4: Tracks
The Ponyville-Appleloosa line of the Ponyville express comprised over five-hundred thousand railway ties, each carved of solid, sturdy lumber over sixty years ago. The rails themselves had been forged with pride, every length made of high-quality steel in the mills of Detrot before being hauled south on the very tracks they would come to lengthen. The innumerable tons of materials had been painstakingly assembled by hundreds of the strongest, sturdiest earth ponies from all over Equestria.
As every other grand project of its kind, the railway had once more brought the ponies of the land closer together, uniting kindred spirits and forming friendships that would endure the distances. It was not out of capricious fancy that the locomotive that would travel its length for the next six decades had been named “the Friendship Express.”
Other than linking two budding communities, the tracks had opened the way for many avenues of both commerce and diplomacy. The buffalo tribes of the south were suddenly made readily accessible to merchants and diplomats from Equestria, allowing their rich culture and magnificent crafts to spread to new heights of popularity and respect.
Had it not been for those tracks, both Ponyville and Appleloosa would have been markedly smaller and less diverse towns. Indeed, after their long months of labor, many of the workers from the far corners of Equestria had chosen to settle in the growing hamlets. The fresh air, the open space, the easygoing and tame weather –at least in Ponyville’s case- had won over their hearts, kindling their desire to see for themselves how their work would bear fruit over the years. The commendable and outstanding hospitality of the Apple family had also swayed many an opinion, a tremendous factor in attracting new settlers.
The line closely followed the old road, an ancient pathway that had once been one of the only links between Equestria and its distant southern neighbors. Worn from the centuries as well as from the hooves of travelers long past, the old road still provided an alternate and more scenic route southward. Both pathways meandered in a rough parallel, the old road often swaying and swerving to avoid many of the obstacles that the railway simply plowed through. On two separate occasions, the two crossed; once where the old road climbed up a hill through which the railway tunneled, and another point where the hoofpath hugged the banks of a river at the bottom of a shallow gorge that the train soared over thanks to a proud, modern bridge.
Over the miles, both paths traversed varying environments, from the cool, temperate climate near Ponyville to the desert of Appleloosa, and the dry plains in between. Coming from Ponyville, one could think that a sudden drought was ravaging the land, thinning the forests in a matter of hours and making way to wide, flat plains of golden grass. Then the grass would slowly vanish, leaving only rocks and pebbles to see until they were buried as well under growing dunes and windswept dusty flats. From the opposite facing, travelers often felt like witnesses to the rebirth of the world, seeing sand and desolation morph into lush greenery and hospitable havens.
For the past few days, Spike, Scootaloo and Rarity had caught glimpses of the railway snaking around the landscape. It would sometimes hug the side of the road, clinging to its every curve as if glued, and abruptly take off, twisting away to reaches unseen. It was, of course, they and the road they traveled on whom would twist and veer away from the railway, as the twin lines of steel had been laid out in a much more efficient and straightforward fashion than the ancient road of packed earth. Still, the railway would always catch up, returning to their side after a few hours apart.
They had often wondered about the fate of the train itself as they went, as they had not seen it for many months. As with most everything else in Equestria, train service had been abruptly cut off when The Signal had arrived. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine some horrible accident had stopped the locomotive in its literal tracks, wherever it might have been located at the time.
But to see it in person was still quite a shock to the trio.
Five days after leaving Ponyville, the three had come across the Friendship Express.
They had been traversing endless plains of long, dried grass for almost two days by then, thankful for the cover the blades provided. The perfectly flat land and the endless sea of head-height grass had meant that it was quite impossible to be seen by anything that didn’t fly, and unicorns were thankfully incapable of such. They had not seen a single soul in that time.
Earlier that morning, they had reached a low plateau, the road climbing the side of a short, steep cliff. The railway had been out of sight at the time, far to the east to possibly avoid having to cleave a trench through the solid rock wall in order to scale to its summit. From the edge of the drop, they had looked back on the road they had come from; from the grassy plains at their hooves to the distant verdant hills far to the north, to the location where they imagined Ponyville to be, hidden beyond the horizon.
A sight much more inviting than the road ahead.
The top of the plateau was barren, only a few patches of yellow grass peppering the surface. Reddish-brown dust and dull stones made up the rest of the landscape, quietly absorbing the sun’s heat in the windless expanse. A few boulders loomed, casting their shadows on what scarce living plants lingered; some sort of short, thin vine.
With the sun beating down on them they had paused under the shade of one such boulder for the mid-day food and the guidance of the signal detector. For having seen it in action a few times already, Scootaloo swore it seemed to stabilize just a bit faster than before. Spike wasn’t fully convinced, though he had to admit that, in theory, increased proximity to one of The Signal’s sources would have that effect. Still, there remained much distance to travel, as the needle stubbornly refused to change its orientation by more than one or two degrees each day.
With their lunch over, they had resumed their journey.
Their legs were stained from the dust their steps disturbed, giving them the look of ancient rusted pipes. Rarity had not complained, though it had evidently been bothering her. She had made her mind days before though; she had promised herself that she would keep the whining to a minimum. She was one of the lucky few after all, and, as such, had no right or reason to complain. A great number of ponies were suffering much more than her, more than she could imagine. Too many ponies, in fact, which was one of the many reasons she was doing this in the first place.
Besides, loudly bemoaning her woes in a high-pitched squeal in the otherwise silent desert was a surefire way to attract unwanted attention.
Hours later, the railway had come back into view, forewarned by its steely silvery glint in the rusted wasteland. Not long after, they had begun perceiving a low, persistent rumble. A few minutes after, a dark gash could be seen in the distance, as well as a strange cluster of triangular shapes.
And now they stood on the edge of the gash, a gorge, hearing the rumble of rushing water down below, and looking at the tangled remains of what used to be a train and a bridge.
The rail line itself showed signs of damage well before the chasm, the steel twisted and slashed, bent and lifted off of the ties. Enormous gashes in the dirt showed the path of wayward cars as they had tumbled away, raking even the old road into an unrecognizable stretch of upturned rocks.
The bridge itself fared no better: only a single section remained in the middle of the chasm, turned sideways on its twisted support. It swayed gently in the breeze blowing through the gorge, emitting sporadic metallic grunts audible over the sound of the river below. It looked like a great tree of rusted steel had grown from the pit, standing tall on its trunk of bent metal and tattered beams. How it was even still standing was a mystery.
It seemed the train had derailed just before the bridge, dragging it and itself down into the ravine with the force of its momentum. The far wall showed signs of impacts, bits of metal planted into the cliffside and rough stones jutting out, yet to be eroded to the smooth finish of the rest of the rock face. Raw wounds in the stone attesting the force of the crash.
“There’s no way we can jump that,” Scootaloo pointed out.
“There has to be a way to the other side,” Spike retorted while cautiously approaching the edge to take a look down below.
“Couldn’t we look for another passage further along the stream?” Rarity was eyeing the chasm with worry, rooted in place at the edge of the road’s first scars. “Be careful, Spike!”
Scootaloo retrieved a pair of binoculars from her numerous pockets and scanned the gorge’s outline all the way to both sides of the horizon. Apart from a few hills to the west, she could see nothing different along the entire length of the ravine.
“That could take us days,” she said dejectedly, “maybe even more than a whole week, and that’s if we even find another way across. I don’t see anything close to that from here.”
“Well you said yourself that we are at a dead end, what else are we going to do?”
“I think there could be a way down there,” Spike stood on a flat stone on the very edge of the precipice, pointing down. The two ponies carefully stepped up next to him, warily glancing at the drop below. The far wall stood bathed in the rusty-brown glow of the sunlight reflected from the wall they stood on, erasing the shadows into a monochrome tint of dull orange swallowing the depths. “Look at the road.”
The turn had been scratched away in the crash, but it was plain to see that the old road bifurcated once it reached the cliff, headed away from them and the broken railway. It swerved to the right and followed the edge for some distance before turning to the left and engaging upon a slope. Hugging the cliff face, it then continued its way downward, passing just below their hooves as it sunk into the depths of the gorge. Much further to their left, they could see another stretch of the path climbing back up on the opposite wall.
“There has to be a bridge or something down there.”
“Can’t say I can see it from up here, though.”
Scootaloo had already set off on the path.
“Well, let’s go find out!”
She jumped over the edge, buzzing her wings to slow her descent as she took a shortcut. She waited for them as they caught up to her the normal way, before entering the shade of the opposite side’s cliff. The shadow felt nice, easing the heat of having been bombarded with sunlight for hours. The few feet of elevation making an enormous difference in the temperature of the air itself. The gorge held shade, moisture and wind, a haven of comfort in the arid wastes. They all sighed in unspoken relief at the sudden comfort as they walked down the slope. The sound of rushing water was much louder, reverberating on the walls and echoing all around them.
The feeling of well-being brought by the new climate was short-lived, however, as the new perspective revealed to them the full extent of the wreckage.
Down below them, in the water, lay piles of twisted metal and boulders, some parts charred black. Skeletal frames of rusting steel spiraled upwards, their ends resting against the scratched walls they had scarred in their descent. In the depths of the clear waters, the dark shapes of yet more debris and wrecked train cars rested. One car had found itself wedged between the walls and had gouged twin streaks in the narrowest part of the cliffs before coming to a rest, apparently suspended in mid-air. Up ahead, the last surviving pillar of the train’s bridge stood, a massive mound of stone and debris leaning against it.
The water had risen, the wreckage serving as a dam, swallowing parts of the road before them. The sound of rushing water came from there, just beyond the steel pillar. One of the cars had landed flush on the road in front of them, before apparently having a massive boulder land on the end closest to them. The result was an easy-to-climb ramp emerging from the shallow water, rising up where the road would have kept descending further below the surface.
“I don’t like this.” Spike said as they moved closer. Whatever may have been the way to the other side, it currently seemed either buried under the wreckage, or lying just beyond it. Just beyond an accidental, unstable, rusting and decaying dam holding a river’s worth of water.
The pillar groaned under the pressure of a sudden gust of wind. The top swayed, dropping minuscule specks of dust and metal flakes below.
Scootaloo hopped over the portion of the road submerged in shallow water, landing on the crushed train car with a metallic clang. She cautiously walked under the train car wedged between the walls some five feet above and stepped up to the front, looking beyond the obstruction of the wreck.
“There’s a bridge!” she gasped, pointing a hoof up ahead. Her expression darkened however, as she added: “But you might want to see that.”
The white mare and the dragon followed, hopping over the water as well and walking up the metallic incline of the train car’s roof. They stopped at the edge, observing, their faces taking on the same grim expression.
There was indeed a bridge. The road lay well below their hooves, still hugging the wall for a dozen feet before turning right to engage over the chasm on an ancient, sturdy stone arch. To their right however, the wreckage stretched across the gorge, containing most of the river except for a rushing jet of water erupting from a cleft in the dam. The powerful stream washed directly across the surface of the bridge with the force of a raging waterfall. The bottom of the gorge stood about thirty feet below them, encased within steep cliffs and continuously swept by the running water.
“How are we supposed to cross that bridge?”
“I don’t think it’s even possible, Spike” Scootaloo pointed with her hoof, adding “Just look at how the hoof-rails have been washed clean off. That water has some major punch.”
“We’d get swept down the gorge in an instant.” Rarity slumped to her belly, her eyes still on the water-swept arch.
Spike stared at the bridge, running every and any scenario that would allow them to safely cross it in his head. Jump over? Unlikely. Weigh themselves down and traverse the jet? As if that wasn’t too stupid to even consider. Pick up some loose wreckage and assemble a makeshift bridge over the existing bridge? Both parts of that plan were insanely reckless and idiotic.
“Hay, check this out!”
Spike and Rarity turned around to see Scootaloo pointing her hoof at a large steel beam, bent and twisted, one of its ends stuck among the wreckage mere inches from where they stood. The other end leaned away from them, coming to a rest on the side of the wedged train car. Once she saw that the others were following her hint, Scootaloo moved her leg to point further along the car, where it connected with the far wall. A small, narrow ridge could be seen just under the broken vehicle, traveling along the cliff until it loomed just over the road on the other side of the gorge.
“You simply cannot be serious, dear. You want us to walk on this?”
As if to second Rarity’s objection, the surviving section of rail looming far above swayed on its twisted pillar with a loud groan and showered them again with a few more flecks of dust and paint chips. Something made a crunching noise from deep within the dam, sending a small plume of smoke upwards through the wreckage. After another low grinding sound emitted from some underwater part, the dam returned to silence.
“The way I see it, it’s either that or taking the round trip around an entire river.”
“Let’s just try it,” Spike said as he stepped forward to inspect the beam. “We don’t have time for detours and we can’t just run around getting lost every time something stands in our way. If this thing held for over three months it’s probably here to stay.”
“Wait!” Scootaloo interrupted as she blocked the dragon’s path, “Let me go first!”
“Why?”
Rarity was the one to answer that time: “It’s only logical, Spike. She’s much lighter than either of us. We should definitely go in increasing order of weight. If the heaviest goes first and makes everything collapse, no one will have gotten to the other side.”
Scootaloo nodded, “Yeah, what she said. Besides, even if that dam held for that long, that thing here hasn’t spent those months fighting against an entire river.” She turned around, first gazing at the barrier of stones and metal below, before letting her eyes wander up the beam to the object of her argument. “For all we know, it can barely hold its own weight and is just waiting for a butterfly to land on it to slide all the way down into the water.”
Seeing as there were no more objections to her argument, the orange filly set one hoof on the steel beam, hesitating for a moment before putting another. The rusted metal didn’t collapse or shift, all three travelers holding their breaths while the pegasus stood over the gap between the train car’s roof and the former support. The seconds passed in silence, no movement to report among the wreckage. With a small gulp, utterly inaudible in the rumble of rushing water below, she pushed with her hind legs, hopping over to the beam and putting her entire weight on it at once.
Nothing.
The group let out a collective sigh of relief, Spike wiping away beads of sweat from his forehead.
The young pegasus began the ascent of the leaning pillar, finding easy purchase on its rough, rusted surface. The train car had been flipped on its side in its fall, and the end of the beam bit into the roof at the point of contact in the middle of a large dent. Scootaloo placed her front hooves over the edge of the vehicle and carefully hopped onto it as well. Once again, nothing made any indication of moving, every part of the accidental bridge remaining undisturbed.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she slowly made her way across.
“Do you think it’s stable?” Spike asked.
“It doesn’t look too wobbly, but I’d rather not test it out any more than we need to, you know?”
“Yeah, don’t go around jumping up and down on it!”
“Don’t worry about that.”
The filly safely reached the far side of the ravine, hopping down to the rocky ridge lining the cliff wall. She turned around to wait for the others to cross, shouting “Your turn now, Spike!”
With hesitant steps, the dragon approached the steel path. From the very edge of the crushed vehicle he stood on, the beam was within arm’s reach. He reached a claw and scratched at the rust. It wasn’t yet running too deep, exposing lines of shimmering metal only a few hair’s widths away. The piece of steel was still sturdy despite the extensive damage that had bent it and shaved most of the paint that once covered it.
He jumped on it.
Digging his claws into the metal, he clung to the beam for a moment, anticipating the inevitable collapse, the thunderous roar of the entire wreck sliding from under him and burying him under the weight of the gorge’s crumbling walls.
Nothing. The rush of water splashing over the olden bridge behind him, the quiet howl of the breeze streaming around his body. A few scrawny birds watching the scene unfold with occasional squawks, as if commenting amongst one another, discussing the events.
He opened his eyes half a second before Scootaloo’s call of “Come on, slowpoke, snap out of it!”
From his right, the naturally soothing voice of the white unicorn worded encouragements in an appeasing tone. “Go on, Spike, you can do it.”
Yes, right. Time to go. His claws unclamped the steel, moving forward along its length. He dared not stand upright, instead crawling along to ensure he could not slip or lose his balance. Both were impossible in his current position, proceeding forward with slow movements and careful grips. Had he possessed a longer tail, he would have wrapped it around the broken support, even further likening him to some sort of chameleon advancing on a branch.
The way to the topmost surface of the wedged compartment was almost an afterthought, lost in the relief of having more space around his feet than there was between them and his head. He stood up, adjusting his bag and the objects therein on his back. The broken, empty windows of the vehicle lined up in front of him, evoking the image of a ladder stretched over a chasm by mountain climbers on some faraway snowy peak. Some bits of fractured glass remained in the frames, and beyond those jagged teeth the interior of the train car housed only silent darkness. Soot and scorch marks lined the edges, as well as most of the cracks where the walls had been scratched or split open by the crash.
Fire had once filled the cabin.
He stepped forward, carefully peeking into the darkened interior. Indistinct shapes seemed to hover within, perched high above the distant foaming water and rocks of the dam visible through the opposite windows. A single… object could be seen silhouetted against the animated background, too shadowed to make out in any significant detail. It could have been a piece of luggage, a structural fragment, or something more… organic.
Spike averted his eyes, trying to convince himself that the object wasn’t a burned, rotting hoof, that he wasn’t walking on a mass grave.
How many bodies were buried beneath him?
The wedged car responded to the regular tap of his feet by bouncing up and down, a slight bobbing motion keeping rhythm with his steps. Halfway through, a loud metallic bang rang out from behind him, a sound not unlike an old kitchen appliance being struck with a hammer, or a thick, wide lead pipe colliding with some unseen obstacle. He immediately spun around to spot the source of the sound, but saw nothing. The bridge-car remained as motionless as him while every soul present held their breath, waiting for something, anything to happen that would hint at what had just made that noise.
Still nothing. The lone pillar gently lurched high above, only a faint whisper of grating metal to be heard from it.
Spike hurried along, going as fast as he possibly could while still taking every measure he could think of to ensure a safer passage. He adjusted his steps to be as fluid and smooth as possible to reduce their impacts, crouching down lower to gain better balance. Once he reached the other side, he threw himself to the ridge, landing in the arms of Scootaloo, who had thought ahead and moved to intercept him.
She let him gently drop to the ground, both youths then turning to look at the grown mare still remaining on the other side.
Although, she wasn’t actually there anymore. After a few well-timed gasps, they began calling her name in confusion and fear. Their cries were almost immediately answered as Rarity came running up the flattened train car, her legs dripping wet with a thin, clear reddish mud.
“What? Did something happen? Why are you screaming?”
“What were you doing down there?” Scootaloo asked irritatingly, frustrated by the sudden fear she now knew had been unfounded.
Rarity began wringing the muddy water out of her coat, running her hooves all over her skin to wipe away the dirty liquid.
“I was washing myself a bit. This red dirt is just horrible on my coat,” she said, ignoring how Scootaloo rolled her eyes. In a whisper they couldn’t hear, she added: “I don’t want to die filthy.”
She eventually picked up her saddlebags and hefted them to her back. She took a step towards the fallen beam, her leg stopping in mid-air as the pillar groaned again in the wind. She waited for a bit, looking up at the threatening ruin above as it visibly swayed back and forth, teetering over her head.
With a beep breath, she closed her eyes and set one hoof on the steel beam, lightly pawing at it until she was certain her appendage wouldn’t slip. Another soon joined it, further ahead, still unsure and fidgeting. The third and fourth followed. The white mare was now standing fully on the beam, carefully balanced, her eyes still closed in concentration or fear. The sloshing of water whispered in the silence.
In five short steps, she ascended the rusty incline and reached the flat surface of the train. It groaned lightly as she set hoof on it, but otherwise remained motionless. Her movements were slow and hesitant as she stepped forth, crossing the gorge on the precarious catwalk. She kept her head pointed forward, staring straight ahead in concentration, every methodical step bringing her closer to where she could at last relax.
The pillar groaned and swayed again.
A gust of wind swept through the gorge, making Rarity instinctively crouch on the train’s carcass. The pillar above lurched, filling the air with a stuttering, grinding sound of crunching metal. Some loud, dull percussion sounded from above, making all three travelers look up just in time to see a large, terribly heavy piece of steel plummeting down. A section of the bridge’s upper structure had been shaken loose, tumbling through the air in near-perfect silence.
Rarity’s scream was nearly lost in the deafening impact of the piece of debris as it slammed into the wedged train mere feet from where she stood. Glass shards from the window frames were sent flying upwards while the wall bent, and the piece of steel bounced away wildly to end its course into the pile of rocks and metal below.
The glass rained down, plinking on the metal, adding its own clatter to the lingering echo of the debris’ fall. Rarity stood wide-eyed, legs spread apart as she panted in terror, paying no mind to the bits of glass sprinkling themselves onto her mane. She instead could only notice the slow, rhythmic beat traveling up her hooves, its tempo accelerating as a low grinding noise began emanating from behind her. The metallic whine turned into a loud thump when the train car suddenly sunk a few inches lower. A single “pop” was heard, soon followed by a minuscule twinkle of steel. The mare looked down to see, between her shaking hooves, a loose rivet spinning on the wall she stood on.
Peeking behind, she could see the rusted beam she had climbed from had punched through the roof of the train and was now biting into the horizontal wall as the wreck attempted to slide even lower down the gorge. Either the roof would soon split from the wall, or the beam was about to rip free of the carcass altogether.
She turned her head back forward, noticing Scootaloo pinning Spike on the ground to prevent him from rushing back up on the vehicle.
“RUN!” the filly screamed, “JUST RUN!”
Another rivet snapped behind her, hitting and stinging her ankle. She was sprinting before she even realized it herself, her hooves banging against the metal wall as she ran for her life. She galloped, she jumped, she leapt across the length of the train, tackling the stone wall with very little restraint as the metal groaned once again behind. The makeshift catwalk slid even further in a shriek, the steel beam still propping it up curving under the weight, more rivets snapping off and peppering the cliff faces with their impacts.
The entire dam rumbled, screaming with the howls of tortured metal and stones cracking under pressure, groaning and grinding and screeching while the teetering pillar shook. The sounds weakened, losing their volume gradually while the three hurried along the rocky ridge.
And then nothing.
Their run slowed down, and they halted, fearfully looking back over their shoulders at the stabilizing wreck, its silence deafening after the fury of mere moments ago. Loose stones tumbled into the river, their dull clatter lost in the sound of the rushing water. A final rivet popped, arching nearly to the top of the gorge before plunging directly into the river with an inaudible splash.
One of the birds squawked in the silence.
They quietly hopped down to the road, observing the wreckage once they had reached the relative safety of solid ground. The wedged compartment still stood in its precarious aerial position, the edge of its roof torn open into a black scowl by the steel beam stretching the wall away.
“That,” Scootaloo whispered, as if afraid her voice would make the wreck collapse, “was close.”
The others didn’t respond. It was, after all, a fairly obvious affirmation. Rarity held a frantically shaking hoof to her chest, trying to catch her breath, while Spike watched her with worry. The pillar groaned softly above.
The orange filly eyed it with caution. “We should leave before this gets any worse.” With the immediate danger passed, her eyes wandered downwards, taking in the sight of the ancient drowning bridge. The water splashing on its surface radiated outwards in a wide, flowing puddle, caught by the remains of the old stone hoofrails to be brought to the edge of the road as a small stream.
“But we should fill our canteens first.”
She bent down to gather more water for the road ahead, Spike soon following her lead. He took it upon himself to do it for Rarity as well, the mare still visibly shaken.
Their reserves once more full, the trio made their way up the road. Their steps were measured and methodical, both to avoid stepping on the multitude of rocks and debris littering the path and to forcefully bring themselves to a calmer disposition. Every step they took away from the sporadically groaning ruins eased their nerves, until they at last emerged in the waning sunlight, crossing the threshold where the ravine’s walls muffled the sounds within to a mere whisper.
They kept walking south, eager to leave the train and its ghosts behind.
Only minutes after they left the shade of the gorge, a loud booming noise erupted behind them, loud enough to be heard from the depths of the ravine, loud enough to send tremors through their legs. They turned in time to witness what was left of the ruined structure of the bridge swaying and falling to the side, seconds before a thunderous clash sent a monumental plume of smoke and dust sailing high above the gorge. All was then silent once more.
The three exchanged looks of terror and nothing else, each knowing full well that they didn’t need words to understand what had just happened, and how close they had been to it.
They walked a little faster from then on.
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Next chapter: Our heroes send a letter!
Oh my fricken gosh this chapter made my heart stop. I was certain Rarity was a goner! Wonderfully written! Good job!
Fun fact: my first idea was to have the wedged car start to slide and fall without getting hit by the piece of falling beam, but then I thought "hey, that's basically calling her fat! that's just mean!"
2992751
(joke)
Woohoo! Finally a comment! Thank you! I was so lonely...
2994131
Rofl, nice! :D That would have been scary too. Poor Rarity.
LOL
It is nice to get comments. :D
You have a way with dark stories and words.. but I just can't keep reading. Its too dark for me, I would ONLY feel comfortable reading if I knew the ending I guess. Sounds dumb I know, but a good story to me is like a good movie or game, I feel a connection with them. Sucked into their worlds and right now I don't want to be part of this grim dark messed up Equestria. You are not a bad writer of course and you clearly did your job by making it dark, but I guess I'm just a wuss heh. Good luck on your story.
3126674
Huh. Wow. That's a first.
For what it's worth, I'm sorry to have driven you away. Maybe you could check my fine selection of very silly stuff instead?
Also, a fair warning for anyone who might share your feelings: yes, this will probably get worse before it gets better, but do note the absence of the "tragedy" tag. This will get better, somehow.
Its fine, I'll check out your silly stuff. And probably come back to this when its finished. But yeah to me, my imagination grows the strongest while I read. And it went way too vivid on this one.
3127613
Wait..
If the rails follows the most foward way while the path takes the longer one,
Why din't they follow the rails instead of the path whit the Friendship Express not functional?
Pegasi are weightless. Scoolatoo was never in any possible risk.
4336849
The hassle of walking along the extremely uncomfortable, uneven surface of a railway is not worth the few hours of travel it would have saved.
I like your attention to detail.
This story makes me scared to go to sleep at night, good job sir.
Well, that's their first physical obstacle that they had to overcome.
"with a beep breath"
You know what this reminds me of?
The Last of Us.
The game of its time, a gaming masterpiece capable of shredding hearts to pieces. High praise indeed.
Now THAT, is how you write a tense scene! Expertly made wordsmith! Can`t wait to see more!