Black and White

by Dakilladj

Chapter 5

Artyom's POV

Relaxing. One of the many words to describe my current surroundings. Tranquil, peaceful, void of any distractions. I knew I was sleeping, and it felt amazing. The darkness was welcoming, and I relaxed in its embrace.

When was the last time I had actually slept? Not counting napping, but actual rest during my journey? I couldn’t remember, but then again, I had had difficulty with memory ever since I was a child. I didn’t think I had contracted anything, but one day I just found it difficult. It had also been the day I had first visited the surface. Was that why? Did something happen up there?

The more I tried to look for these memories, the fainter they got. Frustrated with their elusiveness, I gave up. There would be time for that later in my life, I hope. The average lifespan of a Metro-dweller was surprisingly long if they knew what they were doing. Imagine, living until your forties! You would be one of the few.

The Metro, boy how I missed those tunnels. I never thought I would say that in my life. Growing up around them, they gave me a sense of safety. Always sheltering me from the harsh surface where the monsters came from. The older I became, and the more knowledge I acquired, the safer the tunnels were. At my ripe age of twenty four, I was at my prime.

I could put a bullet through a nosalis’ skull from a distance, overpower one if it ever got close, and kill one before it realized it had been stabbed. All of my abilities had been my most valued assets in my life. I was sought after by many merchants interested in guards for their railcars.

I always turned them down. Not because I didn’t need the bullets, but because I didn’t want to endanger my life unnecessarily. Not only that, but because I don’t want to kill unless necessary. Most of the people in my station called me an idiot and I ignored them. They also ignored me. I didn’t mind, I enjoyed the silence. It had been my friend since childhood. I shyed away from conversation, and instead used body language and hand signs for communication. It had taken a few months, but the station had eventually adjusted.

What could the possibilities be If I had accepted the offers given to me? Infinite. I could’ve been a hero, a legend, or a dead man. It was definitely not worth the risk. I disregarded my train of thought, I could not undo the past. So why dwell on it?

I felt a little jolt in my side. Thinking nothing of it, I resumed my leisurely thoughts. I felt another jolt, stronger than before. I knew what was happening, and I tried to stay asleep but it was no use. The third jolt came, painful now as the darkness faded. It was replaced with a blur of colour.

Blinking my eyes, the window became crystal clear. Yawning I began stretching, only to be interrupted by a hard poke in my side. wincing, I let out a gasp. Bringing my hands down to my sides. I was just in time to block another jab. Turning my head to my right, I spotted the white horse from before. It brought it head up to look at me.

It then proceeded to stare at me indefinitely. I became uncomfortable fast, getting up and walking towards the bed that supported my mask and weapons. Sitting down on sheets, I proceed to inspect my weapons. Checking the clip on my AK, the grip, and the muzzle. Satisfied with its condition, I switched to my revolver. Checking the chamber, I replaced the spare bullet I had used yesterday. Doing my best to try and calibrate the sights on it, I got a glance at my gas mask.

It was unnecessary at this point, the air was breathable and beyond fresh. It would just weigh me down. Strapping my revolver to its holster, and my AK to its Scabbard, I looked forward. The white horse had moved in front of me, and was now blocking my path. It was still staring, but with less intensity. It looked almost curious, its eyes darting up and down my face. This undesirable attention made me uncomfortable. If this was the reaction I would get without my mask, I would rather it on. Reaching for It, I brought it to my face. Strapping it on, I looked towards the horse. It almost frowned, or that is what I thought it had done. the horse did a one-eighty straight towards the door. Comfortable with my identity hidden, I followed her out of the room.

I was lead into the same room from before. I noticed the ponies from before, as well as a few extras. They must have arrived during my sleep, it showed on their faces too. one glance at me, and three different horses cringed, while a few others neighed. all their eyes drilled into me. I could take this, to them I was alien. With my mask on, I was invulnerable to their stares.

Taking another good look around the room, I saw that some windows and the front door was barricaded with supplies. Boards, chairs, dressers, and mannequins? That was what they looked like, and they creeped me right out. Looking from their fortifications, I recognised one horse from the numerous others in the room.

There was Twilight, in the corner of the room. Her attention focused on something on a table below her. It was brown and had markings from what I could see. Approaching her, I noticed something else as well. A lizard was standing beside her. It had lime green spines on its back and head. The spines ended at its tail. Its scales were light purple, and its underbelly was a light green as well. Fins, the same colour as its underbelly, adorned its cheeks.

I was not noticed by the creature, until I had started to approach Twilight. A glance was all it took before the reptile shot behind Twilight. Its hands were shaking, and Twilight groaned in agitation. Moving the lizard to her side, Twilight continued to study the paper before her. The creature on the other hand got a good look at me, and was shaking harder than an old generator. Giving gave it a quizzical glance, Twilight turned her head towards me.

She regarded me silently. I Walked until I reached her. Motioning with her head, she tried to turn my attention towards the parchment she was observing. Moving alongside her, I finally got a good look at the map she was studying before. Around forty black squares marked the map. nine circled in red, and one square in blue stood on the outskirts of town. She used her powers to materialize little blue flags in each of the houses that were circled.

At this point I had given up on trying to explain this phenomenon. I just assumed it was magic, and I didn’t think I was very far off.

These flags slowly began moving outside their respective houses, and towards the blue square. I could establish that the flags were horses, the houses circled were occupied, and the blue square was a sort of safe zone. She looked at me, requiring assurance of her silent explanation. I gave her a nod.

Focusing back on the map, she made one of the houses pulsate. Assuming that it was their current location, I saw two little red paths show up the map. Starting at their current building, they split up, and extended towards the closest house with survivors. They tapped buildings, and the flags inside the houses moved onto the paths. The paths continued to reach houses and people until they both ended up hitting the safe zone.

Once again, Twilight looked up from the map. Nodding, I noticed something about the two paths. one path hit five houses, while the other only hit three. Bringing up my finger, I pointed to the path with more stops, and then pointed my finger back to myself. This surprised Twilight as she looked at me with a look of uncertainty, trying to come up with an explanation for my unexpected heroism. I just nodded to her. She frowned before looking back towards the map. Twilight bit her lip, trying to make a decision. The Lizard from before started to talk? It made sounds. Twilight seemed to understand what it was saying. She reached consensus as she took a deep breath in, and out. Turning to me, she nodded her head as well.

Something caught her eye as she craned her neck, trying to see past me. Turning my head, I could see a window behind me. A horse with wings was flying outside. Turning back toward Twilight, I saw her wave her hoof sideways repeatedly. She stopped after a second and frowned. Her eyes widened as a look of shock consumed her face. her eyes meeting my mask, she tried to push me away? It didn’t work, looking behind me. All I could see was a blue blur approaching fast.

I barely had anytime to think as the window shattered into pieces in front of me. The horse from before had used its momentum to plant its hooves onto my shoulders. caught completely off guard, I lost balance immediately. I was in shock as we rolled across the floor. The horse had tumbled into a wall, and I had landed close to it. Instinct kicking in, I drew my knife in one swift motion. In another It was now embedded into the wall a centimeter from the horse’s neck. Using my other hand I pinned its shoulder opposite my knife. it recovered from the impact, and tried to move. It tried, until it saw my six inch steel knife. It froze, eyes locked on the knife.

Aside from the ragged breathing from myself, and the blue horse in front of me, the room was completely silent. Nothing moved, no one spoke, everyone froze. As our breathing came under control, Twilight slowly made her way over to us. I was fighting the urge to slit this horse’s neck, like I would open a letter. My blood pumped, adrenaline flowing through my system, and my mind told me to kill my attacker. Twilight was by my side before I could decide on a course of action. Turning my head towards her, I saw she was biting her lip, and staring at my knife.

Looking back once more to the horse I’ve pinned, she too was still looking at my knife. Taking a deep breath, I pulled it out of the wall, and I put it back into its sheath. the blue horse slid down the wall and onto the floor. Bringing a hoof to its neck, it looked up at me in fear. Frantically scrambling away from me, the horse eventually hit a corner of the room and stared back at me in fear.

Getting up onto my feet, I turned towards the stairs. I think I heard Twilight saying something. I ignored her, My heart was still beating rapidly from the surprise attack. I needed to calm down before I killed something.

Comments

[Mklj00]

Good chapter my friend. Cannot wait for more.

[IncoherentOrange]

Hi there, Dak. You know who I am and why I'm here, so let's get started. You say I should hold nothing back. I'll see what I can do.

The description looks pretty much fine, apart from he very last sentence. I don't think it's really relevant that this story will be shorter than one of your previous ones.

As anyone will, I'll start with the prologue. Points of view, I think, should not need to be explicitly stated; it can hurts immersion a bit. I notice that you use full stops when commas would be appropriate and that there's some instances of unusual wording in some places, which seems related to (and makes worse) the problem with the commas. On the flip side, some commas are placed incorrectly forming comma splices. Additionally, there are some instances of words starting with capital letters when they shouldn't and vice versa, along with a few missing apostrophes and spaces that shouldn't be there. Weeding these errors out is a tedious process, but I think that even a quick scan of the story with these kinds of errors in mind could help a lot.

Anyway, Artyom is in one of the so very many tunnels beneath Moscow, on his mission that is described in both the novel and game, though somewhat differently in each in that Artyom faces different threats and that one contains more action than the other. This interpretation appears to be based on the game for at least most of it, probably all. (If you liked the game and its story, then the book will certainly appeal to you, too. It goes into more detail than the game does about the world.)

The Dark One's whispers could be done in a different fashion. I'd advise you play around with things, maybe italics and ellipses would serve better than just commas. Additionally, dialogue that ends with something like "the voice said" should be:
1. lacking capitalization;
2. if the sentence said by the speaker would end in a period, it becomes a comma. Otherwise, the punctuation is unchanged.
Like this:

"Help us,” the voice pleaded. “Only the chosen one..."

Emphasis on words using capital letters is something I am not fond of, but it's stylistic, so I can't really nag you about it.

So, Dark One, new land, that stuff... Prologue appears to be alright. On to chapter one. It seems kind of strange to mention with every line who said what, If it's a back-and-forth conversation that has only two members. Celestia determines the primate nature of humans immediately, which seems unusual considering how much clothing an inhabitant of the Metro would wear. Perhaps she could refer to them as bipeds. Another grammatical error I see here is missing punctuation, like, a significant amount of it. Maybe you wrote this a bit too fast, or something. There is little to say on this chapter. Celestia sees a Dark One and some humans of the Metro in a dream of sorts. Alright. The chapters could be longer, perhaps even merged, but the chapter gaps aren't that big of an issue.

Onward to chapter two, and a third perspective is taken. Again, I did not need to be told that it was Twilight's perspective that I was being told the story through.

The only scientific explanation some stars are brighter than others is because they are closer.

Either Twilight has no understanding of apparent magnitude, (and I don't think it'd be so unreasonable that she didn't) or stars work differently in the universe that she exists in. Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to ours, and it's far from the brightest (many would identify the brightest as Sirius A, which is the sixth closest star to ours. Taking into account additional portions of the light spectrum, Betelgeuse supposedly is). Or, it could be an oversight on your part. Either way, it's no big deal. Anyway, weird thing appears in the sky, and a Dark One appears. Twilight dreams of nosalises and Artyom appears, clad in the stealth armor, I'd guess. Weird dreams are quite the theme, aren't they?

Chapter three and we're back to our mute man on a mission in the Metro. Bourbon, not Bourban.

This could only inspired me

Not sure why this stuck out to me, but there's more weird wording. Anyway...
What I'd keep in mind when writing Artyom is the fact that he was born only just before the bombs fell, or otherwise was raised in the Metro. He knows very little of the outside world and only goes to the surface for any significant amount of time after leaving for Polis. He collects postcards of various pre-war locations and is fascinated by the outside world and the time before, but he doesn't know all that much other than what his father and the others of VDNKh tell him as he grows up. Of course, none of this is really explained in detail within the game, but it's nice to know. Anyhow, Artyom might have heard only rumors and tall tales about the demons of the surface before going there and facing them himself, for example. Oh, a sort of hole through which mutants come? Well, that's all kinds of nasty.

Well, when mutants come to destroy all you hold dear, that's kind of a bummer, like, a big one. A quick and action-packed chapter that could have been slower. The rest of the pacing so far was alright, but now it just seems a little too quick. I think that you could do with larger chapters and the story would benefit, but it's your choice. Chapter five reveals the liberties you've taken with Artyom's character, what with him being an experienced fighter (when in the novel he is nothing of the sort, but a mushroom farmer). Kind of funny in hindsight, really. The ponies' reaction to Artyom's and the mutants' appearance is not unexpected and seems reasonable enough, as does Twilight's attempts to organize things.

However, that's all there is so far, so I can't say much more. Nothing stuck out as particularly out of line. The things I'd say you could use the most improvement in are sentence structure and grammar. Once those are improved, the reading process will be more fluid and therefore more enjoyable to the reader. Plot-wise, the story is still young and it has many possible directions. Try to have a general outline before moving forward so you don't get stuck in your writing (like I have). Best of luck to you, Dak. I hope I was at least slightly helpful.

~IncoherentOrange, WRITE's Rambling Citrus.

[Fading Soul]

I like where this is going.