intent on reaching him in any way it could, with a perplexing array of colors added as a finishing touch to ensnare him into this newly-woven web. He released his grip in shock.
“There you go.”
He was being held aloft by Strider and another Blazer whose name evaded him. They had caught him the moment he slipped and were slowly carrying him to what was the de facto Blazer’s territory. The world around them had not changed since the last encounter but its sharp edges were no longer pointed at him in anger. They now merely existed. His head was spinning, though, as it struggled to process the mountain of new information. He was able to stand on his own hooves when they reached their destination, but only just. Strider thankfully nodded to the batpony to leave and slowly walked to a nearby mud mound, turning back every few steps to check on Snaps’s unsure movement. They got to the top.
“You’re early.” Strider looked at Snaps who was now keeping his reactions under control, ready for whatever he had to say. “It usually doesn’t happen until after you’ve turned completely.”
Snaps still had substantial white patches over his body, unlike the rest of the Blazers.
“You’ll get used to this in a day or two. Just don’t try any aerobatics until you’re sure of yourself,” he said with a hint of a playful tone that had managed to creep into the sentence, “we can’t keep an eye on you every single minute.”
He put a hoof on Snaps’s back as if the two were old friends. Given their young age and the time they had spent together in quarantine, they might as well have been, even if they had spoken few words in all that time. More so now, that Snaps was to become a part of the exclusive group of batponies who had become so different to even the batponies with whom they shared the quarantine. Nearly a different species, unfit to live in the cave as their ancestors did.
The division of the newcomers from the Blazers had happened naturally. The first to arrive after Muddy were scared enough on their own and found comfort in each other’s company even as one after another succumbed to the disease. They were the first to explore the small cave that isolated them from the healthy population. The exploration was more down to the subconscious necessity to occupy their minds with something other than the constant thought of rejection from the town. They had enough food, in the beginning at least, as it was being delivered by the shamans and the doctors that had hoped to cure them, until the sheer volume of newly infected didn’t start rumors about those same batponies being the carriers of the disease and having them temporarily quarantined as well, albeit in a different section of the cave.
It was only as the group grew that cliques had started forming and what better way was there than to separate the ones that had lost their visualizing sound to a new kind of vision that was only useful during daytime? The loss of the pearly white color was merely an indicator, although there were a few lightly-colored batponies in the later stages of the disease as well, but for a while nopony knew what to make of them. In the end they were allowed to join the Blazers, most of whom were highly skeptical of their new members. Snaps, it would seem, had the good fortune of experiencing the symptoms at a time when the darkness of the fur was no longer considered a valid mark of a Blazer.
“What about Jowly?”
“Yes, your brother.” Strider contemplated his answer for a moment, not entirely sure of the best way to phrase it. “He’s not showing any signs yet, is he?”
“No. A small black spot, actually. He has one.”
Strider gently shook his head, understanding the difficult decision that lay ahead of Snaps all too well.
“Then you know he can’t come here with you.”
“I can’t leave him there!” Snaps raised his voice for the first time in ages. “He wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me!”
Jowly was one of the rare batponies that had voluntarily joined the quarantine, much to the dismay of his parents. Although it could be debated as to how much his decision was the result of his free will and how much of his emotions when he saw his brother dragged away. Their distressed parents embraced each other in tears at just the wrong moment, giving the young colt the window of time to lunge at his brother for a final embrace.
Strider partially opened his wings in an instinctive way to block out some of the sound and attempted to calm Snaps. “Quiet down, they’re sleeping. Don’t worry about that for now, nopony said anything about you having to stay here. You can come here as you please.”
Snaps was baffled and quietly happy at the same time. “I don’t understand. So I can go back to him and come back here?”
“Yes.” Strider’s usual look of reassurance was gone. “Technically.”
“What do you mean, technically?”
“I mean that nopony here was ever told to choose between one side or the other.” He spoke the sentence in a monotone way, not allowing any emotion – happy or sad – into in. “It just happens.”
Lost for words, Snaps said little over the course of the tour that awaited him. On the way he was encouraged to fly as much as possible, Strider flying close behind should something go wrong. By the time it was over, he had seen the workings of the community and had met the Blazers in their entirety, the original member of the group included. Mulberry Tap, once derogatorily known as Muddy. By now he had half-accepted that nickname, although only from the Blazers and the few outside that circle that he considered friends. Snaps never quite knew what to make of him, except that calling him Muddy wasn’t something he wanted to do. There was too much fear and hate mixed into that name and many who had once called him that were now sheepishly walking around, their coats as dark as his.
As he had done with every Blazer since the group was named as such, Muddy welcomed the newest member to the group with genuine kindness, but as few words as possible. He had always known that everypony who had entered the quarantine was destined to join the Blazers and felt nothing special about it, save for the desire to make them feel at home as soon as they had arrived. Snaps received some helpful tips on how to adapt to his altered senses, had a short conversation about what the future would hold and other light-hearted topics that made him temporarily forget the massive change that had happened. They were sitting down at a boulder table, for no other reason than to feel as if they were in the same kind of civilization they had had in the town and talked away, until he asked Muddy a question that few new members ever did.
“Do you think we will ever be able to cure ourselves?”
Muddy looked at Snaps, a smirk forming on his muzzle.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? Will we ever get better?”
“Do you still think you’re sick?”
That caught Snaps by surprise and he jerked his head back in disbelief. “Of course I think we’re sick – I mean look at us.” He shrugged, not knowing what else to do.
“Yes, I see. I see you, I see me. I see everypony here. And those over there.”
He pointed at the wall opposite theirs, where dozens of batponies were either sleeping or lazily stretching their wings. It reminded Snaps of Jowly, but before he could move a muscle, Muddy continued.
“Take some time. Watch them fly in the night.” With an unmistakable hint of certainty, he added, “and then watch them fly in daytime.”
He slowly stood up and looked back down on Snaps. Gently shaking his head, he said one final sentence to Snaps before flying off. A sentence that Snaps didn’t immediately understand, but recognized its implications from the way in which it was said.
“They always fly the same.”
Shortly after that, and more than a little confused, Snaps slowly and cautiously returned to the ledge that he had shared with his brother since day one. Jowly was impatiently waiting for him. The morning had brought refreshed optimism into the heart of the young batpony, and he had assumed exactly as Strider had predicted, that Snaps was out hunting and gathering for breakfast. The illusion was complete with the small assortment of food given to Jowly as both a welcome and temporary parting gift by the Blazers. They took their time with the breakfast. They flew around the cave, Snaps keeping a slow pace close to the ground. They socialized with other batponies, Blazers included. In other words, they were having a perfectly normal day, and although Jowly could sense a change in his brother’s behavior, it was not pronounced enough to raise any flags. Instead, he chalked it up to previous night’s conversation and the lack of sleep.
While Jowly was busy going through another uneventful day, Snaps was keeping tabs. He constantly, but secretly, analyzed the batponies around him. More so even than the day they had arrived in the quarantine. There were moments when he had a hard time concealing his gaze as he observed them flying and walking, speaking and listening. He watched out for even the smallest details that would help him discover every single difference between his new group and the old one. There were slight differences, for sure, such as the Blazers’ ability to change direction more rapidly mid-flight and their sure-hoofedness on the ground, but an unexpected detail rose to claim the top spot in Snaps’s mind. The way some batponies were looking at him while talking to others and quickly averting their gaze as he looked at them. Not everypony was asleep when the Blazers had come for him and the news was spreading.
“Jowly, there’s something I have to tell you…”
There was little point in keeping it a secret and, as soon as they were back on their ledge, Snaps told his brother everything that had happened.
“But you won’t go, will you?” Tears were forming in Jowly’s eyes. “Please say you won’t go!”
Snaps smiled and responded with full sincerity, “I won’t. Not now. Not ever!” He put a hoof around Jowly’s neck, gently hugging him.
As Jowly flew to his friends some time later, Snaps decided to practice his flying. The mole was out of the burrow, so there was no point in attempting to conceal his new form. Keeping to the advice, he refrained from acrobatics, although he did gradually build speed and the distance from the walls of the cave as time passed by. The superficial differences in flying that he had observed in others were now showing their true face. There was a reason behind the agility he had witnessed – the cleared vision, although at times still uncomfortable, operated without the delay inherent to echolocation, allowing for quicker reactions to the changing environment. The most noticeable difference, however, was flying over the water, which had previously always been the most difficult part of flight to master. The water absorbed some of the noises, making it seem as an empty space, especially in deeper parts of the lake, and causing young and inattentive batponies to tumble into it, much to the ridicule of the observers. Now the problem was gone.
When he got too tired to continue, he slowly made it back home. On the way he passed the batponies he knew, trying to make small talk. Almost everyone ignored him. He looked around, only to see the faces of batpoines either staring at him or nervously averting their eyes as he approached. An invisible barrier had been put in place. Jowly looked at him from high above with a forced smile on his face, his wings folded as if he was cold. He ignored the rest and hurried up to him.
“What’s the matter?”
“They say you’re gone.”
Jowly was scared. The only question in Snaps’s head was: of whom?
“Who says that? Gone… how?”
“Everypony.” Jowly looked in the general direction of his friends and the older batponies around them. “They say you’re not one of us anymore.”
As Snaps glanced around, the now usual procedure followed. Retracted looks and group whispers.
“Well I’m staying where I belong!” He nearly yelled at nopony in particular before joining his brother on the ledge.
This day was different from the rest. There was no socializing, only lonely flights through the cave and two kinds of stares directed at the brothers. One, with a mixture of fear and restraint, came from the newcomers. It followed the two brothers wherever they went and held the question of time. For how long will he remain where he doesn’t belong? The other one came from the Blazers. It was made up of understanding and sympathy and held the question of time. How long before he realizes where he belongs?
Time went by slowly and the sense of unease never stopped. Through a heavy layer of denial, Snaps was slowly forced to recognize a strange truth. That somehow it was perfectly acceptable for the newcomers to meet with Blazers and engage in conversation, and vice-versa, but only as long as they each returned to their respective groups after some time. The truth seeped into Snaps with every passing minute and Jowly was becoming aware of it as well, despite his brother’s best effort to conceal his emotions. Again they tried to converse about a dozen random things to forget about the situation, only this time their minds were not the only enemies. Toward the evening, while on a rare solo flight to clear his mind, Snaps came face to face with the final piece of evidence.
He looked up to his brother and saw something he had never seen before. Where there were once batponies scattered about the cave wall, a circle had now formed. A zone of exclusion around the young batpony. He realized at that point that he can very well stay with his brother and keep him under his wing, only that doing so will doom him to loneliness until he too joins the Blazers. At the same time, the Blazers had already accepted him as one of their own. The cave was getting darker as the Sun was raise back into the town, its light slowly extinguishing. Knowing full well what he had to do, Snaps made his way back to his brother. But it was on this flight, as the light went dim, that Muddy’s words echoed through his mind. He could barely see. The change from light to dark had played havoc with his eyes and the sharp glow of the veins was now only a smudge against a canvas of black.
THUD!
He crashed against the wall of the cave and slid down the jagged surface. In panic he tried to grab onto whatever was in his way before he finally caught a cranny in the wall and anchored himself to it. His breathing was hectic, his heart was beating and he had no idea how far away from his ledge he was, but at least he wasn’t falling any longer. The few bruises and the bloody nose would be a reminder of his new limitation for a few days. It could have ended much worse.
“Snaps?” Came the voice of Jowly a few minutes later. “Get up!”
He had stayed put, not wanting to let go until he could see again. His eyes had adjusted somewhat by now, but flying was out of the question.
“Jowly, is that you?” He looked around to search for the outline of his brother. “Ah, there you are. I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”
“What? Why not? What happened?”
“Nothing, nothing. I’m just going to rest here until morning, OK?”
Snaps’s attempts at sounding unfazed were not successful. He could hide neither his shock at what had happened, nor the shame of being found like this. At least he managed to keep the thought of how many other batponies must have seen him buried deep beneath current worries.
“Then I’m staying with you.”
He wanted to object but found no realistic words with which to do that. After a second of frantic thinking he also didn’t see the reason for it anymore. Jowly knew.
“Thanks.”
The next morning he woke up with the Sun, no longer blinded or shocked by the sight. Jowly was still asleep, only instead of taking this time to search for food, he stayed and watched the world around him in strange peace. There was no doubt left in his mind; he would have to go. In the same way he used to drop in for a chat at the Blazers, he would now return occasionally to the other side. Jowly was the obvious exception, but their time together would be spent flying and hunting. From now on, they would sleep at separate ends of the cave with different batponies around them. In a way he sensed that Jowly knew that as well. He took in the surroundings while guessing about the details of the future arrangement. Some of the Blazers were watching up at him. He smiled at them and continued looking around until Jowly awoke. It was time to talk.
“You know this is the best way, don’t you?” He said to him after the short monologue.
Jowly was quietly crying and pleading with his brother the whole time, trying to cut midway through the sentences but being overruled by the calm monotonous voice of Snaps that held a finality in its purpose that could not be avoided or changed. Before he could reply to the rhetorical question, Snaps continued.
“It’ll be difficult for the first few days. But you know how to hunt and I’ll come around every now and then.” For the first time he actually smiled and said in earnest, “you’ve got good friends here. I’m sure they’ll enjoy seeing more of you now that I won’t be around all the time.”
He put his foreleg around Jowly and waited through the inevitable flood of begging and pleading with a relaxed expression of understanding on his face. He did not allow himself to show any negative emotions, only a hint of a smile to reassure Jowly without the need for a spoken word. At the end the young batpony was left red-eyed and exhausted. Snaps gave him a big hug and, as if nothing had happened, asked a simple question.
“Want to go meet the Blazers?”
They flew down and Snaps introduced Jowly to the Blazers that had waited for his arrival. Not allowing any of them from getting the wrong idea, he wasted no time in saying out loud that Jowly was going to visit him here every now and then, indicating clearly his intention to make this his new residence. They went around on a second tour, most of the Blazers being happy to entertain the young batpony while he was here. He was Snaps’s brother and that made him a part-Blazer at the least, much like the other few younglings that had arrived after their brothers and sister into the quarantine. At noon they had seen everything there was to see and it was time for Jowly to head back home. Snaps escorted him half way, then turned to him mid-flight.
“Wan to race?”
“Sure!”
They flew like possessed all over the quarantine. It wasn’t quite large enough for a proper race, so they made a few laps around it, flying high and low, dropping down diagonally by the cave walls and shooting back out at an angle toward the center of the cave. At one point Snaps attempted a barrel-roll, but the dizziness that resulted from half a turn sobered him up to the fact that he was still getting used to his new flying instruments. Batponies from both sides of the cave joined in, as they often would as soon as a couple of them started racing and the sky was soon full of flapping wings and near-misses. After they had enough, they looked at each other, nodded, and flew away in separate ways.
“You don’t mess around, do you?”
“What do you mean?” Strider’s question had caught him off guard.
“You don’t prolong the inevitable, you just jump right into it.” He moved forward and nudged his head lightly to the side to point at a fellow Blazer. “Took Hazel a week to move over here. Or are you going to run back tonight?”
The kind smile and friendly look told Snaps that the last part was a joke. Still, the information surprised him. He had always been used to getting things done as soon as he could. When he had arrived in quarantine, he didn’t spend his first few days, or even weeks in some isolated cases, crying over the fact. He pulled himself together and adapted to the new way of life, not knowing if it would last for a months or for the remaining lifetime. Jowly was probably a big factor in that behavior. Having a smaller brother beside him, one who shouldn’t have even been there in the first place, made him forget about his own fears and feelings of rejectment. There was somepony else to take care of. Now though? Now he was deliberately leaving that batpony behind to make both their lives easier.
“Who knows.” He smiled back, “You’ll hear the plop if I do!”
Over the next weeks he befriended a few other Blazers. He heard the stories of their former lives and the range of emotions that flew through them when they learned about the disease and were taken from their homes. Those were the parts he had heard before in some shape or form from other batponies and he could relate all too well. The difference was mostly in what had happened after they had arrived here, as these were some of the very first inhabitants of the quarantine. They were the ones who had discovered the food sources and made the first basic living quarters, if you could even call them that. Mainly just areas where you could relax and rest without fear. After all, they weren’t called the Trailblazers for nothing.
Then came the other side of their stories, the one that only they could tell him and the one he needed to hear the most. The stories of how their change transformed their lives further, with more ferocity than they could have ever imagined. Again, they were blazing a trail, only this time the unknown was not merely a more luxury-deprived habitat but an entirely new outlook on life – literary. The first ones to go through the transformation had nopony to count on for support, both because nopony at first knew what was wrong with them and because they were afraid of contracting the advanced disease themselves. As a result, many had scars and signs of broken limbs from the falls and crashes they had endured. He found comfort in their words.
“Its expanding again.” Hazel remarked a few days later when the silver glow of the force field slowly shifted back toward the town, expanding the size of the quarantine.
The quarantine had received a steady dose of newcomers, as it has since the day it was put in place. The infected couldn’t be left to confined quarters, so the only solution was the one that has been implemented so many times – expansion. The medical research had long ceased. The town was visibly starved of population as only the older ponies remained. Every young batpony was eventually diagnosed.
“Want to go exploring?” Strider added and looked at Snaps.
“Exploring?”
“Yeah.” He replied with no desire to hide the excitement, “we’re not called Blazers for nothing!”
Most of the newly uncovered terrain was perfectly visible through the field, but the act of exploring it gave them a special satisfaction. It would confirm what they had already assumed about the rock formations and the food sources and at the same time give them the privilege of being the first ones of the quarantine to reach them, even if they had no intention of claiming them as their own.
“Strange, isn’t it,” Snaps shouted out to Strider as they were flying to their destination, “if we weren’t cut off, those rocks wouldn’t mean a thing!”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right!”
They scoured the whole border of the force field, starting from top and moving down on both sides of the cave that marked their living space. It was the first time Snaps had done something like it in the quarantine and he was enjoying every second of it. There were some new hallways leading nowhere, wide cracks in the cave walls long ago filled with mud and debris and sharp stalactites dropping from the ceiling. Glowing veins showed up sporadically and life in the lake was the same as life in the lake everywhere else. Moving about frantically. They were about to head back when Strider stopped instantly, forcing Snaps to crash into him. They both recovered before falling in the lake and Snaps approached to ask what he was doing, only to see Strider hover a hair’s width away from the field, looking at the town.
“What is it?” Snaps asked with a quiet tone, expecting Strider to make an emotional connection to their old lives from being ever closer to home, yet always so far. No such thing happened.
“Do you see that?” He pointed at the base of the town, high on the ceiling of the main cave.
“See what?”
“That.” He traced a line with his hoof across the sky and Snaps followed it. Then he saw it.
“What is that?”
There was a dark vapor coming from the Sun, traveling up along the tethers that held it in place. It formed a dark mist within the town but what happened then was the surprising part. It traveled in a straight line along a slight curvature in the ceiling and vanished in a hole no wider than a batpony. Others soon joined as they stared into the shield and their witty remarks about being drawn to a flame like a moth were son dispelled when they too saw it. The gathering of the Blazers soon attracted other batponies as well, although they were keeping their distance. They stared at the town for a long time. A familiar sound came from behind.
“What are you doing?”
Snaps turned to see Jowly excitedly flapping his wings behind him. With a serious expression on his face, Snaps answered with a question.
“Do you see that?”
“See what?”
“Come closer.” When Jowly was as close to the field as the rest, he pointed to the town and drew the line of the vapor.
“The Sun? And the town?” Jowly looked at Snaps, confused.
“No, that thing rising from the Sun and flowing from the town.”
Jowly looked again, straining his eyes and clicking more often than usual.
“No. I don’t see anything else.” As if he had disappointed his brother, he wistfully looked at him and added, “I’m sorry.”
As everything around him went silent as he looked at this brother, Snaps heard the ending of a sentence from the distance.
“… anything. Let’s go back.”
He turned to see most of the batponies casually leaving, as if they had gone to a canceled play at the theater. The Blazers were the only ones watching – neigh, seeing the vapor. To the rest it was nonexistent. At that moment a memory flashed back into his mind.
“Yeah. You’re probably right. I’ll see you later, OK?” There was no point in keeping Jowly involved in a situation he couldn’t comprehend. “We have something to talk about. Secret stuff!”
“Okay!” Jowly said gleefully before flying off.
When he was young, there was one warning that was being repeated by his parents, teachers and passersby whenever they could remember to repeat it. Slow down in the town. That was the first rule of flying. Once you knew how to fly, you could fly anywhere you pleased and do as many stunts as you pleased, provided your parents weren’t watching, of course, but in the town you had to take it slow. The responses to the questions from the young batponies about this rule were multiple. Some claimed it was to maintain peace and civility in the town. Not to have maniacs rushing through it and knocking down elder batponies or colliding into buildings. Others said it was a matter of acoustics. That the town warped the sound in it, which could cause your mind to become confused at speed and you would, again, end up in a building or another batpony. Some explanations involved daemons and witches, but that was a white lie that didn’t have a long life expectancy with most younglings. Whatever the cause, he had disobeyed the rule once and quickly learned that it was there for a reason. He got dizzy as speed increased and nearly lost control of his direction.
“The acoustics…” Snaps mumbled to himself.
“What?” By some coincidence Hazel had heard him.
“Come on!” Snaps replied sharply to Hazel before turning and tugging Strider’s tail to get his attention as well.
They flew away from the field, then turned and flew alongside it to the edge. There, they landed close to the lakeshore and Snaps frantically explained his thought as coherently as he could.
“The vapor. Slow flying in town! It’s because of that.”
“What?”
“Don’t you see?” he pointed to the batponies in the distance, “they don’t see!”
Strider and Hazel turned their heads, first to the batponies, then to each other and finally to Snaps.
“I don’t know-“
“The vapor is why we have to fly slowly in town!”
“And?”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but it must do something. To the clicks or the ears, but it’s causing problems if you go too fast.”
“And we can see it but they can’t?”
“Yes!” Finally they understood; one part at least. “They can’t see it because they’re seeing different.” He relaxed a bit. “Muddy once told me that they always fly the same. Night, day, it doesn’t matter. Because they don’t see with their eyes, they see with hearing! Like we used to. But now we see more with our eyes than we used to which makes us useless at night, but they’re eyesight is still as bad as our used to be!”
The two Blazers again looked at each other, only in a way with which they confirmed to each other that Snaps was probably correct in his theory. They had thought about it before, Muddy having said that sentence to nearly every new arrival, but for the first time they had tangible proof. And now they knew something that would shock even Muddy.
“And that vapor-“ This time it was Strider’s turn to cut off Snaps mid-sentence.
“The vapor is rising. It’s going across the ceiling and into a hole that those in the town have probably never seen precisely because of the smoke.”
Snaps and Hazel were left speechless, only for different reasons. Snaps bore an expression of quiet joy at his understanding, Hazel was about to start drooling on the ground if he hadn’t closed his mouth in time. The implications were enormous. Without saying a word to each other, they flew away and returned to their home. It was time to let other Blazers know. They would decide later if the batponies were to be told as well. Would they even believe them?
When Jowly had replied to a question by claiming to see stars, Snaps knew he would have to teach his brother something that he had already been taught in school. Jowly was too young to reach that part of education. The part that spoke of the history of the town and what existed before it. Jowly had no way of knowing that the Stars, the Sun and the Moon were not what he was told they were. The Sun wasn’t the bright orb, lowered each day above the lake, nor was the same orb, burning with reduced intensity and at a higher height above the lake, the Moon. And the Stars most certainly weren’t the glowing veins of the fungi that covered the walls. They were once something entirely different in a world not constrained by the walls of the cave system that the batponies now inhabited. It was believed, by the shamans especially, that that world was long lost. That the surface had been either destroyed or under the control of Nightmare Moon. That the cave-in that blocked the exit was a blessing in disguise.
“You’re only going to have one chance at this, so make it count!”
Muddy had found a way around the shield. He was as amazed at the discovery as anypony who had heard about it and was determined to get to the bottom of it. Getting past the shield wasn’t going to be easy, though. Having been here the longest, he had explored every part of the cave several times and came to a surprising discovery. Once, he was tapping his hooves against the wall of a narrow tunnel. It didn’t lead anywhere, but the sound made by his hoof suddenly became hollow. The thin plate was the closest passage to the main cavern. Until now, he hadn’t thought about breaking through it, but he had discovered several others like it in the following months. They had just about everything in the cave and breaking through would only mean that the batponies on the other side would become more vigilant about such things. The one thing holding him back, therefore, was a worthy cause.
“Three, two, one…”
A hole appeared in the side of the wall, followed by four just like it on other parts of the main cavern, always close to the field. Before the batponies in the town could work out what had happened, two dozen Blazers shot out of the holes, each group in its own direction. If the shield could be used to capture them, the multiple targets would give the mayor a thorough workout before he could hope to ensnare them. To make the chance of success for the two teams that had started at the topmost parts of the cave and were now grazing the ceiling as they flew away from in other in a circular pattern the highest chance of success, the bottom three teams were actually flying directly toward the town, only withdrawing upwards at the last moment. There was no resistance, only the sound of panic in in the town and a few guards holding batons in a defensive position over their chests and heads.
“There! Go in!”
One by one, amidst the shouts of warnings and joy at the success of the plan, the Blazers made it into the tunnel. The concentrated smoke – or vapor, as they called it, made them cough, but there was no turning back. With them, they took sticks covered in the glowing veins to light their way. It didn’t illuminate the narrow tunnel nearly as much as any of them had hoped it would, but at least they could see where they were going. After what seemed like an eternity, the smoke began to thin as the tunnel widened. Soon, they could fly two at a side. Then three. The tunnel leveled off before ending with a halo of blue mist at the entrance. They landed and slowly walked the rest of the way. As the feel of a cold breeze swept through their bodies for the first time, Snaps’s thought turned to Jowly.
They had not told any of the batponies where they were going or what they were doing. It was for safety reasons, first and foremost. They risked getting caught flying out of the quarantine, and who knew what the consequences would have been for that. The condensed vapor would have turned their sense of navigation on its head several times over and somepony could get hurt. The worst possible outcome though? That was simple: that the shamans were correct all along. That the world above was indeed destroyed in one way or the other. They would return with answers once they had them.
“Are you ready for this?”
“Yes.”
White dots of light appeared on a black canvas. Dark patches, each shaped roughly as the other, hid the dots in random intervals as far as they could see. Every once in a while, one of them would shift to a different position before returning to normal. Treetops leaning in the wind. They approached the entrance itself. Snaps began shifting uncomfortably.
“What’s wrong?” Hazel asked.
“Nothing.” Snaps looked around. “It burns a bit.”
“What burns?”
“I don’t know. It just does.”
He was the only one who experienced any displeasure after exiting the tunnel. The rest looked at him for a moment, then Muddy intervened. He looked at the others and himself, then turned to Snaps.
“Probably should have stayed behind on this one, now that I think about it.”
“Why?”
“You’re not completely turned yet.”
Snaps froze for a moment, contemplating that. Then he bit his lip and replied.
“I’ll be fine.”
Once out of the tunnel completely, Snaps’s pain increased, but he held his own, knowing he could retreat back inside at any moment and fighting that desire with every step. A bright circle hovered high above them, casting a pale light on everything beneath. The shape of the mountain, from under which they came, brutally slashed the sky in half, just as the lake had done to the cave walls. Strange sounds emanated from unknown sources. But there was one feature that they were all staring at. O single point of focus that took away the awe at the sheer expanse of the outside world, the glowing shape that made them immune to the cold breeze. Rising unnaturally from the side of the mountain behind them was a city made of white pillars and yellow lights. Every so often, the shape of a pony flying around it broke the idyllic scene.
They contemplated and debated for a while whether to tell the community living beneath them of their finding. There were those who proposed an all out celebration and the loudest possible announcement of the discovery. Others were more tempered, and there were even those who would keep it a secret.
"What happens if we tell them? Do you think they'll listen?" one said.
"We need to tell them, what do you think?! Should we just leave them down there?"
"Who knows what they've done with the shield?"
The words were like a flood of irrational fears and hate, directed first toward those who had created the quarantine, then to their ancestors for not discovering the exit sooner and in the end even Nightmare Moon for contributing to their imprisonment all those years ago. While the debate was preparing to spill over into a fight, Snaps noticed that something was missing.
Turning to Strider, he whispered, "where is he; going down?"
"Yes."
Disappointed by the chaos that had ensued from the amazing discovery, Muddy had decided that the question of informing the batponies was irrelevant. After all the bravery displayed by the Blazers to get them there and thinking of those that were still left in the dark, both metaphorically and literary, the answer was simple. The decision was made long ago. They had to tell them, it was as simple as that. How they would react to that information, though, that was out of anypony's reach. He could only hope for the best.