Sky’s hooves felt like she had tied lead weights to them with how easily she moved. She was about to break into the house that Alexandria’s first ever visitors were using for their private business. She was about to betray their trust and possibly reveal them as some sort of awful, homicidal murderers. More likely, they would be guilty of nothing, and she was going to destroy their relationship with Alexandria.
That, or she wouldn’t be caught, and she would feel horrible and guilty every time she was around them. Lying, that she could do. But breaking into somebody’s home? That was something else.
“Nobody’s in there?” she asked for the tenth time, crouching behind a car parked on the side of the road and glancing sidelong at the mysterious structure.
There was absolutely nothing to set the house apart from any other on this street. At the edge of town, they were perhaps half a block apart, separated by long and winding gravel paths. She could get no closer without coming out into the open and being obvious to all around. This was the point of no return.
The house itself was a tad run-down, with tin sheeting on parts of the roof and plywood tacked to some of the windows. It was the last place any of them would look for salvage (though raiding houses still seemed silly when retail stores had everything you needed without needing to walk around so much).
“Yes. I was just in the library a few minutes ago. They’re all there or nearby. Riley is watching the door from the third story of the bank, she’ll tell me the instant any of them leave. You’ve got the getaway car close, right?”
The “getaway car” was actually a rusty ATV converted for ponies to drive and towing a trailer filled with salvaged food. It was her pretext to be in the area if she was caught nearby, though she didn’t expect to need it.
“I have it.”
“Good. If we need to run, we can run for a few days and wait for everyone else to get back. It’s a shame Riley can’t fly out and meet us, but… it shouldn’t be that big a deal. You get in, tell me what you see, and get out. We’ll pretend nothing happened until everyone else gets here.”
“Yeah.” She stepped out and cantered up to the house. She was wearing her boots today, specifically to muffle the sound of her hooves on the cement. Sky spread her hooves as she moved without really meaning to, as though she might take off and escape from the task her friends required of her.
Sky stopped on the edge of the house, not actually going in. She didn’t even bother with the front door, pacing around it and searching for ways she might use to get inside. At Adrian’s instruction, she would avoid using any of the doors, in case the newcomers had taken measures to protect them. Not that she expected the alarm to be on or anything, with as far as the house was from their “electrical grid.”
Sky eventually found her means of ingress: a secure-looking basement window hidden behind some tall grass and an overgrown hedge. She peeked inside, but it was either caked with dust or else intentionally blacked-out, because she could see nothing of the room within. She didn’t break it open. As tempting as it was to shatter windows with a hoof, she didn’t like the idea of needing stitches afterwards, or leaving damage that could be easily traced. It would be better to feel guilty later than to leave some sign that the house had been invaded.
The window wasn’t locked. She wedged a crowbar into the opening, then very slowly edged it open. It took a little force, but she only used her mouth. Any more, and she might crack it. Light spilled into the darkness of the basement, though it wasn't enough for her light-dependent eyes to get a good look. She switched on her headlamp, then wedged herself into the opening.
It would’ve been too small for a human, but Sky wasn’t human anymore. She made it easily, spreading her wings for a glide that ate the distance and set her down almost soundlessly. It felt amazing to use her magic that way, though she couldn’t have easily described what it felt like or how she did it. She called upon the winds, channeling her intention through her wings in the sure knowledge that she would not fall. They hadn’t disappointed her yet.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom even with the help of the flashlight. As they did, the basement came into focus. She prepared herself for the guilt of invading the home of some innocent ponies.
It never came.
Equestrian runes covered everything, written onto every surface with black paint. The floor was almost totally clear, and within it intricate designs had been sketched. They meant nothing to Sky, though she was fairly certain Joseph would’ve been able to tell more. She couldn’t commit everything to memory, but she snatched a photo of a single diagram on one of the walls that seemed self-contained.
Aside from the runes, there were books and papers of various kinds, all printed in the standard Equestrian size (larger than a paperback, but smaller than many hardcover textbooks), and bound with the standard faux-leather covers. Their titles were all in the same runes, and Sky snapped a few pictures there too, along with the room as a whole.
“Are you hearing me?” she whispered into the still-broadcasting radio. Thinking about the earpiece made it itch.
Static, sounding sorta like his voice. “Right, underground. Gimmie a sec. If you can hear me, I can’t hear anything you’re saying through the ground. I’m gonna try to find a way out.” She might be able to glide down, but she couldn’t yet fly inside such cramped spaces. Stacking things up to the window did not sound like a good way to get out without getting noticed.
Sky took in the intricate diagrams from a higher vantage atop the stairs, looking down at the paint. It was impossible not to feel uncomfortable when looking at a pattern like that. As she looked, a sense of drowsiness pressed briefly on her consciousness. Why not lie down and rest? She’d gotten up quite early! She’d worked hard on the farm today! A few minutes lying down wouldn’t be a problem! The ponies would be at the library for hours more, she could spare a few.
But as she closed her eyes, she felt something else in the blackness behind her eyelids. A presence was there, something very much like a nightmare.
Sleep, the hatred said. Now.
The command had an impact exactly the opposite of what the speaker probably intended. She bolted in sudden fear, jerking awake and galloping up the rest of the stairs as though the enmity of an entire nation was on her heels. She didn’t care how much noise she made, didn’t think about anything except how to get away as fast as she possibly could. This desire was so strong it felt almost as alien to her as the voice, as though it was itself an alien compulsion.
She pounded up the stairs, practically kicking the door off its hinges in her rush to get away from the runes. She didn’t scream, though she knew the house had to be empty and that nopony would hear her even if she did. Empty of people maybe, but not the strange form the runes had given her mind. There was a nightmare in this house, and she wanted very much to be out of it.
The strange impression faded almost as soon as it had come. By the time she made it onto the ground floor, she found herself struggling to remember what had frightened her so much about the basement in the first place. Curious, she looked around, as though expecting to find a comically-labeled canister of “fear-gas” following over her shoulder.
Instead, she got a good look at the interior of the house. From the inside, it was easy to see none of the windows were actually broken, that they had been boarded up to keep out of sight of the outside. With a few more seconds to investigate, she saw the walls here too were covered.
Not runes this time, or else she might’ve started running all over again. No, this time it was maps. They weren’t particularly detailed, most could easily have come from gas stations or chambers of commerce in any number of cities. Most depicted very large areas, though her eyes were drawn to one that was, unmistakably, that of Alexandria itself, back when it had still been called Paris. She moved closer, even as her ears were assaulted by a sudden wave of sound.
Adrian’s voice. “Sky, you’ve got to get out of there! Something happened! It’s like you startled the hornet’s nest or something! All of them, all at once, they’re all leaving the library! I don’t know what happened, but they know! Get out right now, they’re coming! Forget the alibi, just fly! Fly as far and as fast as you can!”
She didn’t, not for a few more seconds. She saw the map of her new home, marked as it was with a regular search pattern. About half the houses were marked off with red ‘X’s, while many others remained blank. What did it mean?
She had no way of knowing that a few seconds of delay would already make her too late. There was a loud crack and a momentary throbbing in her ears, along with a flash of white light. Suddenly, the empty house wasn’t so empty at all. A pony stood there, magic rising from his horn like the smoke of a recently fired pistol.
Ryan seemed momentarily dazed from the effort of his spell, because he staggered for a second, eyes unfocused. Long enough for Sky to start running, bolting past her towards the door.
Ryan’s weakness didn’t last long enough to reach it. She felt something around her back hoof, a sharp force pulling back and up. It broke her stride, yanking her into a tumble that ended in a painful collision with an empty bookshelf. Her headlamp cracked against her head, though the LED resisted the shock and didn’t break.
“This is most unexpected.” Ryan still seemed to be panting. She was still dazed from the impact, and the light upstairs wasn’t much better than the basement. How the hell could the unicorn even see her without doing a light spell or something? The pressure on her leg vanished almost as quickly as it had come, however. Evidently the unicorn’s magical reserves had largely been exhausted in the impressive effort the teleport had cost. “Cloudy Skies, right?”
Sky rolled over, readying her hooves to protect herself. Adrian’s voice screamed from the floor, where her earpiece had fallen in the impact. She was too stunned to reattach it. She nodded, trying to fight back the fear that was threatening to paralyze her.
She knew the worst thing she could do was to stay. She might be able to escape a single unicorn. If the crowd from the library arrived, there would be no getting away.
Ryan kept his distance, eyes wary of her hooves. “You need to relax, Cloudy Skies.” Again she felt pressure on her brain, like the weight of sleep deprivation making her eyes sore and her mind sluggish. “Take a deep breath.”
She did.
“We need to talk about how you ended up in here.”