We dart across a barren field and slam against the first building in our sights: a squat, warehouse-sized thing that must have been an inn or a tavern or something else a bunch of backwoods ponies would want as far from the town center as possible. We'd been spying on this little village for hours now, spent the whole night camped up on a hill overlooking this little place. Now, Sifty takes point, kneeling in the grass with one hand pressed against the brickwork and the other gripping his sword. His shield is strapped to his back, yet doesn’t make a sound as he leans out to peer around the corner at the village proper, shifting his weight ever-so-slightly from one foot to the next. Gotta hand it to him, I really shouldn’t have doubted his abilities. Then again, I probably should have figured that out after watching him tear a dragon’s heart out and absorb its soul for its power. I can be slow like that.
I thumb the crude safety catch on my shotgun and return my grip on it, my finger resting on the trigger guard rather than the trigger itself to keep from letting off a shot. The last thing we need is a big bang to signal anything that might be waiting for us to blunder into its waiting jaws. My knee complains from the extra bandolier of shells hidden beneath my jeans, but it’s a pain I’ll accept to avoid running out of ammo in the middle of a fight. Sift turns to me, and I raise an eyebrow and gesture to the main part of town. Universal sign for Anything out there? He shakes his head but raises a finger to his lips. I nod. You don’t have to be the world charades champion to know what that means.
I wonder if that’s a thing: a world charades champion. I mean, that would have to be up there with that guy with the world’s longest ear hair or that other guy who can shoot milk out his eye and hit a glass thirteen feet away. Why would people take the time to develop these “talents?” There’s no way they could possibly think they’re gonna get laid with…oh, damn, we’re moving.
My focus immediately returns to the here and now. There is a time and a place for jokes and daydreaming, and this is neither. We slink around the building, hugging the brickwork as close as we can. I get my first sight of the village proper as we round the corner: one dirt avenue with a dozen squat, single-story cabins lining it, with one building at the end that has an open-air porch and a few rocking chairs up front that look like they needed replacing back when Celestia first attained royal status. Probably the general store, which could be a good sign, so long as the good stuff hasn’t been looted yet.
My eyes dart up and to the side, then immediately shoot back to the supposedly empty town. “Doyle’s Tavern” is inscribed in faded red lettering across the building’s front, right over the saloon-style doors. So I was right about the “tavern” part. Here’s hoping I’m also right in guessing that this town is too small for the Nightmare hordes to even bother with.
We start with the tavern, which has a second story and indoor plumbing, judging from the exposed piping out back: rich wonders we had yet to see anywhere else in town. Of course, Sifty takes point again, raising his shield and standing with his sword poised. I stand off to the side, just outside the doorframe and, when he nods, I deliver a powerful donkey kick just below the doorknob. He charges in, a rushing shadow silently disappearing into the dim light within. I’m right behind him, a somewhat audible bison sort of popping up wherever I damn well feel like.
My changeling eyes adjust from the bright sunlight outside almost immediately, and the room begins to take shape. I spy a couple dozen round tables that might have been polished sometime in the last century, each with candles that had burnt down to their wicks by now, sitting atop a floor that had probably never known the touch of a mop. Along one wall, I spot the only entertainment readily available: a dartboard, with a picture of Queen Chrysalis serving as the bullseye. I cringe ever-so-slightly. My relationship with my genetic mother might not be all hugs and giggles, but she was still my dispatcher: the one who sent me off to single-handedly improve relations between the species, hoping against hope that I might have what it takes to save the changelings as a whole. Shit like this is just a reminder of how much work there is left to be done.
I sweep the shotgun across the room, the light through the front windows more than enough to see everything I need to see, even the bar in the back corner. Sunlight glints off empty shelves where all sorts of pony booze had once stood, the only hint that anything had ever been there being the shattered remnants of a bottle in a corner. I sigh in disappointment. Ah well, pony booze doesn’t really get the job done for us humans anyway, and even less so with changelings, which leaves me double-screwed. Now, changeling booze!? Hot damn, that will knock you on your ass in an instant!
My eyes lock on a semi-darkened hallway leading behind the bar, probably towards the main quarters where the family who owned this place would have stayed. To the left, there’s a set of stairs leading up to the rooms for rent, an oak banister lining what is almost certainly the creakiest staircase in the world.
I glance over at Sifty and shrug, never once lowering my weapon. He nods, then gestures to himself, then towards the staircase. I return the nod and level my gaze on the rear hallway, noting the ratty linen curtain blocking out the sun from the window at the end, just barely providing enough light for me to make out the outline of a door set in one wall. I creep across the floor, stepping lightly to avoid making the wood creak. I don’t need to look over or hear him move to know Sifty is probably halfway up the stairs already. I let out a few, slow breaths and creep towards the window, moving the curtain aside in the hopes of getting a bit of light to work with.
Of course, no sooner do I so much as touch the curtain when it falls to rotten pieces beneath my touch, the seams tearing audibly and the rod popping off its mounting to thud against the hardwood floor. I let my breath out in a long, slow sigh. Of course, because why would this go perfectly right? I grumble to myself.
I slam my body against the wall and twist the knob with one hand. Thankfully, this door creaks open, no need for another donkey kick. I slide through and sweep the room with my weapon, finding myself in the caretaker’s quarters, as I’d guessed. We’ve got another window in here, some oil lamps that have long burnt through their fuel, a table all set for a nice, quiet family meal that would never happen, and an absolutely pristine metal washbasin set to the side, with a couch and throw rug against the other wall to serve as a living area. A few doors lead off this main room, probably the bathroom and bedrooms. Seeing nothing of interest here (or in the cupboards hanging open, bastards that came through here must have picked the place clean) I figure the master bedroom would have to be my next safest bet.
I lunge across the room in a semi-quiet stride, stopping just short of the bedroom door. Turning the handle, I slowly creep inside, shotgun poised against the door to automatically sweep the room as the hinges slowly squeak with my movements. Once again, we’ve got a room with conditions I can only describe as Spartan: a bed with plaid-patterned cotton sheets, a nightstand that has seen better days, a chest against the foot of the bed for clothes, and a bookcase against one wall. That draws my attention immediately. I stride right over to it, drawn in like a Jersey Shore cast member to a drinking contest taking place inside a tanning salon. Though the other rooms have yet to be cleared, I can’t help myself, keeping the shotgun in one hand while the other thumbs over the selection of titles. It really doesn’t surprise me that the shelf is relatively untouched, I doubt looters have much of an interest in reading. Then again, it could be these ponies’ choices in reading material: paperback romance novels you can pick up at drugstores, coffee-table dreck people only buy to look impressive, mystery novels, the whole works. I roll my eyes. What’s wrong with a few Stephen King novels!? Or some fantasy and sci-fi? Why can’t you ever find those in anyone’s personal collections except for weird teenagers? Hell, at this point I’d settle for a paperback Dean Koontz!
I skim over a shelf packed full of paperbacks with the pony version of Fabio on their covers, feeling up some random mares. Dude even has long, golden locks drifting in some unknown breeze. Spare me. Eventually, my eye falls upon a picture of what must have been the family that lived here: a mommy pony, a daddy pony, and a baby pony, all wearing adorable little smiles. A little grin cracks my face. They might not have had the best reading choices, or the most luxurious lifestyle, but these ponies had a life. A life now certainly uprooted, if not ended altogether by…
Hold on…
Something’s wrong.
I scoop the picture up in my free hand and frown at it. Something about it is setting off a tiny alarm at the back of my head, as if I’m forgetting something really important, but of course I can’t put a finger on what that might be. Do the smiles look fake? Maybe a little, but these are ponies posing for a picture, what else would they look like? How about the eyes? Are the eyes wrong? No, that’s just my own paranoia. Okay, maybe it’s not something wrong with the picture, maybe it’s something missing…
Yeah! Okay, I’ve almost got it, what could be missing from this picture? I’ve got three ponies here, pasting on big, shit-eating grins for the camera. I’ve got a background that was obviously bought on the cheap from whatever studio took this. I’ve got condensation from the hot, steaming breath drifting over my shoulder...
…
PISS.
I whirl around, finger wrapping around the trigger, the photo shattering on the ground by my feet. A Dreamwalker fills my vision, sharpened tentacles poised, rotten breath drifting from between its fangs and blasting my face, its loose, tawdry skin practically hanging off its skeleton. The monster lunges for my throat, one of the pointed tentacles it has substituting for arms flying through the air with a little swish, like a throwing knife tossed by an expert. I barely manage to duck under the swing, feeling the wind ripple just over my head. With a flick of my wrist, I bring the shotgun up to bear in one hand (no need to worry about accuracy this close) and unleash a single shot that sends the creature falling backwards, turning half its previously-exposed ribcage into a red mist. The creature cocks its head back and opens its mouth wide enough to swallow a watermelon, a pair of ridiculously oversized fangs working up and down, as if it were trying to scream, only to discover this impossible with a large chunk of its lungs gone. The bastard settles back and coils into itself, its snake-like body shivering in its death throes.
A few stomps from outside tell me this bastard wasn’t the only thing waiting for me. I grimace and take a few deep breaths, working the lever action on my weapon to chamber a fresh round before charging out the door. A half-dozen zomponies are waiting for me, the air filled with their slavering cries and the ground hissing with their acidic drool. I let loose with another shot, and one of the bastards hits the floor with his skull from the jawline up gone, the once pristine washbasin behind him now oozing with the putrid remnants of its gray matter. My ears are starting to ring from the shotgun blasts, but I don’t let it show. Instead, I let loose a scream from somewhere deep inside myself, unleashing a battlecry to make a barbarian chieftain proud as I lash out in a swipe from my gnarled, changed hand, tearing out a chunk of another zompony’s throat. As that monster falls back, clutching futilely at the torrents of rotten, stinking blood pouring out its neck, I raise my shotgun in time to fend off a bite from one of its freakish buddies, blocking it right at the throat with the stock of the weapon. It takes a few bites of air, snarling at me, another zompony coming up behind it, lunging for my legs. With a quick twist of my body (I always considered myself an undeniably flexible bastard) I toss my first assailant aside and sidestep the second’s charge, bringing the butt of the shotgun down against the back of its skull as hard as I can. The thing’s head explodes like a large beetle getting run over by an 18-wheeler, giving off a surprisingly satisfying squish.
I grin. I’m almost completely deaf now, partially from the shotgun blasts and partially from my own pulse pounding in my ears, but it doesn’t matter anymore. My adrenaline is going wild. I’ve got three of these fuckers to take down now, and I even know just how to do it. Mr. Teeth is coming at me with another charge that I find unbelievably predictable. His two buddies still in the world of the semi-living are just standing on the other side of the table; totally stunned by the way I’ve just blitzkrieged through half their friends. It’s child’s play for me to dodge Mr. Teeth (crap, if that’s my name for him now, does that mean I’m getting attached already?) and follow up with a buttstroke against the back of his head, slamming him so hard his own momentum carries him right onto the table. Reacting fast, I chamber a fresh round and flip the table on its side, four crashes sounding as the place settings shatter against the floor. Mr. Teeth howls in confusion before I bring the shotgun to bear and unleash a final blast right through the wood, blood spewing out behind it. With a final battlecry, I slam my foot against the splintering remnants, sending the table sliding across the floor to hit the opposite wall and crushing the other two zomponies in the process.
That’s really it for the battle. Mr. Teeth is just a rotten-smelling stain on the wall now, and the other two are too stunned from being slammed against the wall and winged by the flying splinters to do much of anything. I take my time with them, strolling right up to their bodies as they struggle to free themselves from the splinters and scrap wood, then finishing each with a few stomps to the back of the head. With the adrenaline starting to peter off, I can take my time and look over the bodies.
These ponies look like regular raiders, all kitted out in scraps of whatever they could loot from abandoned villages. Not exactly innocents, and thankfully no foals among them to mess with my conscience, but still, one helluva way to go. They didn’t deserve this shit, to be taken and transformed into tools for the Nightmare hordes, their minds blasted away and their bodies used as expendable resources to further some demon fucker’s plans. They’d just been a roving band trying to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland this paradise had become. “Requiescat in pace,” I mutter, crossing myself. “May you at last find peace.”
I stride back out the door, pulling some fresh shells off the bandolier around my leg for good measure. Once I’m loaded up and ready, I dash outside. “Sift!?” I call. “I think we’ve got a small problem!”
No sooner do my sneakers touch the ground when I hear a crash from above. I turn just in time to see one of the upper-floor windows shatter outwards, spraying glass everywhere. Right in the heart of the spreading glass cloud, is my new best friend Sifty, riding a Hive Guardian while screaming like a maniac. A part of me is disappointed that he doesn’t have doves shooting out behind him in mid-air.
“FIVE-OH AIN’T GOT SHIT ON ME!” He screams, the monster roaring in reply, only to fall silent once Sifty lands on its throat. Still surfing the bastard’s body like the world’s meatiest tidal wave, he decapitates the creature with a single swing of his sword then tucks and rolls off a shoulder, landing right next to me to glare from a face covered in brackish, rotten-smelling blood.
“A small problem?” He huffs, still breathing heavily, still glaring.
I shrug. “I dunno, you seemed to have it locked down pretty tight. So I figured this was on the spectrum of concerns somewhere between ‘rabid dog in Ponyville’ and ‘hangnail on right index finger’.”
No sooner do these words escape my mouth when an ungodly cry rises from the outskirts of the village. We turn just in time to watch a veritable tidal wave of Nightmares, a horde that must be dozens strong and composed of Black Gorgers, Dream Walkers, Zomponies, and a whole host of shit I’m not even sure has gotten named yet. The horde descends upon us with the same kind of ravenous glee I’m sure a starving lion enjoys when it notices the slowest, fattest member of the zebra pack breaking its leg and falling into a pond of barbecue sauce.
“Okay,” I mutter, working the lever action of my shotgun. “Warden, remind me to keep my big, fat mouth shut in the future, wouldja?”
“I’ll remind you with a couple fat lips, half-breed,” he grumbles.
“Thanks pal, I knew I could count on ya,” I hiss, exposing my fangs in a sarcastic smile.
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A half-hour of battle and quoting one-liners later, and the last of the Nightmares lies dead at our feet, the blood of their brethren caked on our clothes and shoes. Yep, looks like tonight is going to be a shower night. Great. Just when I was working up a really decent man-stench too.
“That the last of ‘em?” I yell, trying not to huff or show just how totally out-of-breath I am.
“Hold on,” Sift brings the edge of his shield down on the neck of a fallen zompony. It cringes and lets out a cry to let us know it had been faking death before breathing its last. “Okay, yeah, that should be it.”
“Great,” I grumble, beginning the search for my shotgun. The shells had run out about halfway through the battle, and I’d lost my grip on the poor little dear sometime after that. Not really sure how or when. I think it was before I tore the last of the Hive Guardians’ eyes out with my bare, clawed hands and attempted to show them to its vacant eye sockets, but after Sift had scaled one of the houses with a cry of “POGO PARKOUR,” flipped off the roof, and came down with his full weight behind his sword's edge to slice one of the Black Gorgers perfectly right down the middle. Again, I’m not one-hundred percent sure.
I manage to find my beloved weapon under a pile of zomponies, that loose bit clattering in my claws as I scoop it up again. “Shh, there there, girl,” I whisper, stroking the weapon’s barrel again. “Daddy’s here. Daddy made sure all the bad monsters went buh-bye.”
“I better not catch you with your dick in that thing,” Sift yells, his voice totally flat and emotionless. “I might just be apt to go for the trigger.”
I turn on him, all ready to give him a taste of a good ol’ demon face, but instead of his usual, stoic deadpan, he’s wearing this big, shit-eating grin. It knocks me back a pace or two: I didn’t even know he remembered how to smile. Then I return the grin and shoulder the weapon. “Perish the thought,” I reply. “I’d never do that to Shelly! Now, Lefty here…”
I hold up my hand, still grinning, partially tempted to try and emulate Princess Celestia’s almighty solar woman-parts but deciding that’d be too far, even for me. “…Lefty here’s another story.”
Sift just shakes his head, still smiling, surprisingly. “You’re a sick man, K, y’know that?”
“And proud of it!” I announce, pausing to take a quick scan of the piles of dead bodies all around us. “Say, should we do something about these? It’ll stink to high-hell if we just leave everything as it is. Might fuck up the crops, too, but I’m no expert on what happens to rotting Nightmares.”
“Naaahhhhhh, don’t worry about it,” Sifty cocks his head up to the sky. “Sun’ll take care of ‘em. Dead Nightmare bodies don’t last too long in the stuff.”
“Oh, cool,” but then a thought occurs to me. I turn back to the inn. “What about the ones in there?”
“Ehh…dammit, we should probably take care of those, huh?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “But hey, when it’s all said and done, at least we’ll have actual beds to sleep in tonight, yeah? Maybe an actual bathtub or two?”
“No,” Sifty frowns, urging me along through the piles of dead Nightmares already beginning to disintegrate in the rays of sunlight left. “We’ve got a ton more ground to cover tonight.”
“Aww, c’mon, Warden!” I say, cracking something to relieve some of the ache building in my neck. “We’re talking actual beds! Some basic creature comforts to…”
Something flares in his emotional spectrum. It’s tiny, and gone almost as fast as it appears, but my changeling senses detect it instantly. A small, flare of anger, accompanied with something else, some nasty little taste that reminds me of many a school night spent locked in my room, hunched over a textbook with visions of F-minuses dancing in my head. Anxiety? Woah, Sifty feels anxiety!? Something’s up. There is a definite glitch in the matrix here.
“Okay, Warden,” I say quietly, keeping my eyes locked ahead. I follow him into the inn, then immediately lock the door behind us. We both walk into the shadows in some far corner, ducking down low. “Okay, why aren’t we really staying here? And don’t pull any punches, I wanna know.”
He doesn’t sigh, or run his hands through his hair, or any of that other bullshit. He just keeps his eyes locked on me and his tone dead and flat. I kind of admire that, in a way, but there’s a fine line between emotional control and emotional repression. As a creature that feeds off emotions, I know that better than anybody. Luckily for us, Sifty seems capable of dancing that line with the grace of a ballerina. A raging, battle-fuelled ballerina with abnormally large amounts of destructive capabilities and the ability to eat dragon souls. “We’re being followed,” he tells me, still with all the intonation and expression of the announcer at a bingo parlor.
What little remains of my smile fades from my face. “How long, and how many are they?”
“Don’t know,” he says. “Spotted a few things out in the woods yesterday: trampled underbrush in the shape of a boot, birds suddenly flying away, little shit like that. They’ve probably been on us for longer, though. Could just be the one, but again, I don’t know. Could be that one of them’s just not that good at keeping their trail covered. Either way…”
“Piss,” and I do run my hands through my hair. That’s probably the one good thing about hair for guys, now that I think about it. Having something soft to run your hands through can be somewhat calming. It doesn’t help here, though. “Okay, so we do what we came in here to do. We ditch the bodies, clean up a little, and leave like nothing’s…”
I pause. Why? Because I am an idiot. A blind, stupid, fucking idiot. “Goddammit,” I hiss under my breath.
“What?” Sift asks, and I feel a mild spike of concern. Jeez, Sifty having multiple emotional spikes in one day? Must be a sign of the apocalypse.
“You’re not the only one who’s seen signs,” I whisper, marching to the door to the manager’s quarters. “Only I was too blind to see ‘em.”
I don’t even break my stride tearing through the kitchen and back into the master bedroom, shattered glass and splinters crunching under my sneakers. I nearly kick the door off its hinges, still unwilling to break my stride as I throw the fallen Nightmare out of the way, all using my stupid, retard strength. My stupid, idiotic, retarded moron strength. I had been so blind.
Sifty’s right behind me. I scoop up the remnants of the picture frame from where it’s fallen; holding what little is left of the intact wooden frame in the palm of my hand. I gently leave the picture resting on one of the shelves and sigh. “Warden, tell me: how many people do you know keep family photos on their bookshelf?”
“Uh…” he hunches his eyebrows in another rare expression of emotion, this one mild confusion. “A few that I can think of, maybe.”
“Right, but if a family had just one photo for some reason, like say, if they were a bunch of poor-as-dirt innkeepers in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, they wouldn’t keep it there, would they? So far from the bed, I mean,” I continue, my behind sinking into the hay mattress as I take a seat on the bed. My eyes drift to the side. “They’d want it close to where they sleep.”
“The nightstand, yeah,” Sifty says. “Kildeez, where is this going?”
I don’t answer for a second. My eyes just scour the squat piece of furniture, scanning with my enhanced changeling vision. It doesn’t take too long to find what I’m looking for: a narrow slot in the dust, a little piece of wood darker and more polished than the rest of the wood, why? Because it had been protected while the rest of the wood had been exposed to the light. I hold up one of the more intact pieces of the frame and lay it gently in the slot. Perfect fit.
“Of course,” I grumble. “I was so, so blind.”
“Kildeez? You’re kinda pissing me off now,” Sifty says, though the gentle spike in his anxiety says otherwise.
“I’m pissing myself off, Warden,” I announce, standing up from the bed. I face him directly, my eyebrows hunching as my mind focuses on what I’d looked right at without seeing. “Earlier, when I threw that table over, there were four crashes. Why four crashes? Because there had been four places set for a nice, pony dinner. Four plates set for four diners. A fact that I should’ve picked up on much sooner.”
“Alright, so?” Sifty shrugs.
“So,” I point to the picture quivering on the bookshelf. Relenting, I cross over and press a book facedown over it to keep it covered, not even bothering to look at the title. “There are three ponies in this picture.”
Sifty’s eyes widen in instant realization. “An extra place.”
“For an extra guest,” I hiss, even more clues coming to mind. “Just like the fact that every single candle and oil well had been left to burn out in this place, and I’ll bet if we checked the rest of the village, we’d find the same true of every candle and every lamp.”
“Even though the Nightmare attack hit in the middle of the day,” Sifty’s eyebrows rise so high they practically disappear into the mop of dirty, black curls he calls hair. “If the ponies were all running for their lives and it was the middle of the day, why would they leave their candles burning?”
“Because they didn’t,” I growl, seeing the full extent of what we’re up against. “Because something came in after them and played a few pranks: set an extra place at the table, lit a few candles and let them burn down, moved pictures to places where I would find them, all tiny details they knew I would pick up on eventually, just like they knew you would see the trampled underbrush and scattered birds in the forest. Tiny clues for us to know of their presence, each tailored for our specific brand of talents.”
“God damn,” he mutters. “Not only are they tracking us, they’re predicting where we’re going! They know what we can do, and they’re using that to fuck with us!”
“They want us to know they’re following us,” I grumble. “And worse yet, they’re doing this to make sure one point gets across…”
“…that there isn’t a goddamn thing we can do about it.” Sifty growls angrily.
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A short distance away, a tiny camera whirs into action, sliding out of its hiding place beneath a fake stone and focusing on the little inn. After scanning around for a little while, the camera spies its preprogrammed target. A small window fades into its viewfinder as tiny gears whir into place. The camera finishes its scan and settles, spying two men standing near the window, one sitting on a cheap bed with his hands running through his hair, the other leaning against the wall, peering outside with a stoic grimace on his face, but not even his keen eyes could possibly spot the tiny lens as it focused on them.
Eventually, the man on the bed looks up, the sunlight catching his eye with a strange, emerald glimmer. The camera whirs and zooms in, immediately running facial recognition software over the face. A green light snaps on in the dark little hole behind its body.
Somewhere a much greater distance away, something pauses in its step, a jaunty little tune it had been whistling to itself cutting off mid-melody. The forest falls silent, not even the birds in the trees above its head whistle. A dark grin spreads over the creature’s face like a malignant tumor, and it drops to one knee and pulls a small device out of its pack.
Pressing a few buttons, a screen flickers to life on the device, immediately displaying real-time footage of the changeling-hybrid in the window, going over some new, clever, but ultimately futile plan with the man at his side. The grin widens.
“Took you long enough to see me,” the creature hisses, its voice oozing out of its mouth like pus from an infected wound. “I’ve been watching you for a long time, after all. And now, I finally have you where I want you.”
It slides a claw over the screen, and the view shifts to the man next to the hybrid. The grin wavers ever-so-slightly, but quickly recovers. “Even if you’ve found another playmate. Don’t worry, though, I’ve had a long time to plan this. He won’t interfere.”
The creature continues to grin as it reaches into its pack again and pulls out a bottle of Jack Daniels, taking a few great, big gulps without hesitation. It raises the bottle to the air, the horrid grin never leaving its face. “And now: a toast, for the game can finally begin,” it whispers. “I’ve been looking forward to playing with you, half-breed. You have no idea how much I’ve been chomping at the bit for this. For you”
A small cackle builds in the back of the thing’s throat, continuing on for the rest of the night it spent camped there, the bottle in one hand, the screen frozen on Kildeez’s face in the other.