You lay there for an inestimable amount of time, gently holding the sobbing Wisp and recovering your strength.
Breathing and heart rate slowing, you carefully stand up, cradling Wisp to your neck with your foreleg.
You hold Wisp until you can no longer hear her crying. She finally takes a deep shuddering breath; she then sighs, exhaling all of the air out of her lungs.
“Are you feeling better?” you ask, eliciting a quiet squeak from her.
You slowly set her down on the ground and gently pet her mane. “That’s good.”
She makes a soft hum and pushes against your foreleg.
“Wisp?” you ask. “Why don’t you help me by searching around the room, okay? Try and find something important-looking,” you ask her.
She nuzzles your chest then nods. She chirps and runs toward one of the many desks, banging on the metal desks quietly as she searches.
Poor thing, she doesn’t deserve to be here, you think, slowly walking over to the pile of rotting corpses. Wary of their regenerative abilities, you keep a close eye on the flesh, ready to fight or evade should the situation arise.
You slog through the stinking meat, making sure to step on anything even resembling an intact eye. The broken blue eyes crack underneath your hooves as you step on them mercilessly.
Something catches your eye in the remains of one of the bodies. Bending down, you peer closer at whatever it is.
It’s just a quivering tendon, weakly spraying blood as it struggles to connect to a nearby bone.
You stomp on it, forcefully blowing air out of your nose. “Nothing,” you mutter.
After searching through the mutilated bodies for an unknown period of time, you come up empty. “Still nothing,” you mutter. “I guess there was nothing pony left in them.”
Wisp squeaks excitedly, and you hear her tapping on the side of your body. Your skin makes a particular sound that sounds somewhat akin to stone whenever she hits it.
“What is it?” you ask, turning your head around to look at her.
She is balancing a box roughly half the size of her head on her back with the help of her damaged wings. Squeaking again, she points to it with a hoof.
You levitate the box off of her and over to you with your magic. There is a small, worn label on the solid-feeling steel cube. It reads, “Letters To Mother”.
“Where did you find this?” you ask her.
She points to a small trash bin next to one of the closer desks.
Curiosity piqued, you look for a way to open it. Nothing, the box is completely seamless. You look at it from every angle. Still nothing. “Hmmmm…” you hum, continuing to turn it over in your magic.
The box isn’t just a cube, it appears to be a perfect one. A dull, flawless grey metal cube.
Wisp squeaks again, drawing your attention. She is sitting on the floor with her fore legs in the air. She points to you then the cube, then she makes a show of bringing her hooves together with a quiet clop.
“Of course, thank you Wisp,” you say, feeling the urge to drive your hoof into your forehead. “I guess I’m still getting used to the new body.” You hold the box in front of you with your magic. Sitting down, you bring your fore legs up and smash them together like sledgehammers, crushing the cube open instantly.
Papers erupt violently, spraying everywhere. Wisp squeaks and you both jump backward slightly. The papers begin landing on the bloody floor, causing them to soak up the blood. Finally reacting, you try to catch as many as you can with your magic, and Wisp joins in seconds later, trying to catch them in her mouth.
The papers finish falling. You look at the dozens of pages on the ground to see that they are completely illegible after soaking in gore of the dead Gigglers.
You start reading the precious few that you caught.
Mom,
I’m telling you, this place is… off somehow. They have guards that are posted at the only exit supposedly “guarding us from intruders”. But the funny thing is they’re facing the wrong way. They watch the hallway, not the door. Meaning that—theoretically of course— if somepony tried to get out, they would have to get through the guards. So the question is, what are they guarding exactly?
And another thing, these formulas are simple to understand, but mathematical impossible gibberish. Nothing has enough power to do what this… “Element” can do. One square inch of this material can supposedly corrupt an entire body’s worth of cells instantly from direct exposure without losing any energy? And that’s the most tame thing I have seen.
Your son.
Mom,
There is some pretty freaky stuff going on. Foals are being led into rooms that they don’t come out of. Foals Mom, foals. Sometimes I can hear them crying in the corners of my workroom. I found some small cages, but I can’t open them. Sometimes I’ll just sit and talk with them when there’s nopony around; most times they are unconscious and continually being flashed with a painful-looking light. I know it's painful because the conscious ones cry out whenever it hits them.
Ponies walk places then are never heard from again. This place is bad news. I’m getting out when I can. Problem is, the Director has some kind of… murder switch on us. We don’t show up for work; we die. I don’t know how he does it, but one of my friends was talking about it. She said that anypony can be killed at the press of a button.
I’m scared Mom.
Hey Mom,
I know you won’t be too pleased about the location of my job, but I’ll tell you anyways. I just got my new job copying formulas today at this special facility! We’re going to make the world a better place here, I can feel it.
Your son, Note Taker.
Dear Mom,
I’m making this special case for my letters to you. The automatic censor spell I mentioned keeps censoring words and phrases in my letters. You may ask why I don’t write my letters from home. The answer: I can’t. I physically can’t write or say anything regarding my work at my apartment. And the scary thing is, I have no idea why…
Your confused son.
mom
i can haredy get this out on papeR. my hoves are shaking so mUchh and i can’t even spelll coherantly. i watchd a poNy murdered get brutally get merdered just nOw. he died in my forelegs. a pony Ran out of a room only to me followeded by something. it was huge and metel and bleeDng and huge and… a pony. It toor him apart. i went to cheack on him after it left, and he died seconds aftEr.
i’m going to die here.
Finishing the ones that you caught, you reach for the single one that Wisp managed to catch.
Mom,
If this somehow makes it to you, just know I’m sorry. You were right. You were always right.
I managed to survive the Gigglers. I thought they were bad. Now the Demon Shadows are walking. We’re all going to bucking die.
I love you Mom. Always remember that.
That last letter sends a chill through your spine as you read it. Every scattered piece of information you find seems to answers a single question but asks so many more.
The chill in your spine intensifies, you look around quickly, making sure that all the bodies are truly dead. Confirming this, you relax slightly.
You hear a soft sobbing originating from a corner of the room. Glancing over towards the sound, you see a small cage made out of steel that blends into the wall. Looking closer, you can now see that there are at least thirty cages half-imbedded in the wall from the floor to the ceiling, though most of them are already open.
Walking towards it, you wonder why you didn’t notice the cages before. I guess I had more pressing things on my mind, you think, glancing over toward the dead Gigglers.
Reaching the cages, you see a small sliding window with a rubber knob. You open the window with your magic and are immediately met with wide golden eyes staring back at you.
“C-can you h-help me? I want my mommy...” asks a small, scared voice from the pure blackness of the inside of the cage. The soft hum of electricity comes from the cage, and a flash of blindingly pure white light floods the inside of the cage, momentarily blinding you. After you blink the spots out of your eyes you look at the cage again. The eyes have disappeared from view and you can hear the pony squirming on the floor of the cage, crying softly. The inside of the cage is dark once again. “Please?” it whimpers weakly. “It hurts…”
You hear the quiet, raspy voice of the Beast from directly behind you. “What will you do? What should you do?” it whispers. “I already know the answer, but the real question is, do you?”
Quickly turning around, there’s nothing there...
>Help it out of the cage.
>Leave it and run away.
Dear chapter,
You are locked.
Sincerely, NightWolf289