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.”
Well, crap. Several kinds of crap. Enough crap to occupy a scatologist for a good year. Unless Riley figures out how to shoot lasers in the next few minutes, this is not going to end well. At least, not in the short or medium terms. Long-term, I'm a bit more optimistic.
Well, that was a disaster. I guess the plus-side is that Adrian should now be able to identify everyone in the villain group and try to rally everyone else. I wonder how good of a sniper a Diamond Dog makes?
Cipher:
Ha! It's the Rosetta Stone! It looks like we've got a translation for some of the zodiac signs (which almost certainly correspond to the three-letter words) into the other cipher. I'll take another crack at that later.
...Shit.
Man, there is just about no good outcome to this. Maybe a miracle will happen?
Oh, hell. Please be friendly, please be friendly...
Craaaap.
Good thing they sent the flightiest possible pony on this mission. Run, Cloudy, run! Fly, you fool!
Gaaaaah. I'm so glad this is a weekday daily update fic.
Welp, this is turning into a Category 5 shitstorm.
......?!
Poor Sky. Poor little brave Sky.
Sky continues to be my most beloved character, there's just so much to her that isn't obvious to everybody else.
Please don't kill her. Or worse.
Wow not what I expected. Ryan better be Equine. Teleportation isn't a mundane spell. A human using the spell would be a gross Villain Sue.
Knew it. There was just no way this was going to go smoothly. I mean, c'mon, this is a post-apocalyptic survivor story, when does ANYTHING go according to plan?
6303476
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JFfN5pKzFU
We might have a problem, I hope Sky's keeping the line open.
The shit has hit the fan. I repeat: THE SHIT HAS HIT THE FAN.
....And cliffhanger! Also, oh oh shit Moriah was right that there are bad equestrians out there.
Can't wait for for tomorrows update.
Creepy runes? Supernatural awareness? (Apparently) extra-powerful individuals? Getting some serious Fullmetal Alchemist vibes from this chapter. Big question is who's in charge: the newcomers, or that thing lurking in the house?
Oh gods no.
I noticed that the symbols in the outer ring of the circle are zodiacs. The inner ones are tic-tac-toe ciphers. No idea what they mean though.
This is when you kill the lot of them. Ensure scorched earth doesnt happen, for you, they've settled their choices. If you are wrong, oh well. You got the bad apples with the good, and it happens. Either way, its a clear message.
Cipher:
There are seven zodiac signs on the picture in this chapter, with corresponding pigpen letters, as follows: Libra: u, Capricorn: s, Aquarius: a, Taurus: e, Pisces: i, Cancer: o. Virgo could be pigpen n, but could also be a full stop. I'm leaning towards it being a full stop because if you eliminate the seven three-letter words that repeat from the messages, the letters a, e, i, o, u and s don't appear at all, but n does, which suggests those three-letter words represent those six letters and a full stop, but that the other three-letter words stay as they are.
Replacing the words tul, kar, mak, kum, min, mes, and vri with a, e, i, o, u, s and full stop is probably the first step to solve the cipher, though I haven't yet decided which to replace with which.
Also, since it doesn't need that part, the letters on the fire dragon spell: X-H-U-A-QYZY-O-Y-U.
Those are likely old english, or near english runes on the inner track. Given one of them rather looks like the word for cattle, bison, or horse.
What could have driven ponies to do whatever evil they are doing?
Oh fuck all kinds of duck.
... WELL, so much for PEACEFUL settlers, now we have some Equestrian equivalent of satanist's up in here, dandy.
Now... I wonder why this weird 'sleep' spell or whatever kind of ruins didn't affect Sky, and whoever these people are... they certainly aren't setting themselves up as 'good and upstanding' ponies, even if they are, I doubt a lot of the Alexandria ponies are going to like their secrecy.
6303974
Nah, it's Pigpen Cipher, and it's pretty definitely a Rosetta stone for translating the zodiac signs into the letters in the second cipher. I mean, if you start from Aquarius and work clockwise, you get the vowels in alphabetical order, 's', then full stop. That fits too well with the vowels and 's' not turning up anywhere else in the cipher but those seven three-letter words to be coincidence.
6303506 Between your avatar and what you said... it made my morning. It is just too perfect together.
6304161 ah, neat! And thank ya.
6303686
6303982
Seems to be some kind of mind-controlling force behind it all.
Maybe it's just got a firm hold on them?
I do find it really hard to believe that any normal Equestrians would do something like this. Obviously from their maps and actions so far, they're trying to eliminate human-turned-pony civilization, and destroy their knowledge base. Maybe they're some kind of cult-faction that doesn't want humanity to survive, for some reason?
i.imgur.com/DKJhx9l.gif
There is absolutely no way that anyone could've learned something as advanced as teleportation or putting together mind-control runes or intrusion-detection spells this quickly without help. I think Moriah might be right- there's an Equestrian malefactor who's been giving some very bad ponies some very evil information.
Suddenly I am reminded of a passage from 'Bored of the Rings'...
Who the hell is Ryan? I mean, I know he's one of the new guys, but beyond that I have no idea who he is. All this time skipping is making things confusing. There are too many events that are mentioned in past tense without any explanation. I don't even know how many ponies are in Alexandria right now.
Sky might be in some trouble now. I'm hoping for Riley to be the one that shows up to save her. That would be pretty awesome.
6303974 It's actually a pigpen cipher. It's one of the more common ways of code writing since it has a very methodical way of determining how the various symbols map to the normal English alphabet
I love how everybody here is freaking out over the outsiders being evil, except for the small segment who are geeking out over some graffiti on the walls.
6304455 ... Since 's' is the odd one out, do you think that is to imply that s=y, as y is the only vowel missing?
Well, ain't that just tan-tucking-FASTIC.
6303476
I'm not even optimistic about the long-term. The only hope I'm holding out at this point is that they didn't count on news of their doings in Philly traveling this quickly and so weren't forward-thinking enough in their nefariousness to have been spending all that "study time" rigging the entire library with their freaky dragon bombs, instead focusing on merely destroying any and all references to Nightmare Moon and/or the Elements of Harmony.
i.imgur.com/RdnlMpm.gif
OOOOOOOOhhhhhhhh CRAAAAP!!!!!!!!!!! This is not good. Nope Nope Nope. Sky is screwed. This cannot end well.
Not a huge fan on magic that can basically mind control like that. Gives so much power to the unicorn who can learn stuff like that. Poor, poor Sky.
6303652
Literally anywhere else in this story, I would find that post insulting. But here, it's completely appropriate.
6304983 Or it/he/she has made them into very bad ponies... that kinda felt like the description of a sapient being that needs a ton of rune magic to manifest itself as a power. Ryan was half dazed after casting that spell on Sky; looked to me as if he was merely channelling magic beyond his actual abilities, not casting a high level spell himself. Something seems to have jumped through the portal as well.
Well, guess Sky will find out.
6305080
Was wondering that as well... I looked at the previous chapters and didn't find a mention of him.
When they met the caravan there was a mention of 'some ponies who didn't come out' or something, then there was the Pegasus called Kirk and his brother. Ryan? Did I miss something as well?
6292863
If only it had been so easy. >.>
6292921
I'd say both. It might be neat to watch a species acquire sapience before your eyes, but also extremely unnerving when you thought about how many of them you'd eaten over the course of your own lifetime (and how, unless you appeared right at the beginning, you probably still remember meat fondly instead of with disgust).
6292958
I think we'll find out if we wait a chapter two more, but... I've got faith in Sky.
6293039
I think because she's already going to be in that area anyway, so her being there won't attract any suspicion.
6293182
It is important that Sky doesn't actually say a great deal of what she's thinking. It would be fair to call her attitude awful and a serious danger sign, but it wouldn't quite be accurate to say she's been actively abusive.
Except that Riley can sense her emotions, so even though Sky doesn't actually tell her how much she hates her, Riley probably knows anyway. Awful luck right here.
6293287
Thanks for pointing that out! Should be fixed now.
6293422
I don't think Sky has nearly the talent for animals Fluttershy does. I think it's more she's spent so much of her life working with them on a farm she understands farm animals.
6293442
Yeah, we really haven't seen the immigrants yet. I don't even think it's fair to call them characters. They're like any other part of the background, until they're given characterization. Until that point, they could be anything, or anyone.
6293542
Yeah there are.
6303515
For now it is. Enjoy the quick cliffhanger resolution while you can! Third story will probably be weekly, just because school will have started by then. Not looking forward to that. X.x
6303613
Kill her? Oh, no way I'd kill a character! I've never done that before >.>
6303982
Odium
6304455
Somepony will! If not, I'm sure Joseph will eventually. Characters are collecting the clues right along with the readers, so...
Someone who knew exactly what I did now has everything they need to decode the cypher. But like I said, I'm looking for more organic this story than just italicizing the translation key.
6305080
Yeah, I think the skipping is a weakness. I might be done with large skips from here on out, to remove that confusion.
6306585
From the most recent Alex journal entry:
That is all we know of him at this point. I expect we'll get to learn about these new characters now that we're not skipping ahead any more.
6306868
It's mostly just the fact that the time skips are jumping over important events, like meeting the new arrivals, the car crash Day was apparently in, that sort of thing. Skipping over the parts that are just them scavenging and trying to stay alive is one thing, since that's not the focus of this story like it was in the last one, but that just means that the character interactions and developments are even more important, especially with the changing perspectives that you're doing with this story (I do love the chance to see things happening from the perspectives of all of the different characters. That was definitely a good decision for this story).
This seems like it should be 'spread her wings'.
6303515 Remember at BronyCon how you said you didn't think this was a good universe for dark? Well.. I think Starscribe may have proved you wrong here.
6327746 Hahaha, yeah, that's a point.
why does the rune circle have zodiac symbols? thank god for shitty the world is ending movies from SyFi. that seems like laziness.
And that was a teleport.
Huh. That doesn't seem like good news at all. Is he possessed by something? It's spreading like some kind of malevolent virus, or created some kind of hive mind?
Or... Or maybe, he's actually doing it all of his own accord and he's just got them under his spell!
....
Now I have to wait for an update...
Nah, just kidding. Waiting for chapter stock has merits.
Well, fuck. I hope the HPI'll make good on their promise to help out.
I don't want to read the next chapter....