You lay there for an inestimable amount of time, gently holding the sobbing Wisp and recovering your strength.
Breathing and heart rate slowing, you carefully stand up, cradling Wisp to your neck with your foreleg.
You hold Wisp until you can no longer hear her crying. She finally takes a deep shuddering breath; she then sighs, exhaling all of the air out of her lungs.
“Are you feeling better?” you ask, eliciting a quiet squeak from her.
You slowly set her down on the ground and gently pet her mane. “That’s good.”
She makes a soft hum and pushes against your foreleg.
“Wisp?” you ask. “Why don’t you help me by searching around the room, okay? Try and find something important-looking,” you ask her.
She nuzzles your chest then nods. She chirps and runs toward one of the many desks, banging on the metal desks quietly as she searches.
Poor thing, she doesn’t deserve to be here, you think, slowly walking over to the pile of rotting corpses. Wary of their regenerative abilities, you keep a close eye on the flesh, ready to fight or evade should the situation arise.
You slog through the stinking meat, making sure to step on anything even resembling an intact eye. The broken blue eyes crack underneath your hooves as you step on them mercilessly.
Something catches your eye in the remains of one of the bodies. Bending down, you peer closer at whatever it is.
It’s just a quivering tendon, weakly spraying blood as it struggles to connect to a nearby bone.
You stomp on it, forcefully blowing air out of your nose. “Nothing,” you mutter.
After searching through the mutilated bodies for an unknown period of time, you come up empty. “Still nothing,” you mutter. “I guess there was nothing pony left in them.”
Wisp squeaks excitedly, and you hear her tapping on the side of your body. Your skin makes a particular sound that sounds somewhat akin to stone whenever she hits it.
“What is it?” you ask, turning your head around to look at her.
She is balancing a box roughly half the size of her head on her back with the help of her damaged wings. Squeaking again, she points to it with a hoof.
You levitate the box off of her and over to you with your magic. There is a small, worn label on the solid-feeling steel cube. It reads, “Letters To Mother”.
“Where did you find this?” you ask her.
She points to a small trash bin next to one of the closer desks.
Curiosity piqued, you look for a way to open it. Nothing, the box is completely seamless. You look at it from every angle. Still nothing. “Hmmmm…” you hum, continuing to turn it over in your magic.
The box isn’t just a cube, it appears to be a perfect one. A dull, flawless grey metal cube.
Wisp squeaks again, drawing your attention. She is sitting on the floor with her fore legs in the air. She points to you then the cube, then she makes a show of bringing her hooves together with a quiet clop.
“Of course, thank you Wisp,” you say, feeling the urge to drive your hoof into your forehead. “I guess I’m still getting used to the new body.” You hold the box in front of you with your magic. Sitting down, you bring your fore legs up and smash them together like sledgehammers, crushing the cube open instantly.
Papers erupt violently, spraying everywhere. Wisp squeaks and you both jump backward slightly. The papers begin landing on the bloody floor, causing them to soak up the blood. Finally reacting, you try to catch as many as you can with your magic, and Wisp joins in seconds later, trying to catch them in her mouth.
The papers finish falling. You look at the dozens of pages on the ground to see that they are completely illegible after soaking in gore of the dead Gigglers.
You start reading the precious few that you caught.
Mom,
I’m telling you, this place is… off somehow. They have guards that are posted at the only exit supposedly “guarding us from intruders”. But the funny thing is they’re facing the wrong way. They watch the hallway, not the door. Meaning that—theoretically of course— if somepony tried to get out, they would have to get through the guards. So the question is, what are they guarding exactly?
And another thing, these formulas are simple to understand, but mathematical impossible gibberish. Nothing has enough power to do what this… “Element” can do. One square inch of this material can supposedly corrupt an entire body’s worth of cells instantly from direct exposure without losing any energy? And that’s the most tame thing I have seen.
Your son.
Mom,
There is some pretty freaky stuff going on. Foals are being led into rooms that they don’t come out of. Foals Mom, foals. Sometimes I can hear them crying in the corners of my workroom. I found some small cages, but I can’t open them. Sometimes I’ll just sit and talk with them when there’s nopony around; most times they are unconscious and continually being flashed with a painful-looking light. I know it's painful because the conscious ones cry out whenever it hits them.
Ponies walk places then are never heard from again. This place is bad news. I’m getting out when I can. Problem is, the Director has some kind of… murder switch on us. We don’t show up for work; we die. I don’t know how he does it, but one of my friends was talking about it. She said that anypony can be killed at the press of a button.
I’m scared Mom.
Hey Mom,
I know you won’t be too pleased about the location of my job, but I’ll tell you anyways. I just got my new job copying formulas today at this special facility! We’re going to make the world a better place here, I can feel it.
Your son, Note Taker.
Dear Mom,
I’m making this special case for my letters to you. The automatic censor spell I mentioned keeps censoring words and phrases in my letters. You may ask why I don’t write my letters from home. The answer: I can’t. I physically can’t write or say anything regarding my work at my apartment. And the scary thing is, I have no idea why…
Your confused son.
mom
i can haredy get this out on papeR. my hoves are shaking so mUchh and i can’t even spelll coherantly. i watchd a poNy murdered get brutally get merdered just nOw. he died in my forelegs. a pony Ran out of a room only to me followeded by something. it was huge and metel and bleeDng and huge and… a pony. It toor him apart. i went to cheack on him after it left, and he died seconds aftEr.
i’m going to die here.
Finishing the ones that you caught, you reach for the single one that Wisp managed to catch.
Mom,
If this somehow makes it to you, just know I’m sorry. You were right. You were always right.
I managed to survive the Gigglers. I thought they were bad. Now the Demon Shadows are walking. We’re all going to bucking die.
I love you Mom. Always remember that.
That last letter sends a chill through your spine as you read it. Every scattered piece of information you find seems to answers a single question but asks so many more.
The chill in your spine intensifies, you look around quickly, making sure that all the bodies are truly dead. Confirming this, you relax slightly.
You hear a soft sobbing originating from a corner of the room. Glancing over towards the sound, you see a small cage made out of steel that blends into the wall. Looking closer, you can now see that there are at least thirty cages half-imbedded in the wall from the floor to the ceiling, though most of them are already open.
Walking towards it, you wonder why you didn’t notice the cages before. I guess I had more pressing things on my mind, you think, glancing over toward the dead Gigglers.
Reaching the cages, you see a small sliding window with a rubber knob. You open the window with your magic and are immediately met with wide golden eyes staring back at you.
“C-can you h-help me? I want my mommy...” asks a small, scared voice from the pure blackness of the inside of the cage. The soft hum of electricity comes from the cage, and a flash of blindingly pure white light floods the inside of the cage, momentarily blinding you. After you blink the spots out of your eyes you look at the cage again. The eyes have disappeared from view and you can hear the pony squirming on the floor of the cage, crying softly. The inside of the cage is dark once again. “Please?” it whimpers weakly. “It hurts…”
You hear the quiet, raspy voice of the Beast from directly behind you. “What will you do? What should you do?” it whispers. “I already know the answer, but the real question is, do you?”
Quickly turning around, there’s nothing there...
>Help it out of the cage.
>Leave it and run away.
Dear chapter,
You are locked.
Sincerely, NightWolf289
Here's a tough one...
I analyzed the letters to my full extent and came to the conclusion that the Foals hit by the light transforms into "huge, bleeding, metall monsters".
As to why they don't transform in the cage? Pherhaps they need to come in contact with the "element" one of the letters mentioned.
But that adds a question, two infact. What is the "element" and if the purpose of the light is to transform the foals, why are they being flashed multiple times? ARRRGH! Decicions!
3647352
And then there is always the possibility that the foals and the metal monsters are completely unrelated. As well as the possibility that all of your theories are completely off.
Then again, they could be spot on...
I'm so good at helping.
So it's between these choices...
1. Save the Foal and make it join the family, so to speak. Buuuut.... Also risking that we face a "Demon Shadow" (assuming thats the metal monsters, what if they aren't :O )
2. Leave it and hear it's desperate plea. While also probably making Wisp think a little less of you...
I'l post my vote when I decided.
LEAVE IT!
INCOMING SHITSTORM!
i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/136/232/incoming%20shitstorm.jpg
>Leave it and run away.
We can only trust three ponies in this place.
Wisp,
Our brothah,
And the merchant. Do not deny the merchant logic
3647379 maximumwage.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/ohyou.jpg?w=640
Well... I may be severly overestimating myself or underestimating the Metal monster that may or may not appear, but I can't look at those eyes as i turn and walk away.
This is very risky. But i choose > Help it out of the cage .... Please have mercy, oh great Wolf!
>Help it out of the cage.
How could wisp even look at you of you just leave another foal to die?
I say Help It. How could you possibly look Wisp in the eye if you abandon it?
>Help it out of the cage.
we are so going to die
>Leave it and run away.
>Help it out of the cage.
I noticed some errors while reading through...
"by", not "be".
Usually, the expression is "something catches one's eye", where "eye" is a singular, even if both eyes see the object.
3648151
Thanks. I do my own prereading and derp a bit sometimes.
3648198
Who doesn't?
3648307
Evidently not me.
We are soooo going to die.
>Help it out of the cage
I'm just gonna go out on a hunch here and say that we help it out of the cage.
And by the Nine, you're starting to scare me with these author notes.
I vote help it out of the cage.
3647352
Maybe the light makes them susceptible to the element? It does weaken them.
I suggest we help it out
3648861 That makes a lot of sense acctually.
But that still leaves the very important question: "What is the element?" .
Is it something unusual like a potion, developed by the scientists? Or is it something usual, like water for example?
I guess we may or may not find out if we help the foal out of the cage...
3650924
I will remind you of the letter found in chapter four, but that is the extent of my help:
Help it
3651254
Oh! Thanks, had no memory of that. It did not cross my mind that i could have looked for clues in the earlier chapters.
So i read the two letters in chapter four and came to the conclusion that "they" found a strange metallic "element" that they were able to make a serum out of.
So the metal was the thing that started this whole mess? And the light makes the foals suspectible to the serum? But why would they need that light to make it activate?
... 0.0 ... Okay, this is probably nothing more than a tinfoil hat theory... But WHAT IF... The metal is ussually buried in the ground or deep in mountains, compleately void of any sunlight. Then when it does react to sunlight, a reaction occurs.
But if they showe the serum down the foals' throat... Should they not transform when they are flashed with the bright light?
OR WAIT! What if it's the opposite?! What if it's long exposure to darkness that transforms them!? That would explain the multiple flashes!.... Kinda...
My head hurts... :(
3652320
But what if it's neither?
3652340
You're not making this any easier.
3652511
Really? I hadn't noticed.
3652511>>3652340
Actually, it does make sense.
What if neither light nor darkness triggers a reaction? What if the trigger is pain?
Bright light, when shone into somepony's eyes, causes a piercing effect, resulting in pain. This method of pain does not injure the test subject physically but still hurts him/her enough.
The serum might have an effect like that of radiation on Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk. For him, when his heart rate goes up, he transforms. Same thing here. When the foal experiences pain, that increase in heart rate and body tenseness triggers a reaction in the serum... You can guess what happens next...
All of the above is just speculation. The ramblings of a young boy who watches TV shows about ponies and stays up late to read Fimfics.
TL;DR: Pain might be the reaction trigger.
3656363
Hmm... But why would they not transform the moment they are struck by the light if that's the cace? Is the light just supposed to keep their heart rate at edge so the tiniest speck of injury is enough to make them transform?
Sure hope we break that cage carefully if that option get's choosen.
And yes, you make alot more sense than my insane ramblings.
So many theories, not enough evidence to prove them.
I'm just going to risk it and open the cage.
>Help it out of the cage.
Karma gained
cdn.staticneo.com/w/fallout/0/05/Karma_Very_Good.jpg
...open it