My head throbbed and my blurry vision slowly came together, brining into focus the incredible darkness of the room that I was in. Steel bars surrounded me, locking me in the corner of what appeared to be a bedroom. Wooden walls with an intricately-carved pattern, a bed in the centre and a dresser against the opposite wall, and a large rug stretching along the dust-covered, wooden floor wherever there was open space.
Where was I, and more importantly, who was I? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember anything. All that I had to try to remember was a dark, purple hoof as I tried to stand up. A brief look around revealed a note attached to the back of the cage. It was my only clue so, despite having to strain my eyes, I read it.
This was the only way to save myself. To save my sanity and stave off the monster, at least long enough to make things right. Twilight Sparkle, I am sorry for putting you through all of this, but this is the only way. Beneath this house is a machine, an abomination of nature that should never have been created. I tried to turn it off, but my hooves were too dirty, too tainted, and too stained in blood to get anywhere close. The only one who can do this task is somepony pure of heart, somepony with no ill desires in their soul, and no guilt of sin weighing them down. The only one I can rely on for this task, was you, Twilight Sparkle. You must reach the facility beneath this house and shut down the machine for ponies. It is the only way to save yourself, and your friends.
I pray that I was not mistaken in my decision, and that Celestia is looking down on you even in this accursed abode.
All the best,
Twilight Sparkle
Suddenly, the sound of thrashing and thumping drew my attention behind myself, to the door at the opposite side of the room. Dust flew from the door’s cracks. Somepony was trying to get in. Another loud bang and the door moved once again. A grunt from the other side followed by the sounds of retreating hoofsteps and scraping metal told me that whoever was on the other side had given up. I sighed as the sound of a closing door elsewhere in the house offered me some relief.
The bars of the cage started to lift up. I looked to the ceiling to find that the entire cage was hooked up to a pulley system, which seemed to have been set onto some sort of timed device. Whoever had trapped me here must have calculated when I would wake up which, according to that letter, must have meant that I was one smart pony before.
A vanity in the room held a small lantern. I naturally reached out towards the only source of light that this dark place seemed to offer and took it. There was some fuel inside, and so the lantern came on. An image in the broken mirror revealed my face: purple fur, purple eyes, a streaked mane tied into a bun, a pair of thick glasses, and a brown, old-fashioned coat over a white, buttoned shirt.
There was no time to take a longer look at myself, though; the sound a door creaking slowly opened caught me by surprise and I turned around as quickly as possible, gasping loudly and then slamming my hooves over my muzzle. The door was open, but there was nopony there. I slowly inched my way to the open door and peered outside.
An empty hallway, with five open windows, three doors along the side and one at the end, and a staircase separating the second and third doors. The curtains hanging to either side of each window fluttered in the cold wind and I could see that it was night outside. Thankfully I had that lantern, but that offered me little assurance when the entire house began to creak and the sounds of ponies screaming ran through my mind.
With a gulp, I took one step forward, followed by another, and another. I very nearly jumped out of my skin as the door slammed shut behind me. I turned around, and once again, there was nopony there. That sound was loud though, and whatever had tried to break in earlier might have heard it.
With that thought in mind, I took cover beside the first door in the hallway and crouched down low, shutting off my lantern. I waited, and waited. It was so dark, and so cold. There were bugs everywhere and I swear the room was beginning to spin, but I waited. Nopony came by for some time, and so I concluded that it was safe.
I began to move forward, cautiously, when my hoof bumped into something. I relit the lantern and fell backwards with a scream as the sight of a disembodied hoof entered my field of vision! My heart was pounding, my entire body was shaking. The lantern had fallen to the ground and its light was cast on the hoof, casting an eerie shadow along the wall beside it. After taking a moment to calm down, I realised that the hoof had very strange when I had come into contact with it. It looked strange, too. I reached forward and poked it experimentally. It was made of wood!
With a relieved sigh, I picked up the lantern once more and rose to my hooves. Still, what is a wooden hoof doing in this hallway? I tried to open the door it was resting beside but to no avail. With that door locked, I moved on to the next one down. It too was locked, and the stairs only seemed to lead down to a flooded room of some kind. I couldn’t even remember if I knew how to swim or not, so I decided to check out the other two doors, first.
The third door along opened up, and I saw definitive proof that I wasn’t alone in this place; something was standing there, in the darkness, facing the wall opposite to me. It appeared to be equine in shape, and whoever it was was breathing so heavily that I could hear them from that room’s doorway.
I took a step forward and they turned around. The light from my lantern reveal their torn-up face, mostly kept together through the few stitches that were present, and the large, metallic brace forcing their jaw to remain open. It roared and charged forward, one of its forelegs replaced by a blade that it raised up as it picked up speed. I slammed the door and took a step back, unsure of what to do. It banged against the door and I gasped, turning right and running towards the final door in that hallway.
It was locked, of course. As I turned back around, I could see that the door was about to give. The stairs were my only choice remaining, so I bolted as fast as I could past the door and towards the stairs. I could hear the door finally exploding behind me and a blood-curdling roar made my stomach churn as I rounded the corner and descended the stairs. A chill down my spine told me that I had just escaped by the hair on my tail as I took a chance and plunged myself into the water below. From beneath the murky depths I could see that thing staring down at me. It stared for several seconds before turning around and slowly walking back up the stairs.
I could only hold my breath for so long before I had to come back up for air. Carefully climbing back up the stairs, I peered around the corner just in time to find that creature breaking down the door at the end of the hallway. It walked through, and a few seconds later, all was quiet.
“What’s down here?”
“The laboratory, of course. Well, it’s more like a factory.”
“A factory? I thought you said we would be conducting important, scientific research.”
“All in due time, my dear Twilight. All in good time.”
As the voices cleared from my head, I took a moment to sit down and catch my breath, and allow my heart to recover from its little recent episode. One of those voices was definitely my own, but the other one… I didn’t recognise. It was male, and it was cool, yet also slimy. It was clearly trying to sound reassuring, yet came off as anything but. It was… sarcastic? Mocking, maybe?
I peered down the hallway again to find that the creature still hadn’t come back. Something in the back of my mind was telling me that that doorway at the end of the hall would take me to the laboratory. Honestly, just a way out would have been nice, but using a nearby chair as a footstool to look outside of the window told me that that wasn’t an option. Not when the surrounding landscape was nothing but forests, and this house appeared to have been built on the very edge of a cliff, with this side facing said edge.
With no other direction to follow, I reluctantly followed my gut’s instinct and headed through the door. Inside was a lot of machinery that appeared to be on, as well as some kind of cage with two buttons to the side of it. I at least could remember what this was – an elevator. I pressed the button to go down and the machinery came to life, filling the room with noise pollution and steam. Within mere moments, the elevator was here. The doors opened for me and I stepped inside. I pressed the ‘G’ button, expecting to go down to the ground level. Instead, the ‘B1’ button lit up, and the steel prison began its dark descent. It was then that I had dared to ask myself the question: what had happened to that creature?
The elevator finally arrived. Wherever this ‘basement’ was, it was very deep underground. The doors opened, revealing a large, steel corridor. The lights were on and the sounds of pistons pumping and gears turning filled echoed around the enclosed space. There was only one way to go, so I followed it, making sure to turn off my lantern for the time being to save its fuel.
Boxes lined up the walls. I had no idea what was in the ones that were sealed, but they were labelled with words such as ‘EVIDENCE’, ‘SPARE PARTS’, ‘SHIPMENT’ and, most disturbing of all, ‘DANGEROUS’.
Along the ceiling were three different pipes running down the corridor. One was labelled ‘WATER’, another ‘WASTE’, and the final one ‘FEED’. What was being carried in the ‘FEED’ pipe was beyond me, and quite frankly, I had no desire to find out just what was being ‘fed’ down here.
I kicked an empty can on the floor as I was distracted by the pipes and stopped suddenly, cursing myself silently as the rolling of the can echoed throughout the corridor. I waited to see if anypony came out to check on the noise after all had fallen silent, and that’s when I realised that the loud noises of machinery that I had heard earlier had stopped. In fact, I had been travelling down that corridor for some time, and not once had I passed by a door or encounter a single piece of machinery. There weren’t any power cables or coal vats lying around, either. Did those sounds really exist in the first place?
After some more walking, I came across a dead end. The path onwards had been blocked by debris, from what I could only assume was the result of a cave-in. There was an open door to my left. I stepped through and found myself inside of an office, or at least that’s what it appeared to be beneath all of the scattered papers and… organs.
“Why do you need so many precautions?”
“Just a safety measure. I’m sure we’re safe, but we can’t take any chances now, can we? Just remember, the key goes into the lion statue and turns to the right.”
“What happens if I turn it the wrong way?”
“… Let’s just say that you should never have to find out.”
A key in the lion statue? The room was darker than the corridor, since the lights inside were broken, only flickering occasionally. I flicked on my lantern and look around, soon finding the lion statue above the fireplace. It was a small bust. To either side of it were two more busts, one a tiger, the other a bear.
… They were in the wrong order.
Regardless, I couldn’t find that key anywhere. I did however find a note.
I’m glad that you made it this far, but your troubles aren’t over just yet. Unfortunately the guard assigned down there takes his duties very seriously. He makes his rounds regularly, so I’d suggest you hide soon. He’ll be there soon. In fact, if you listen closely, you might just hear him…
‘Clang’, followed by ‘step, step, step’. Something was moving closer to my location. I looked around and found a small cupboard beside the door. It was small, perhaps too small, but my heart was racing and my brain was telling me to hide in whatever I could find. I somehow managed to just about fit inside that tiny cupboard, although the door wouldn’t close properly. I turned my lantern off and waited…
“This doesn’t feel right.”
I could hear the ‘guard’ as he entered the room, grunting and panting as though he were out of breath.
“Who’s in here?!”
I brought my forehooves to my mouth to prevent my stifled sobs from giving away my location. I could see a forehoof slam down in front of the cupboard, with a small key dangling down from a metal rod imbedded into burned flesh.
In order to get out of here, I needed that key. Slowly, I reached out my hoof, but yanked it back quickly as the ‘guard’ moved away. I heard the sound of doors creaking open, before slamming shut, followed by another grunt.
“Damn rats.”
Those horrible, blackened hooves passed by me again, and I reached out a little faster this time to grab the key, snatching it before the ‘guard’ had finished passing by and managing to remain hidden as he left the room. I waited until I heard the sound of a door closing in the distance, and then I crawled out of my small hiding spot.
There was no time to celebrate; I wasn’t safe with that ‘guard’ still lingering around. In fact, I wasn’t safe at all. I closed the door as silently as I could, biting my lip as the quiet clicking of the mechanism seemed that much louder all of a sudden, and then turned my attention towards the lion statue. I needed to turn the key to the right…
“Whoops! I meant the left!”
It would have been nice to have had that flashback sooner! Had it not been for the pile of debris forcing me to stand just to the left of the statue, I would have been skewered by falling spears!
I turned the key to the left and, that time, the entire fireplace slid aside, revealing a secret passage.
“Little rat!”
I gasped. I jumped. I ran. Whatever was behind me, chasing me, hunting me down with relentless determination, I did not want to risk slowing down in order to see it. I just ran. I jumped over toppled boxes, and ran. I pushed through slightly open doors, and ran. I darted around dark corners, fiddling with my lantern to grant myself some light, and ran. My pursuer grunted and cursed, and seemed to be getting closer with each obstacle that I had passed.
If I hadn’t come across that elevator when I did, I am sure I would have been caught. As I pushed the button to go up and turned around, my pursuer was but mere inches from my face, screaming and banging onto the caged doors as the small box that I was in descended even further into this hellish nightmare.
I almost didn’t care, though. For just that moment, for just the briefest of instances, I felt safe. That small box, sending me further into the lion’s den, was like a sanctuary where nothing bad could ever reach me, and for just a few short moments before I reached my next destination, I could breathe once more.
“This is the factory’s main source of power. These generators all work together to power our machine.”
“All this for one machine?”
“Watch your step, and don’t stand too close! If you fall into one of these ovens, it will be no joke!”
The elevator arrived at its destination, and the doors opened. It felt like an oven in there and was just as bright. It was louder than upstairs, which made sense considering all of the large, steel boxes pumping out steam as roaring fires filled their large, open mouths.
These must have been the generators that the voice in my head had mentioned. If I could turn them off, the machine should have stopped, is what I figured. The only question now was how to do that.
Looking behind one of the generators, I found a large lever that I guessed would deactivate it. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t move. It must have been locked in place, so I would have first needed to unlock it.
“Who’s there?”
I ducked down and peeked out from behind the generator. Another one of those grotesque ponies was making rounds in the distance, looking around each of the generators on the other side of the room. This one was wearing some kind of steel mask over his face, but I could tell by his voice that he was male.
His body had been shaved of all fur and tally marks adding up to seventy-five were etched into his skin, the most recent one still bleeding, indicating that it was fresh. Finally, his forehooves had been amputated around the cuffs and two long blades had been inserted into the bases of his forelegs.
Looking further down the room, I saw a separate room through a glass window. On the wall of that room, there were buttons, connected to gears and chains. It was something worth checking out, since there was little that I could have done there in that generator room.
I stepped a hoof out carefully, but the stallion turned around quickly and I’d only just managed to pull back in time. I didn’t hear any sounds of movement for some time, so I chanced a peek around the corner again…
“GOTCHA!”
I fell backwards onto my rump and unleashed a loud, sharp cry that thankfully stopped itself as fear clutched my throat. The stallion hadn’t found me, but a rat that was scuttling about in the middle of the room. He had stepped onto it with his bladed leg, killing swiftly.
“That’s dinner for tonight…”
He was going to eat it? I put my hooves to my mouth to avoid throwing up as I clambered back up to my hooves. The stallion turned and I took the chance to sneak over to the next generator. I wiped the sweat from my brow and took a quick break, before crawling over towards the third and fourth generators.
After taking a look around to ensure that it was safe, I scurried over towards the other room, gently closing the door just a bit and staying low to ensure that I would remain hidden.
The button on the wall had a plaque that read ‘SAFETY OVERRIDE’. My suspicions were confirmed and I pushed the button, but nothing happened. Some of the gears were missing, preventing the mechanism from functioning correctly.
“Thought I left this open.”
The door creaked and my fur stood on end. With haste, I hurried to position myself behind the door, allowing it be my cover after it had opened. As the stallion walked inside, I stealthily crept around the door and left the room. As I did so, my hoof hit something cold and hard behind me. I looked back to find one of the three gears that I was looking for just lying on the ground!
As the stallion inspected the wardrobe inside of the separate room, I scurried down the generator room and took shelter behind one of the hissing generators. There, I found a second cog, this one small enough for me to carry on my back. I lifted it up and placed it down atop my back, and then peeked around the generator to see where the stallion had gone to. I gulped as I realised that I had lost sight of him. I closed my eyes and tried to pick up on any sounds that he was making…
He was on the other side of the generator that I was hiding behind!
But I had no idea which side he was going to come around from. Steadily, I took a chance and tried to escape by crawling to my left. I heard a roar that made me fall back quickly, my heart pounding and my breathing picking up. There was no way that I could have crept past unnoticed.
I looked around for anything that I could use, but all I had on me at that time was my lantern.
…
With no other choice, I threw my lantern as far as I could. It crashed against another generator, catching the stallion’s attention as he charged over to investigate. Taking the chance that I had been given, I sneaked past the stallion and ducked behind another generator. There, I found the third gear! It was bigger than the second, but I could still carry it on my back.
The stallion seemed to have discovered the remains of my lantern, and he was searching the generators closest to him for any signs of life. While his back was turned, I limped my way back towards the other room, making sure to pick up the final gear along the way there.
Tired and feeling like my back was about to break, I considered simply lying down and taking a rest. But I knew that I didn’t have much time. I placed the three gears down by my side and looked back up at the mechanism. It seemed fairly simple, so I replaced the three gears into the appropriate slots and then hit the button once more. The mechanism was very loud as it was set into motioned, and a sense of relief washed over me as this meant I could finally shut off the generators.
It was not to last, though, as a sharp blade grabbed me by the neck and pulled me back. With a scream, I grabbed the blade with my forehooves, fighting through the pain as it dug into my skin and pushing the blade away long enough for me to spin around push the stallion back.
“TIME TO EAT!” the stallion exclaimed as he raised one of his bladed hooves.
I pushed back the stallion and charged through the door, entering the room with the generators. My goal was the elevator, which should have been able to offer me some protection! I froze as I noticed that the elevator wasn’t even there! Or at least, it wasn’t for long. It arrived only moments later, with two guests inside of it. The two ponies from earlier, one screaming in pain and the other roaring madly as the two charged towards my position.
And so, here I am. Danger on both sides, nowhere left to run, and nowhere left to hide. No idea what’s going on. No clue as to why I’m here, or by whose will I am to die in this way. All that I can do… is cover my head and wait for death.
Discord chuckled as he unfurled a scroll and spawned a pair of reading glasses to wear.
“It has come to my attention that, whenever Equestria is in danger, the task falls to myself and my friends in order to protect it. Or more correctly, the powers of the Elements of Harmony that we represent.
“During my most recent battle with Tirek, I had an epiphany: what would happen if anything were to happen to prevent us from using these powers in the future? For example, if the six of us were separated, or worse…
“I want to protect Equestria, but I don’t even know if I alone possess the strength to do so. That is why I am seeking your help. That is why I want you to throw together the attached scenario, to determine just how far I can go when I am on my own, and at my most vulnerable.
“I must know if I have what it takes.
“Your friend, Princess Twilight Sparkle.”
Discord banished the scroll and the glasses and looked down at the shivering mare beneath her. “Well then,” he said, bringing his paws up, ready to snap them, “I suppose I had better end this little test. This is as far as you go, my friend.” With a snap, both Discord and Twilight disappeared into a flash of light.