80 Days: Under the Waves

by Sharp Spark

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It was that night that the invasion happened. I was in a restless slumber, plagued by unfortunate dreams until a scream awakened me to a nightmare much more real and immediate.

“Gather our things,” Madame Fog said, standing at the porthole window and looking out into the city. I could smell smoke in the air, along with an unidentifiable acrid stench.

I quickly packed our meagre possessions, and joined my mistress to peer outside. Orange flames licked at the bones of the derelict ships of the settlement. Strange figures coursed over and through the structures in a preternatural fluidity.

They were equine in form but strikingly pale, and when one looked up at me, I shuddered to realize that it had no eyes, only a smooth expanse of rubbery skin where they would have been. A forked tongue hissed out of the creature’s gaping maw, but then a sharkpony galloped into view, and the creature and several of its kind turned as one to rush at the poor mare.

They caught up to her in an instant, and I turned away, trying to block the screams from my ears.

“What do we do?” I asked, helplessly. “Where do we go?”

My mistress paced back and forth, thinking, pausing only to stare out at the city. Suddenly she halted, as something caught her eye. “Follow me.”

We fled through the streets...