Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

by scifipony

"We're Being Herded."

The only other inmates we met on the road were a pair of mantis-like creatures with brown carapaces but with horse-like faces and eyes. At sighting one-another around a bend, they froze. We froze. They then flew over us on roaring dragonfly wings with no interest in contact.

That got us to a slot lake at the base of the circular mountain range. The forest continued, thinning to scattered woods and copses that spread into the closer highlands and toward an unusual sight: waterfalls that ran uphill along the base of a cone-like caldera, the base of which descended gently into the lake. I had been hearing a strange crashing, hissing sound as we walked, one that periodically echoed and ebbed and flowed as we followed the widening river through the forest.

The volcano began to rumble, then with a growing boiling sssish sound, lofted a rush of foaming water that reached toward the weird dome-like sky. At the peak of the geyser's eruption, the frothy spew merged with a deck of cloud, adding to it. As some of the water fell back, it reversed the waterfalls. Dark storms spread like suds in a bath tub northeast and northwest to follow the ridges and peaks of the mountains.

In a world without functioning pegasi, something had to make the weather. And the humidity. The heavy air smelled of sulfur. I could taste an acrid taint of metals on my tongue. The air was so filled with moisture, I expected it would turn to mist as the sun went down. I'd never understood why Celestia liked to take steam baths those times she "escaped" to the spa with me. I preferred the sauna myself, but I wasn't getting my preference today.

Just walking out from the tree to the reddish-black pebbly shoreline, I began to sweat profusely. The lake was miles wide, east to west, but less than a quarter mile from this shore to the one beyond at the heel of the geyser. "Up for a swim?"

"Not a good idea— Better not!" he said sharply as my hooves crunched on the beach as I stepped from a berm of marsh grasses. I looked intensely ahead as he said, "Not all Celestia's enemies live on land."

"Sea serpents?" I asked, eying suspicious random ripples on a lake that criss-crossed regularly-spaced wind-blown waves. The water was black, probably not very deep. Bits of blue sky reflected in the distance and sparkled.

"Dunno. Maybe? There are saltwater restraint zones beneath the surface. Rainwater lakes in the highlands serve that purpose east and west of Cerberus' gate."

I peered at the geyser. At the bottom, it appeared composed of the same silver and gold pyrite as the other mountains. Something else clad its elevations that at first glance resembled snow—stained snow—with streaks of yellow, red, and brown. Mineral deposits, like those found around faucets and tubs. I asked, "Is Cerberus and his gate up there?"

"No. It's a few miles beyond where the sky meets the land at the most southern reach of the mountains. It's a blasted peak, leveled to a plain."

"And we'll find your Father there?"

He motioned me back to where the river still flowed and the sweet water hadn't mixed with the tiny rectangular sea. He said, "There, or gone through to report to Celestia." He lowered his head and sipped noisily. As I copied him, he looked at the geyser and added. "He went through a door in Twilight Sparkle's gate, sucked through just like us."

I swallowed the cheesy warm water and said, "I'm sorry I opened the door."

"Father's fault. You'd just earned your cutie mark trying to help. Not your fault he figured out how to trigger the gate. I've come to love your enthusiasm for life, Sunset. I hope one day I can learn from you to replace what I've lost since my mother proved she was crazy and evil."

When he reviewed his last words, he jerked his head to look at me. His cheeks lit up red. He glanced down and whispered, "Oh boy."

My face colored and heated up. That's pretty impressive when you consider the blazing sun that was almost ready to become lost in the ring of clouds, the ambient temperature, and don't forget the humidity that threatened to parboil us. I gasped and looked rapidly right and left and then down, too.

I didn't need the guidance of any contrived romance novel to gauge the meaning of my fluttering heart and the butterflies spinning in my stomach, or why my knees felt weak. His word. Love. It might have been an accident, a slip of the tongue. What it did reveal was his true sentiment—you know, what the blush that extended from his cheeks to his ears and neck confirmed.

I was probably his first mare-friend.

The word struck lightning into my heart and soul. I had no doubt that this is what love felt like. It wasn't a crush. That was non-interactive. Infatuation from afar. Here I already had a friend. Something told me it was indeed more.

Was it too soon to know? In dangerous and extraordinary situations, we'd learned so much about one another—what in storybooks ponies learned over months of dinners and domestic adventures and financial disasters that threatened his estate or her nation. I'd earned his respect, and he mine. We looked out after one another. He cared enough to comfort me and help me work through my horse apples. He even finished my sentences...

Was I too young for love?

A stupid question, of course—though a stray thought about lessons half-learned did bedevil me. I metaphorically and physically shooed it away with my hoof, spraying water with the gesture.

I said, "I will always be there for anything you want me to teach you." I took a couple steps toward him.

He had the body language of a colt affected by brain-scramble, mind gone completely blank. He shifted, stirring the river water about and clacking muddy pebbles together, his tail swishing of its own accord. He coughed and finally said. "Me too. I mean, I'd like that and—" He swallowed visibly. "I'd love to teach you anything I know, too."

He coughed. That word again.

He grinned.

I grinned.

He looked up and stepped toward me. When I continued to smile—despite the thudding of my heart in my chest which, in its sheer concussive force, threatened to knock me straight over—he closed the distance and reached down (he was a bit taller) to bring his lips to mine.

I reached up to meet him.

A loud wheezy voice cried, "Oh, isn't this a sweet tableau!"

I shrieked and jumped, landing with a splash. Brandywine whirled, yelling, "Sugar cubes!" Instantly, he jumped in front of me, between me and—

I jumped between him and a sea serpent, lowering my horn and preparing Force with desperate speed. When Brandywine tried to get between us, though hyperventilating, I said, "No."

Shoulder to shoulder we faced— "What is it?"

I felt Brandywine shrug. "Beats me."

I had thought the creature a sea serpent, but I could see evidence of a body below the waves. It paddled to keep a long neck above the waves. Actually, it looked like some crazy giraffe-porpoise chimera. It had a giraffe's hour-glass muzzle, face, and fuzzy nobby antlers. Its neck had giraffe spots, big splotches of black in a field of dirty sky blue. It had the teeth of a shark, visible as it grinned at us in delight.

It paddled its flukes faster, lifting its body high enough to expose flippers with which it clapped. Its stomach was a watery blue and its back the same as his neck. "Such a show! Such a show! Don't let me stop you. More. More!"

Sotto voce, I said, "Do you think Celestia also sends her most annoying adversaries here, too?"

The whatever-it-was kept paddling, looking credulous. With teeth like chef knives, it was hard to think of it as a clown. Brandywine had the same thought as me. Quietly, keeping the idiot creature in view, we walked on the margin of the forest and beach, maintaining as many pony-lengths between him and us as possible.

The creature followed, but at an unseen barrier stopped and whined. "Can't you do something? Pleeeeeeease!" I swear, he lengthened the syllable beyond my lung capacity.

"You're right about the annoying part," Brandywine admitted.

That instant, a huge fin appeared offshore, swimming rapidly. The giraffe-porpoise dove over, displaying whale flukes that smacked the water as he dove. The fin creature turned, frothing the water and disappeared.

I shivered. Consider me disabused of any thought that Tartarus might be a nice place whether controlled by Celestia—or made friendly by a goth purple demigod wannabe.

"I guess you can make all sort of enemies in a thousand years," Brandywine added.

"Judging by what I accomplished in twelve… yeah, undoubtedly. I'm going to have to ask Celestia about those nightmares, though."

We trotted as fast as we could, wary of shadows in the forest and the water, both of us quiet and me deeply disconcerted. Thoughts of love and having almost kissed seemed far from important at the moment. Soon, all this would be all over.

We could work out the fun particulars at our leisure.

The sun drifted behind dark clouds as we turned back toward the geyser. We immediately found a winding road that avoided it and led into the highlands. Steps to the left continued up to secluded mountain lakes. The kibble trees that veiled them soon hid the sea below. The hiss and fizz of the geyser dominated most of the time, but strains of an eerie beautiful harmony no pony throat could emit drifted through the trees and echoed off pyrite walls. Above, the clouds became increasingly darker. They were the same clouds as when we arrived last night, but in the daylight the wane restriction zone illumination did not light them. It felt like a gathering storm. The black miasma curdled in the sky and looked ready to spawn lightening with no pegasus to regulate its ferocity. Drops started falling, spattering on my nose as if to taunt me, and on the ground to make spots of mud.

A spooky feeling of dread filled me. I barely kept my gate from increasing. The quickly darkening dirt and gravel road was unsuitable for the gallop that I itched for.

I did not realize my cutie mark adventure had ceased to be fun until it wasn't any more. By unvoiced agreement, where the road became flat, we cantered as best we could, and finding a grassy knoll, we galloped across even as a light rain began to fall.

It was blood temperature. The wild, unpredictable, uncontrolled randomness of the weather wasn't missed by either of us. We hurried, looking for and taking short-cuts across fields and making a clatter that could not be mistaken for anything but frightened ponies fleeing.

I should have known that our intemperance would not be missed. As the Queen of Cliffside, I had learned what it meant to be thrashed to within a few breaths of life. Nopony could accuse me of being timid as a result. Observant and cautious, yes.

Today, that lack proved completely wrong-headed. And Brandywine sensed it before me. Maybe his Father had talked of his military or police training, or related stories that might be good at a campfire or a sleepover, but cautionary here. He slowed suddenly and said, "We're being herded."

I looked and realized we were on one of those grassy knolls when the road should have been the direct route to Cerberus' gate. We'd been subconsciously spooked.

We were being hunted and I had stopped thinking.

The mist had begun to rise. Tendrils of the gray stuff looked like ghostly cypress. The sun had fallen low enough and the clouds grown thick enough that twilight had essentially arrived. At least the rain had stopped. The air smelled of lightning, crackling with electricity though not one bolt had yet struck. The closest rumble was many miles away.

I spoke the spell mnemonics for Force out loud. When I saw the very real shape of the ready spell form a faint rusty hexagonal rod-like overlay on my sight, I asked, "Herded where?"

"Away from the station near the Cerberus gate. Just keep moving. The road's that way." He pointed with his black muzzle.

We trotted over real Equestrian grass, splat-splatting, looking warily about as we passed the columns and clumps of mist. The wet condensed and beaded on my fur and left me even hotter. The sound of our hooves was the only sound, and it intensified the sense of being watched.

I gasped when I heard somepony galloping behind. We turned to see a cyan pegasus with and absurdly long pink mane slide from under the branches of kibble trees, trip, and spin across the grass. She scrambled and flared her wings, until she got enough traction to get her hooves under her and gallop toward us.

"Thank Celestia!" she cried as she slid to a stop just beyond us on the slick grass, using her wings to brake. I could see a massive rope-like bruise around her flank and under her stomach, peppered with saucer-sized splotches; her fur was rubbed raw. Her mane wept a rivulet of blood. The bits of kibble sticks in her hair told the story of her pulling too hard to get out of a snag of branches. "I thought I was alone!"

She collapsed, sobbing.

I really wanted to keep moving. "Please," I said, nudging her with a hoof and desperately looking about, "Get up."

Brandywine glanced sharply at me, but to her said, "We can't stay here."

The pegasus wailed as I nervously stepped in place.

A drizzle began to augment the mist. "Oh, come on," I said and pushed her flank, albeit too close to her bruises. She had a broke-stem daisy as a cutie mark. She shuddered.

Brandywine gave me a look and hissed, "You're not helping," and folded down beside her to talk with her softly.

His "We're being herded" ringing in my head really wasn't helping either. I worked on keeping my spell ready and looking around as the two talked lowly. Mostly she cried. I was obviously not as empathetic as Brandywine. I didn't trust tears, especially ones that got in the way. With memories of seeing the timberwolf stalking pony-lengths away and thoughts of her wandering about, I had no patience either. When I heard the mare talking about monsters, I lost it.

"If you're thinking we can keep you safe—" I yelled, dropping Force and preparing Levitation.

Brandywine warned, "Sunset!"

"—here, you're wrong. We need to run."

Brandywine shifted and waved at me to back off, making it impossible to pick up just the mare.

The mare cried, "You can't just run from it!"

"But you have to try," I said, resolved to pick them both up and run when it hit me. "You're a pegasus. You could just fly!"

She quieted instantly as if her tears had held no significance. "It—it's Tartarus."

"For Celestia's sake!" I grabbed the pink-maned pegasus and my colt-friend apart and whirled her once above my head before putting her down beside a very shocked Brandywine as he struggled upright on the wet grass. "The place is broken. The rainbow crows are on vacation. How do you think horrors are getting out of the restraint zones!?"

She blinked. She looked sharply in the direction she arrived, getting us to look, too. Usurious tears forgotten, she flared her wings and hovered, the instant before she turned and bucked Brandywine over.

She shot into the sky.

Stunned by her betrayal of Brandywine's kindness, I didn't reflexively grab her. And she wasn't as stupid as she wanted us to believe; she got trees between us as she screamed, "Suckers! You deal with that thing!" She dove into and out of the mists on a crazy evasive course as if she'd done it before.

It was Tartarus. Of course she'd evaded being caught before. She'd probably only failed once.

I screamed inarticulately as I ripped my focus to what was important. I dropped beside my noble idiot where he lay flattened on his side, shaking his head, eyes white with disbelief, in pain. She'd connected just above his hip. Twin tracks of torn skin ran across his flank, from croup to dock. I pressed down with my magic to stop the bleeding.

"You were right," he said, closing his eyes and furrowing his brow.

"I didn't say anything."

"I can certainly read you—"

Exasperated, I said, "I don't want right. I want gone!"

As I began to levitate him, he flailed and said, "Set me down. I can walk."

He pressed against his wound with his magic as we started trotting, albeit much slower than before. I prepared Force again, scanning the trees and the sky as I let him pick our path. Cerberus' gate was two or three miles ahead. We found the road. Beyond the trees on the left lay a flattened mountain with two walls that probably housed a lake restraint zone. Our rocky path was muddy with gold-flecked gray stone dust.

We're being herded.

It would have been a excellent time to use Travel, but I refused to distract him if that meant me maintaining pressure on his wound and neither of us looking for or being prepared for an ambush. The two restraint zones we passed seemed eerie because they were silent as well as surrounded by concealing boulders and contorted wind-blown Equestrian trees. The hiss of the geyser behind us and distant thunder dominated.

We're being herded.

Trees and rock and mist confused the line of sight in all directions, cloaking everything in shadowy drifting pareidolia that hinted at spiders and timberwolves and hunchback ponies pacing our progress south. My heart beat way too fast. The heavy air smelled faintly of rotten eggs and rotten cheese. Add faint nausea to the list.

We're being herded.

I was so intent on looking and listening for an active enemy trying to corral us that I didn't see the one waiting motionlessly for us come to it. When Brandywine suddenly stopped, I glanced ahead.

I really wished he hadn't stopped.

I would rather have nonchalantly veered off to the rocks or trees, or at least gotten a chance to retreat smoothly to a place that was less of an ambush point before predator and prey became certain they knew who was predator and who was prey.

We were prey.

Comments

[Skulljack17]

I gasped when I heard somepony galloping behind. We turned to see a cyan pegasus with and absurdly long pink mane slide from under the branches of kibble trees, trip, and spin across the grass. She scrambled and flared her wings, until she got enough traction to get her hooves under her and gallop toward us.

Remove the d and it's good as can be!

Love the world building going on, displaying the varied and likely viscous depths of this otherworldly place of captivity. Along with the little moment the two just had.