Angujaktuat

by NorrisThePony

Chapter Three - Sewer

i

The Angujaktuat raged onwards into the coming dawn, the entire ruined apartment complex shivering and groaning as much as the six ponies within it. Wind Whistler was lying by the fire, her wings folded tightly around herself for warmth.

Across from her, Opal Charm was running an old engraved dagger along a beaten-up makeshift whetstone, two small piles of bladed weapons on her left and her right. Blades waiting to be sharpened, and ones that had already received her care. Preparations for some bloody battle that Winny was hoping they wouldn’t see.

The others were scattered about, in various positions. Cottonfoot lay glaring at Winny with a look of icy hatred. Amber, the sick little filly, had been put to bed by a white-coated mare who’s name Winny hadn’t caught, not long after Winny had first arrived. Fox Trot and Muktuk had gone to scour the district and assemble some last minute supplies from various ‘dead drops’ hidden across the half-abandoned apartment complex block.

“How long?” Opal Charm asked, not looking up from her work but clearly directing the question towards Winny all the same. “Till your husband finds out what you stole.”

Winny scoffed, shrugging. “He’s probably going to be too preoccupied with finding me. I was careful. Covered my tracks. I’ve spent weeks in his private study, tainting it up with my magical aura so that he wouldn’t be able to single it out as well now. And he’s not my husband, anymore, Opal.”

“Till death do you part.” Opal replied, setting down a dagger and promptly picking another one up.

“Fine. Then I’ll outlive him long enough to say it in earnest, or die trying to.”

“Y’seem pretty sure the Princesses are going to give a damn about any of us.”

“Don’t have much else to believe in right now, do we?”

“Guess not.”

Silence fell, save for the steady rhythm of Opal’s whetstone. Winny could distinctly feel Cottonfoot’s gaze on her, the stallion not saying anything audibly though Winny knew his mind was alight with loathsome remarks in her direction.

For her own part, she passed her time trying not to panic too much about her current situation. She thought about what would actually change in the Empire, once Sombra realized she was missing. If she managed to escape, that was... What would really change? She’d been married to him, yes, but had she really mattered to the Empire? She hadn’t felt like it.

She imagined things would continue on exactly as they’d been. It wasn’t as though Winny contributed much to the survival of the Empire. Her father and brothers had, with the work they’d done at the fisheries and the mines. Her mother did, with her work as a baker and her--

Winny tensed up as a realization struck her like the first gust of wind when she’d left the Tower.

“I have to go.” Winny announced abruptly. Across the room, Cottonfoot let out an audible snarl.

“Over my dead body. Sit down, Sombra-whore.”

Winny rose to her hooves instead, meeting Cottonfoot’s hateful glare with one of her own. “No. I need to go. I’ll be back.”

“You don’t come and go as you please.” Cottonfoot returned, grabbing the hilt of his spear and pointing it in Winny’s direction as he paced the frozen floor towards her. “Sit back down and be quiet.”

Opal Charm let out a little groan as well, swatting the tip of the spear away from Winny and looking at the mare with an impatient expression--like a tired parent breaking up two fighting siblings. “What do you ‘have to go’ for? Number one? Two?”

Winny blinked, not understanding her meaning for a moment. “N-no. I need to leave. My mother...”

“She’s sure as seal-fat not coming with us.” Opal shook her head, frowning.

“Obviously not. But… well, Sombra is going to… he’ll go to her to try and find out where I am. I need to warn her...”

“Shit.” Opal brought a hoof to her forehead. “That’s… a good point, actually. She saw our faces. He’ll no doubt torture her for info, 'less we, uh. Get to her first.”

“Exactly. So, I need to go,” Winny said again.

“Like spirits you do.” Opal shook her head, trotting over to where the Rebels had hung up their parkas. “We’ll take care of it. Snowswirl, you coming? Might need an extra set of eyes.”

The white-coated mare perked up at the mention of her name, nodding and rising to her own hooves. “‘Course, Opal.”

“You keep an eye on Amber and the wife, Cottonfoot.” Opal ordered, tossing Snowswirl her parka and quickly shuffling into her own. “Try to get along while we’re gone, yeah?”

“Please let me come with you.” Winny practically begged. “I need to say goodbye.”

“Listen, mare.” Opal growled out, pausing in the midst of equipping her make-shift snowgoggles to narrow her gaze at Winny. “Every second you’re out there, guards’ll be looking for you. Stay here, lay low, and leave this to us. Ask Cottonfoot there for some help cuttin’ your mane and tail if you wanna be useful while we’re gone.”

There was no more time to protest. Opal stashed a dagger under the sleeve of her parka, and the two mares swiftly vanished down the old stone stairwell. Their hoofbeats sounded out as they descended until they were too far to be heard, drowned out by the swirling winds of the Angujaktuat the mares had fled into.

Across from Winny, Cottonfoot was pointedly not meeting her gaze. The angry winds outside filled any void that would have otherwise been occupied by conversation, the stallion apparently doing his best not to regard Winny for even a moment. With a small sigh, she rose to her hooves, starting towards where Opal’s sharpened dagger collection was still lying in wait. She was hardly impressed that she’d been denied the chance to say goodbye to her mother, but Opal hadn’t exactly been wrong, either. She’d been paraded around the Crystal Empire by Sombra enough that she’d be recognized, and it would be foolish to assume otherwise. She wouldn’t be able to disguise herself easily--her identity gripped her by her sides, catching the breezes and leaving wayward feathers behind. Her wings had helped her fly away from the gilded cage Sombra had kept her in, but they’d be the very first things to get her dragged right back in, too.

Her mane, of course, would be the second. If not by virtue of recognition, then by virtue of inconvenience. Sombra had liked her mane long and ornate, which was hardly practical when mobility and discretion was one’s intended goal. Winny could hardly disagree with Opal’s opinion that it had to go. Shedding it would be like stepping out of ill-fitting horseshoes for the first time in her life.

“Er… Cottonfoot…?” Winny began warily, as she started towards the daggers.

That, at least, got his attention. He jerked his head in her direction, his gaze sweeping from her to her destination and earning an angry snarl from the stallion. “And what are you doing, Sombra-whore?”

“Cutting… cutting my mane. Like Opal asked. Can you maybe help me?”

The stallion let out another annoyed snort, but rose to his hooves with a spiteful little nod. “Fine. Stay still.”

Winny didn’t need to be told twice. She sat back down, getting to work fishing out the expensive broaches keeping her mane in check. One, two, three, she threw the useless jewelry away, her long mane flowing freely down her back for all but a moment before Cottonfoot roughly grabbed a length in a hoof. With no measure of grace or precision, he hacked away at it with one of the unsharpened daggers like it were dense foliage, garnering a sharp cry from Winny.

Over the course of a few minutes, Cottonfoot worked away at her mane, cutting it down until it was a dreadfully messy, unkempt mess of a short mane. His work apparently completed, he threw down the dagger and trotted away from Winny without taking so much as a second to look back at his work, leaving her to cut her tail down to a little over a foot.

“G-guess you don’t like me very much, do you, Cottonfoot?” Winny said softly as she worked, glancing back over at him.

“What was your first hint?” he returned, sneering at her with a stern expression.

“If we’re going to be escaping together, we’d probably do well to, uh. Talk about that?”

“Listen, wife. You stay quiet, you speak when you’re spoken to, and we won’t have any issues. Beyond that, I owe you absolutely nothing.”

“Now you just sound like him.”

He didn’t reply to that, lumbering back over to the other side of the room and not bothering to meet her eyes.

Fox Trot and Muktuk returned first. Winny had been grateful that somepony that wasn’t Cottonfoot was now there for company, even if Fox Trot wasn’t particularly talkative either. Cottonfoot had explained Snowswirl and Opal’s absence in hushed whispers to Fox Trot, the two glancing over at Winny without properly involving her in the conversation.

Winny sighed, and looked away, waiting tensely for Opal and Snowswirl’s return. While she’d quickly pieced together the sobering truth that Cottonfoot would just as soon slice of his own ear than willingly express anything but disdain towards her, she still wasn’t quite sure what to make out of Fox Trot. The older pony had been... Impressively neutral, in his dealings with Winny so far. In her eyes, it could have gone either way. At the very least, she figured Fox Trot wouldn’t act against the will of the group’s de facto leader Opal Charm, even when she was currently preoccupied with other matters.

The night continued to pass around them. Winny watched it from the cracks of a boarded window on one side of the apartment, the sky turning from various shades of pink and purple. She tried to visualize, as best as she could, how Sombra would react upon waking to find an empty bed next to him. She hoped he was frightened. She hoped he loathed her. She hoped his fury was palatable and true--she’d been dreaming of the day she left him since the day she married him, after all.

Perhaps, for once in his life, he would see her as she saw him.

Opal and Snowswirl returned an hour or so after Fox Trot had. Cottonfoot had felt their approach, calling it out to Fox Trot before it had happened, and after a few more minutes the two mares appeared in the torch-lit entrance, coated in a heavy dusting of snow from their expedition.

“Your ma says she loves ya and she won’t spill,” Opal reported immediately, devoid of any emotion or care. “She’s stayin’ with a friend, and then she says she’ll keep moving. Crashing in different places, keeping a low profile, until... Well. Until the heat is down.”

Winny let a heavy sigh of relief roll over shoulders. “Thank you, Opal. Thank you... I can’t even...”

“It’s fine. I get it.” Opal held up a hoof to silence her, and Winny say that Opal had instantly redirected her attention to Fox Trot. “Nothin’ outta the Tower, yet. But we have to move fast.”

“Right.” Fox Trot nodded. “This is all so... After all this time, I didn’t think we’d actually be doing this...”

“Guess it’s safe to say none of you have ever been out of the Empire, then?” Winny said softly. “Never gone through the Shimmer?”

“I have.” Fox Trot piped up. His voice was soft--Winny had to raise an ear just to be certain she would not miss anything the stallion had said. “Once. And not through the Shimmer.”

Winny blinked. “Really?”

Fox Trot nodded. “Was taken to the Crystal Mines when I was a teenager.” A distant, cloudy look flooded into the older stallion’s expression. “Spent… spent decades there...”

“He escaped,” Opal Charm cut in as Fox Trot went silent, as some spectre of an ancient horror overtook him. “Contrary to what Sombra will have you believe, it can happen.”

“How?” Winny whispered, amazed. “How did you--”

“Luck. Hell of a lot of blind luck, and a gods damned strong drive to prove that slave-keep wrong that I wasn’t ever going to see the sunlight again.”

“Not that any of us have,” Opal added spitefully, more at the blizzard raging outside than anypony in the room.

Fox Trot let out an agreeing grumble. “Yeah, well. Better to die free in at the fury of the Angujaktuat then in chains. That’s what motivated me then, and I guess it’s what’s motivating you now, Sombra-wife.”

Winny nodded. “You trekked here from the mining camps?”

Fox Trot smiled, distant and sad. “Yes. Me and a couple others. It wasn’t easy. I... Was the only one who made it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“They died free ponies. I believe that even in death they took some solace in that fact.” Fox Trot’s smile was a sort of passive neutral. An ancient, crystallized resignation.

“Where... How did you get through the Shimmer?” Winny asked.

“Not through,” Fox Trot said. “Under. The Empire used to be a lot bigger than it is now, as it turns out. Do you know what we used to have underneath, centuries ago, before the Angujaktuat made that impossible?”

For a few moments, Winny thought it over. She didn’t want to seem like an idiot to these ponies staring dumbly, though, so she ventured a random shot into the conversational dark. “An aqueduct?”

Fox Trot clicked his tongue. “She’s brighter than she seems. That’s right. An aqueduct. Sewers. And, if you’re escaping a mining colony, and you managed to swipe a pick-axe on your way out...”

“Oh, that’s clever...” Winny breathed out, eyes wide in awe. “How far do the sewers run?”

“Close to the Shimmer, but not far enough. But where the sewers stop, there are uncountable networks of caves snaking their way through the ice-packs far beneath the Empire. I discovered this when I decided to take shelter from the Angujaktuat in one. Imagine my surprise when it... Continued on into the darkness.”

“That’s... Incredible.” Winny gasped. Behind her, Cottonfoot let out an irritated snort at her obvious excitement. Winny ignored him.

"...And they come up at a few junctions, though they’re all sealed up under too much ice for us to get through. With the exception of one." Fox Trot continued. "We still got that map, Opal?”

Opal was already ahead of him, it seemed. As he’d been explaining, she had been rifling through the group’s limited supplies and produced a strip of seal-skin parchment that she set down before Fox Trot. On it, Winny could see a charcoaled sketch of what she assumed to be the sewage system of the Crystal Empire, erected long, long before the Angujaktuat’s fury but sketched in the midst of it. Presumably, it had been Fox Trot himself who had done so, with how intimately he proceeded to speak of it.

“The junctions are all impassable, like I said. For a while, I thought I was just going to starve and die down there, after having come so far. Surviving eatin’ rats like some wild beast. But there is a way out, right here.” He pointed to one of the junctions on the map. “I figured, if there were rats, there had to be a way in and out. This junction here comes up right underneath, well. I won’t sugarcoat it, it’s a mass-grave. Pretty sure of it. The pit kinda was hastily dug out, and I guess it collapsed one of the walls of the sewers. And that was my way out.”

Winny looked closer at the map, trying to reconcile it with the mental map of the Crystal Empire held within her own mind. “I think I know this place. The graveyard in the peasant district, yeah?”

“That’s right,” Fox Trot said, nodding. The old stallion’s expression turned softer, as he read Winny’s own. “Who’ve you got there?”

“Everypony, ‘sides my ma. My pa first. Mining accident. Then my brothers, both of ‘em. The flu, during that first big outbreak.”

“I’m sorry,” Fox Trot said gently, and somehow, Winny knew he meant it.

Cottonfoot, however, let out a little huff. “Don’t see how learning about Sombra-wife’s tragic past is helpin’ and of us right now. No offence.”

Fox Trot glared at him, for but a second, before sighing and turning back to the map. “Right, well. I’m pretty sure my little excursion through here was noticed. I’d be surprised if we were able to get back in there a second time.”

“There’s other mass graves, though,” Opal offered. “Sombra’s guard is fond of them. ‘Specially during, well. Like the wife said. During that first outbreak. Probably a similar story, right?”

“We can try.” Fox Trot shrugged. “They’ll be buried underneath a gods-damned brick wall of pack ice, though. Angujaktuat’s gotten a lot worse since I last did this.”

“There’s more of us, now,” Opal said. “Five, instead of just one. Only problem is that we’re going down, instead of up. Bigger chance of someone noticing us.”

“Not if the bulk of Sombra’s guard is looking for his little lady lost,” Winny said. “I can, uh. I can try luring them away? Give you lot a chance to work, while they’re looking for me.”

Cottonfoot scowled at that. Opal and Fox Trot shared a look, though, seeming to weigh the probability of that actually being an intelligent counter-proposal. Neither spoke up for nearly a minute, and so Cottonfoot predictably broke the silence.

“He’ll skin you alive if he catches you,” he growled out. “Torture you for information on us, what you were planning, where you were going.”

Winny exhaled. “I know that. But even if he did, I’d still be buying you lot time.”

“Oh, good!” came Cottonfoot’s irritated, sarcastic reply. “That’s both of our problems solved, then. We give him the wife to play with while we make our escape.”

This time, it was Opal’s turn to glare at Cottonfoot, for several seconds, before turning her gaze back to Winny.

“It’s too risky. Besides, you do wanna get out too, right?” Opal flicked an ear, seeming conflicted by the compassion she was showing. “You brought us the map and the dragonfire, so you’re one of us now. And we don’t leave anypony behind. Right, Cottonfoot?”

He grumbled some spiteful affirmation out, and looked away. Winny felt a swell of gratitude toward Opal, having fully expected the five ponies to ditch her at the first sign that she’d further endanger their survival. She supposed they still might, but the lapse in compassion was at least good to have for the moment.

Opal shooting down the idea did leave them at a bit of an impasse, though. The group went quiet once again, each of them seemingly working out an alternative to their plan.

It was Opal herself who eventually thought of one. “What about crypts?”

Fox Trot tilted his head thoughtfully. “Mm. We don’t know if any run above the sewers.”

“Still the best we’ve got, from where I’m standing,” Opal said. “And at least we can hide out there. Sombra’s gonna have his guard doing apartment complex searches, and you can bet this’ll be one of the first places he looks. If the wife found us that easily, imagine how long we’ll last with the Dark King himself sniffing around.”

“Right. Okay.” Fox Trot nodded. “We should move soon. Give some time for the snow to cover our tracks. Where are you thinking, Opal?”

“It, er. Well. Not really ideal to our goal of avoiding Sombra, but the best place for us to be going I think is the cemetery closest to the Tower.”

“What?” Cottonfoot let out a panicked laugh. “And waltz right into Sombra’s guard? No no, you can count me the buck out of that one!”

“Cottonfoot. Relax.” Opal glared. “I’m not saying right away. But those crypts are the biggest ones in the Empire. Biggest underground spot I can think of off the top of my head... And if this...” She gave the map a little shake. “Is any indication, we just have to knock down one or two walls or floors to be into the sewers themselves.

The group moved with urgency. From the other room, Opal and the milk-coloured mare (who, Winny had heard through her eavesdropping was Snowswirl) were both helping the young filly with her parka. Snowswirl’s mane and coat were both rather indicative of the mare’s name, so that if she were to lie down among the snow itself, she would’ve been practically concealed.

She was, simply put, beautiful, and had about her a sort of motherly grace as she helped the young Amber. The whole while, Snowswirl was constantly shooting little sideways glances at Winny, whilst in the midst of a whispered conversation with Opal about their current destination.

The filly Amber, meanwhile, seemed to be intrigued by the stranger in their midst. Winny afforded herself a little smile and wave back at the filly. Amber coughed a few times while they were getting ready, each sound a dagger in Winny’s heart.

The six ponies left the apartment complex with the pinpricks of daylight slowly beginning to fade into the sky. The Angujaktuat had calmed somewhat for the first little bit of early morning daylight, but everypony had known it would not last long. As they hastily travelled--in two groups of three to avoid rousing too much suspicion--Winny watched the sunlight fade in from darkness, burning from behind torrents of snow. The purple sun danced in distorted patterns, as it’s first first few beams hit the Shimmer.

Winny could not help but wonder if she'd ever see it again, in the same way.

Their destination was a cemetery that was a bit closer to the Crystal Tower than any of the gathered company necessarily felt comfortable approaching, especially with the first traces of daylight starting to slip into the sky. Snowswirl, Cottonfoot, and Amber had made up the first group, along with Muktuk, who they were planning on then sending back to accompany Winny, Opal, and Fox Trot.

The three huddled behind a tall snowbank, looking over at the snow-cable that led on into the eternal whiteout. They waited, tensely, for Muktuk’s return, and when he finally did the poor husky was nearly impossible to spot with how much snow now clung to his fur.

Opal whistled to him, and he came over to where they were huddled.

“Good boy,” she breathed out, sweeping his back clear with her hoof, and hugging him close to her own barrel to warm him up a bit.

They could not wait long, though--not with the other three still waiting for them on the other side. Opal glances at Fox Trot, first, and then at Winny. “Ready?”

Winny nodded. “Let’s go.”

“Alright. Stay between me and Fox Trot.”

As they began to make their way towards the snow-cable, Winny caught the faintest glint of movement in her peripheral, amidst the swirling snow. Glancing over, she felt her heart sink into her chest.

“Get down!”

Fox Trot and Opal did so in an instant without having to stop and verify why, though when they glanced in Winny’s direction they quickly saw the reason for her sudden exclamation. Back in the direction of the Crystal Tower, a rather dramatic amount of guards were pouring out of the structure as though they were rats leaping from a sinking ship.

“Damn it...” Opal growled, crouching back beneath the snowbank. “They’re already looking?!”

“Sombra must’ve awoken early,” Winny said. She didn’t dare raise her head to see if the guards were heading their way, or even how many there were. “What do we do, Opal?”

“Can’t stay here, that’s for sure,” Fox Trot replied. “I’ve got an idea, though. Come on.”

“Hold it, old timer,” Opal hissed. “The hell you thinking?”

“We cut the snow-cable. Won’t stop ‘em, but it’ll slow ‘em.”

“And if we get lost?”

Fox Trot gave Muktuk a little tap with his hooves. “Then we’ve got fleaball here. Right, Muktuk?”

Muktuk wasn’t capable of replying, though miraculously, to Winny he seemed to understand all the same.

“Right. Kay, good plan. Let’s go,” Opal said. She was already withdrawing a dagger from her parka as they headed towards the snow-cable, leaving the cover of the snowbank. A glance backwards showed Winny nearly a half-dozen guards were already heading in their direction. The three cantered to the snow-cable, and when they were there, Winny glanced back a second time. Now, the guards were starting towards them, and her heart began thumping rapidly in her chest.

“Go, go, go!” Opal barked out. Their previous arrangement was forgotten, it was just a matter of getting across the cable now, the specific order be damned. Winny hooked a wing around the snowcable, the cold biting at her feathers in an instant. She couldn’t help but gasp out as it did, but she did not slow. Behind her, Opal hacked at the cable furiously with her dagger, but there was enough ice and snow coating it that she would’ve surely been there all day had Fox Trot not come behind her, and drove the blade of the pick-axe on his back down onto the cable. Instantly, it severed, and the cable whipped past Winny, slicing off a few feathers as the wind grasped it and stole it with lightning speed.

The three did not linger further. They stayed close together, and close to Muktuk, as the husky resolutely carved his way through the Angujaktuat. It was a lengthy, arduous journey, and the blizzard provided a relentless elemental beating to the three ponies and one canine, but eventually they could see the tell-tale shape of wind-battered-buildings poking out from the roiling white expanse.

Snowswirl, Cottonfoot, and Amber were waiting for them on the other side, though they didn’t initially see them from their vantage point in a back-alley of the decrepit apartments.

Opal delivered the bad news without hesitation. “Think they saw us. We need cover, and we need it fast.”

Cottonfoot groaned, and offered nothing helpful. Snowswirl, however, pointed a hoof back behind her. “The cemetery is that way.”

The group scurried toward the cemetery as quickly as they could manage. The old cemetery had once been surrounded by a fence and bore a proud stone archway at the entrance, but now both were practically buried beneath snow. Most of the tombstones were, too, for the few ponies from the olden days, when they still bothered with those. The only structures that existed besides the boarded-up chapel were the mausoleums, most of which were buried beneath a meter or so of snow.

Fox Trot had taken up the front of the party, and he led the charge towards the chapel. They moved at a brisk, near-canter, which was difficult in the snow but necessary given the intensity of their situation. Even with the snow-cable snapped, she knew it wasn’t long before the guard would make their way to their end of the Empire.

They would likely begin their search with the apartments, at least. It was the more logical option for anypony who wasn’t aware of the Sewers. Which... Winny wasn’t even convinced Sombra himself was aware of them, anymore.

At one of the windows of the chapel, Fox Trot pried off a board as delicately as he could manage, and the six of them scrambled inside, with Fox Trot lifting Muktuk up to a waiting Opal Charm.

And then, Fox Trot replaced the board as best as he could, obscuring the blinding white to a rectangular outline, and flooding them back into darkness.

ii

While the snow storm continued to rage on outside and the guards continued to search the nearby district, Opal and Cottonfoot had ventured out to begin digging out one of the mausoleums nearest to the chapel. Winny watched them from the cracks in the boarded windows, as they worked as quickly and efficiently as they could to clear a path into the long-submerged structured.

As quickly as they worked, it was still several hours before they had made any sort of progress. They had been working with an old shovel recovered inside the chapel, which surely had not simplified matters. The snow storm was strong enough that they were somewhat obscured even from Winny’s vantage point in the chapel, and certainly from anypony looking into the cemetary from the rest of the district.

Eventually, though, Opal and Cottonfoot lumbered back to the chapel, tapping on the hastily re-boarded window. Fox Trot removed it, and then relayed the message to the others.

It was time to move.

The crypts beneath the Crystal Empire smelt of rot and decay struggling to penetrate through the layers of ice and snow shimmering all about.

They stumbled through the darkness for long enough to be within the crypts themselves, and then after Cottonfoot and Fox Trot had heaved the mausoleum door back in place, Opal Charm began to light the stone walls with the sparking of a sheet of flint and steel, and then the more consistent burning of an oil lamp once she got it lit.

“Everypony here?” she glanced back, using the extra light to do a quick inventory. “Good. Okay.”

The first room of the crypt, which would have been the mausoleum visible on the outside, was large enough for one tomb belonging to some noble none of the gathered party knew enough to respect. Besides him, the only other thing of note was a staircase that descended down a single flight towards the underground realm beneath the Crystal Empire.

Opal led the way down, and Winny followed, flanked on her side by Snowswirl, with Amber riding on her back.

“Cotton, gimmie a hoof with our friend here,” Fox Trot was saying. Winny turned with a hoof on the first step, and when she saw the two of them struggling to push the ancient stone coffin, she trotted over to help.

Cottonfoot telegraphed his annoyance with her presence with a low grunt but did not actually seem to be intent on dissuading her. The three of them, with a good bit of effort on all of their parts, managed to push the stone coffin against the entrance of the mausoleum... Not enough to block any legitimate entrance, but Winny supposed any amount of slowing would help if the situation required it.

Then, the three of them joined the others in the bleak corridor at the bottom of the steps, following the only source of light ahead. They took their time on the stairs themselves, so they did not all come crashing down together in a heap. Opal was already heaving off her pack and taking inventory of her supplies, with the oil lamp itself resting atop a stone coffin affixed in a resting spot along the frozen dirt wall behind her.

The Catacombs of the Crystal Empire were an ancient affair, and they travelled for some distance beneath the Empire. On both sides of them, in the first corridor they had descended into, there were about half-a-dozen coffins total, all affixed into the walls on either side. There were plaques on some declaring who the ponies within had been--important figures, no doubt, from a time when the Empire hasn't been such a wretched place to be alive in--or, dead in, Winny supposed. A time when they’d still been permitted to honour their dead in some capacity that they'd deserved, instead of just shovelling them into a great big hole in the ground.

They had just arrived at one of half-a-dozen junction points where one could access the subterranean tunnels, which meant navigation would be key to finding out where they were actually going. As such, Winny was unsurprised to see that the map was the first thing that Opal withdrew, and promptly hoofed over to Fox Trot, who was already helping her unpack.

“We’ll redistribute supplies evenly,” Opal was saying. “Everypony shares the weight. Nopony gets left behind. I know these tunnels seem cramped, but everypony needs to stay close. We can’t afford to get separated down here.”

Opal received a chorus of affirmations from Winny and the Rebels. Winny was given some of their water rations to carry as well as some cookware, and while she hadn’t come to the rebels with a particularly large pack, it was still enough to carry her affairs.

As soon as their affairs were all collectively sorted out, they began to head into the catacombs proper. Even shielded from the wind and pelting snow outside, the cold was intense enough that they all kept their parkas on, and Snowswirl kept the young Amber held close to her barrel as they trudged down the corridor, with Fox Trot and Opal both leading the way taking alternating glances at their hoof-drawn map. Winny had been wedged somewhere between the group, with Cottonfoot behind her. Considering what she’d seen of his cowardly behaviour thus far, she was hardly surprised.

The catacombs snaked on in the strange, labyrinthine way they’d been known to. Dug as the dead piled. Growing and growing and interconnecting with other catacombs that had been growing in other places in the Empire... Halls upon halls of the entombed. A more prestigious fate than being thrown into a hole in the ground with a dozen or so other ponies, as Sombra had deemed fitting those beneath him.

She found it interesting that despite the frozen nature of the catacombs, a rank scent still hung over everything, to the point that it was almost choking at its absolute worse. She knew she wasn’t the only one to notice it, either--Amber’s coughing had become more violent, her sickness stirred by the dank and claustrophobic air. A glance back at Cottonfoot, and she could see him traversing forth with his snout scrunched up and a scowl on his face.

“Surprised anything’s even alive down here,” Winny piped up softly, hoping some conversation might break the chip Cottonfoot seemed to have on his shoulder about her.

“Obviously it isn’t,” he gruffly replied.

“Mare’s right. It’d have to be,” Fox Trot piped up. “We’re smellin’ rot and decay, so. Somethin’s alive, even with the frozen temperature.”

“Shouldn’t be possible.”

“Nature’s a fascinating thing, Cottonfoot. Lots you don’t know,” Fox Trot replied, glancing back with a smirk. “Wait till you see what it looks like outside the Shimmer.”

“Uh huh. Less talkin’, more walkin’, Sombra-whore.” Cottonfoot grumbled out.

Winny rolled her eyes. “You see me slowing, Cotton?”

She received another wordless grumble by way of reply, and nothing further, not that she’d really been expecting the stallion to be very verbose.

It was hard for any of them to really be certain as to where they were going, even with the map. The oil lamp did not grant them a plethora of light at their disposal, and they knew better than to light a second one with what limited oil they currently had. Technically, they had three oil lamps--one of them she could hear jangling against Cottonfoot’s side as he walked. The other was attached to Opal’s pack, with the lit lamp held in her maw.

On occasion, the group came upon another junction, where a flight of old wooden stairs rose up towards a ceiling of ice and hard packed snow. A mausoleum once, now lost to the constant blizzard and forgotten.

They were largely walking in circles, Winny figured. It was to be expected, considering the point they were searching was a fairly narrow one, and they were going entirely off of Fox Trot’s intuition and an old scrap of paper that hardly qualified as a map. On occasion, Fox Trot would stop, and Winny would see him dig his hooves into the snow a little more firmly, as he tried to get a proper feel for the layout of the earth beneath his hooves. An old earth pony trick. Sombra had always insisted that they were the ‘magicless’ tribe, which only further convinced Winny that they were something to be looked to and not underestimated.

Eventually, on one such occasion, Fox Trot’s expression shifted to a thoughtful frown. He withdrew the map, checked it again, and mumbled under his breath. “Think...”

He removed a pick-axe that had been strapped to his pack, and left the blade crack down against the ice beneath his hooves.

“Think this might be it,” he said again, louder, turning back towards the others.

Winny could hear a collective sigh of relief between the group. Opal shuffled her pack off and gave Fox Trot a single nod and smile. “Only one way to find out, old-timer. Which of us is the strongest digger?”

“How ‘bout you and me take turns, Opal,” Cottonfoot grumbled out, removing his pack, too, and trotting close.

Winny took a step forwards, too. “Me as well.”

“Alright,” Opal nodded. “Snowy, you and Amber okay?”

“Yes we are, Opal. Right, Amber?”

A cough. “Yes, Miss Opal!”

Opal smiled a weary, tired smile. Then, she jerked her head towards some of the old wooden boards that had been erected to keep the nearby coffins from falling from their spots along the walls... Necessary, perhaps when they hadn’t been frozen in place like concrete. “Think you can get a fire going?”

Snowswirl did so, and after a few moments, the catacombs were lit by the warm burning of a small bonfire. Fox Trot and Muktuk had decided to patrol the catacombs in the interim, while Opal, Winny, and Cottonfoot took turns digging down blindly into the ice below. Opal worked for ten or so minutes, and then Cottonfoot had offered to take over when the mare’s grunts became a bit more noticeably exhausted. After Cottonfoot had taken over he worked for twice as long, and every time Winny piped up with an offer to take over, she was met with a low growl and backwards glare from the stallion.

Apparently not.

That was okay, though... After all, if she had been busy thudding away at the ice, she might not have heard the sound of a vibrating thump, from somewhere else in the catacombs.

She wasn’t certain it wasn’t just a trick of her ears. Or perhaps the sound of the ice above shifting. That had been her initial assumption, but the low vibration had seemed to come from below them, not from anywhere above or around. It had been a single, solid, thump. Not a clatter, as she would have expected from ice or rocks breaking off and falling, but instead like something large and fleshy had fallen from a high ceiling.

Winny had wanted to ask Snowswirl if she’d heard it immediately. And yet when she turned to do so, she saw Snowswirl gently singing a whispered lullaby to Amber, trying to lull her into some sort of calm with the help of the warm bonfire.

Winny wasn’t sure if the sight had disarmed her of her worry, or she’d come to the conclusion of her own silliness by her own vocation. Either way, she found herself heading over to the bonfire as well, relishing in the heat against her fur for the first time since they had left the apartment complex.

“Heya,” Winny mumbled out, settling down by the fire next to Snowswirl.

“Cotton not givin’ you a turn, eh?” Snowswirl said, her voice a soft whisper. Which... Now that Winny thought about it, was more or less its default state.

“Not for me, that’s for certain.”

“He really... You’re seeing the worse side to him,” Snowswirl said, a hoof idly stroking Amber’s mane, while the little filly herself seemed to have drifted into sleep. “He’s not usually so nasty.”

“I don’t take it personally,” Winny replied. “I just wish he’d let me help, is all. He’s allowed to hate me, but not to such an extent that our progress might be hindered.”

Snowswirl nodded. “No arguments here, I suppose. We haven't really spoken yet, have we? You and I? I’m Snowswirl. But that’s a bit of a mouthful, so you can call me Snowy if you’re prefer."

Winny smiled. “Hi, Snowy. And that’s little Amber Waves, yeah? Out like a light?”

Snowy chuckled. “Poor filly. Y’know... I wish we didn’t have to take her with us. I wish there was someplace we could leave her.”

Winny pursed her lips. “There might be. My ma. But... I don’t know if Sombra will... find her, or not."

A hollow, guilty emptiness, in her chest, as she said it. Her own mother’s fate was a question mark, and it was her own damn fault.

Snowy seemed to read the unease on her face. "I think she's going to be fine, y'know. She seems like a very smart and resourceful mare. She's worried sick for you, but... well. Opal promised her you wouldn't be alone."

Winny blinked. A small smile cracked on the corners of her lips, but she said nothing immediately.

“A-as for Amber... she’s safer with us outside the Empire than without us inside it,” Snowy replied. “This might seem... Tangential. But how old are you, Winny?”

Winny. Snowswirl had, to Winny’s knowledge, been the first of the Rebels to actually call her by her nickname. Not ‘Sombra-wife’. Not ‘Whore’.

“Twenty one.”

“You’ve been married to Sombra for four years. He married you when you were seventeen?”

Winny’s ears fell. “Yeah. I didn’t... I didn’t chose it. I mean, I did, I accepted his hoof, but...”

“But it was a lie. Y’know, I do remember the wedding. I remember seeing your face when it was happening.”

Winny bit her lip, and found herself unable to look away from the sparking fire. “Yeah?”

“Haunted. That’s what I thought of you, when I saw you. You looked... Haunted.”

“My brother had died that week. I’d... I’d been too scared to ask Sombra to delay the wedding...” Winny squeezed her eyes shut. “Had to put on a happy face. Pretend I wasn’t... Hurting.” She exhaled. “Gods I hate him. I hate him more than anything.”

“You and Cottonfoot have more in common than you think.”

Winny snorted. “Tell that to Cottonfoot. He’s already got it in his head that he’s gotta hate me.”

“He’s really not a bad pony,” Snowy said for what seemed like the second time. “He’ll come around on you. Seems Opal and Fox Trot already are.”

“And you?”

Snowy laughed. “I... Guess I just try to understand.”

Winny managed a smile, a warm and genuine one. It hardly occurred to her that it was probably the first one that had graced her visage since her visit with ma... Had it only been a week ago? It had felt like years.

Behind her, she heard a rustling of hooves against the icy floor, and a gruff throat clearing. “Sitting on the job, huh? Lazy whore.”

“Said you ‘didn’t want my help,’ Cottonfoot,” Winny returned. She did not bother looking over at the stallion, which seemed to further motivate frustration from him. She heard him stomp his way closer, and before she could turn, he'd reached a hoof to harshly pull her up by her left wing.

“C’mon. Up. Your turn, Sombra-whore.”

Across from the bonfire, Snowy narrowed her eyes. Not at Winny, but at Cottonfoot. “A ‘please come help’ would suffice, Cottonfoot. Let her go.”

Cottonfoot snorted out a laugh and did not relent. “Like blazes it would.”

“Wind Whistler, you don’t have to follow his orders,” Snowy said, not breaking eye contact with Cottonfoot.

For her own part, Winny didn’t want things to escalate unnecessarily. She rose to her hooves, wrenching her wing out of Cottonfoot’s grip as she did and shooting him a filthy look. “I’m coming. Jerk. Don't touch me like that again.”

Cottonfoot continued to complain about something or other to Snowy after Winny had left, but she did not stick around to listen to what it was. She was already trotting back to where Opal was leaning against the shaft of the pickaxe, which had been driven into the ice with enough force that it had stuck there.

“How’s Snowy and Amber holdin’ up?” Opal asked.

“Amber’s sleeping. Snowy’s... Nice, isn’t she?”

Opal chuckled. “Got every right to be nasty, that mare. But she’s the nicest pony I know. Go figure, right?” She plucked out the pick-axe with her teeth, balancing a hoof on the metal blade and easing the handle towards Winny. “Know what you’re doing?”

“Sharp end hits the ice. Try not to hit face.”

Opal nodded, and a small smirk formed on the mare’s typically stone face. “You’re a natural.”

Winny got to work, with Opal lingering off to her side and offering the occasional pointer as she began to beat the blade of the pick-axe down into the hole that her and Cottonfoot had started to make in the catacombs floor. It was a few hooves deep, and every time Winny hit the floor she could feel a distinct reverberation in her hooves, as though there were some sort of empty space beneath them. The sewers, as Fox Trot had predicted? She certainly hoped so.

It was tiring work, but with the knowledge that Opal was silently scrutinizing her from the sidelines, she did her best not to stop or slow. Gripping the pick-axe with one hoof and one wing wrapped around the handle for extra leverage, she chipped away at the hole she was making. Piece by piece it grew and deepened. Occasionally, she would the pick-axe lean against the side so that she could scoop out a hoof-full of the compacted ice and shovel it out of the hole.

And then, when her wing and forelimb felt ready to give out in exhaustion, the pick-axe impacted the ice and she heard the distinct sound of ice clattering down below into empty space. When she drew it up, a patch of darkness lay where the blade had been.

Opal was peering over the edge of the hole in an instant. A little whistle left her as she did.

“Looks like we’ve found our way out.”

Winny let out a lengthy, relieved exhale of relief. Opal was already scrambling back towards where she had deposited the oil lamp, removing a piece a piece of rope from her pack and tying it around the lamp’s handle. Winny worked on clearing a bit more of an entrance in the meantime, and by time Opal was ready there was a hole large enough for Amber to squeeze through. Not quite any of them, but they’d get there.

Opal lowered the lamp in gently and slowly, and Winny peered over the side with wide-eyed intrigue. Their little beacon of light in the catacombs vanished, and the glow instead spread across the curved walls of the sewers beneath.

As it did, Winny could have sworn she’d seen movement, though it was the sort of movement one sometimes ‘sees’ when their eyes are adjusting to the dark after the last candle of the evening has finally burnt out. That strange swirling of the shadows that wasn’t really there, as though darkness itself were lurking and spreading across the fringes of the last light meeting her eyes.

A simple trick of the light, of course. There was nothing down there.

The sewers, from what she could see by the light of the descending oil lamp, were more spacious than the catacombs they were presently in. They were a good six or seven meters down, which meant they would have to descend with a bit of caution. It also meant that return would be... A difficult affair, not that Winny imagined such being a tempting prospect in the first place.

Opal and Winny were peering so intently over the threshold, that Cottonfoot’s urgent voice caused them both to nearly jump out of their skin.

“Opal, wife... We have a problem,” Cottonfoot grumbled out, not even looking at the hole the two were transfixed by. “I don’t think we’re alone down here.”

Cottonfoot had been mercifully brief in his explanation. Hoofsteps. Multiple, armoured, at some point nearby. Whether they were within the catacombs or above, Cottonfoot hadn’t been able to see. He claimed to have felt them, the reverberations in the ice, while his own hooves had been planted firmly and he had been remaining vigil. Winny had wanted to call hogwash simply because she wasn’t quite fond of Cottonfoot, but... Earth magic was real, denying it made her feel like Sombra, and Cottonfoot may have been a flighty coward but he had at least usually been reasonably so.

Opal had retrieved her oil lamp as quickly as she could, but then dimmed it down to a dull burn. Snowswirl and Amber were on their hooves again, the fire stomped out. The five were back in inky darkness, huddled together by the entrance to the sewers with their speechless breaths rising into the claustrophobic catacomb air.

“Hole’s there,” Opal had said, her voice a hushed whisper. “I’m gonna go find Fox Trot, you two need to keep opening it up and get Snowy and Amber down there as soon as possible.”

“What?” Cottonfoot hissed. “They’re gonna hear the bloody pickaxe, Opal!”

“Doesn’t matter. Anything’s better than staying still. We need to--”

Opal went silent as Cottonfoot’s ears twitched and his eyes widened. “Hoofsteps. But... Familiar. Soft. Approaching...”

Opal turned up the dial on the oil lamp to force out more light, and Muktuk scampered into view, followed closely by Fox Trot. The two were moving at a brisk and urgent pace.

“Guards are scowering the graveyard,” he reported. “Snow seems to have blown away our prints, but... Only a matter of time.” He nodded at the hole. “That it?”

“Yeah,” Cottonfoot said. “But we don’t wanna open it up any further, in case they he--”

Fox Trot grabbed the pickaxe out of Opal’s hoof and brought the blade down with a mighty force on the corner of the hole Winny had been chipping away at. A hefty chunk detached, hitting the floor of the sewer beneath with a clatter that was loud enough to make Winny wince.

“Thank you,” Opal mouthed in Fox Trot’s direction, while Cottonfoot scowled but said nothing.

With the hole now large enough for them to squeeze through--albeit without much comfort and ease--Opal was already tying off the length of rope with one of the heavy stone coffins as a counterweight. As she did so, Winny cleared her throat and spread her wings.

“I can... I can fly you all down. I’m not the strongest pony, but I can do it.”

“Ah.” Opal looked from Winny’s wings to the rope in her hoof, wordlessly lampshading her own stupidity but saying nothing on the subject. “Good idea, Wind Whistler.” She gave Winny a single nod, already bunching the rope back up again and instead helping Winny take off her pack. “And yes, you are letting her carry you down, Cottonfoot, before you open your mouth.”

The stallion wasn’t particularly pleased at Opal’s stern tone, but he didn’t resist either, as Winny started towards the hole descending down into the sewers.

“Betcha a million bits she’s gonna ditch us,” she heard Cottonfoot grumble out as she did. She ignored him, shuffling out of her parka and tossing it down into the sewers. She heard it hit the ground with a muted thud, a second or so later, giving her a good gauge of distance. Far enough that a fall would be unpleasant to say the least, but still narrow enough that she would have to be quick which spreading her wings as soon as she entered.

Hurriedly, she squeezed her way through the small opening and into the open air beneath, trading one claustrophobic tunnel for another. It was predictably pitch black... she couldn’t see a damned thing besides the faint little glow of the lamp back where she had come. She spread her wings immediately, flapping several times to hover in place and flap back up to the hole, where Snowswirl was already squeezing her way through with the lamp in her teeth.

Snowswirl was a welcome pick for the first passenger--her lithe, spindly form was lighter than the rest and the easiest of the adult ponies, and the oil lamp piercing through the darkness would help her control her descent a bit better without any impromptu collisions.

Still, she winced a little with the weight of a full grown pony on top of her. Her flight wavered, she lost several feet of altitude immediately, but with a few strong flaps of her wings she slowed her fall into something more controlled, and was depositing Snowswirl gently down onto the icy floor of the sewers moments later.

For the first time, Winny was able to see the sewers proper--what little sight she was afforded with the light of the lamp, anyways. Rounded, brick walls that arched upwards, and a river of frozen sludgy water, rimmed by a stone causeway just narrow enough for the group to travel down single-file.

“Thanks, Winny,” Snowswirl whispered out when she put her down on the walkway.

Amber followed, and Winny deposited the filly directly into Snowy’s hooves with extra care. Then, Cottonfoot, Fox Trot, Muktuk, and finally Opal, who had first threw down their packs before-hoof.

“Alright,” Opal said immediately as soon as she was back on her hooves. She was slinging a pack over her barrel, and kicking another towards Fox Trot with her hind leg. “Packs on everypony. We need to move.”

iii

The sewers beneath the Crystal Empire had been built decades before Winny’s time. Perhaps, they had been built centuries before it. They were impressively built, Winny thought, even by the standards of structures that had grown since then. Such structures on the surface had always been... Cheap. Not built to last, but instead built to crumble, and fail, and be built again.

The sewers however were rather expertly constructed. Intricately laid bricks, forming the arched ceiling above them, still sturdily in place after so long. They continued on in lengthy straight lines, long past what their feeble light could show them. In some places, the brick walls had collapsed, which meant they had to venture off the stone path and onto the frozen river next to them, but such was to be expected.

They were a relic from a far different time in the Empire’s history. Back when they were ruled by a Crystal Pony. Back when they’d been free. Back when they hadn’t been trapped beneath an eternal chill, struggling to survive on what they were able to grow in greenhouses or subsisting off predatory diets born not from desire but out of necessity.

Then again, it was... Sewage. They were in a sewer. Winny knew it was rather silly to look at such a thing and feel put-out, and lacking, but it was a sobering reminder of just how far they’d fallen from dignity and freedom that even an efficient means of clearing their waste had been lost in favour of digging a large hole and shovelling it in.

And for what? For what, had they lost their freedom for? They were slaves, and to what end? To what purpose? To appease the ego of the tyrant who ruled them?

Was that all they were worth?

Such thoughts had been swirling through her head with such intensity and vitriol that she wondered if they’d been enough for Sombra himself to hear. For, just as she was thinking them whilst following behind Cottonfoot’s flank, did his icy voice slice into her head as though from inside.

“You’d do well to turn back now and hope for mercy, Wind Whistler.”

She gasped. It was... A similar sensation, to when Sombra had attempted to read her mind and gauge her honesty, but it somehow felt more distant and more invasive simultaneously. She didn’t feel as though her own thoughts were endanger... And rather that his own were being projected directly into her skull. She hadn’t felt him do anything like it before, and the horror that there was nothing she could do to blot it out or resist it was enough that she audibly gasped in horror.

Opal and Cottonfoot both turned back to glance at her, but neither of them had apparently heard King Sombra’s voice, judging by the lack of intensity in their expressions. Winny looked at her hooves immediately and prayed they wouldn’t question her, and that she really was just imagining things, but moments later Sombra’s voice in her head continued.

“There’s only misery in your future one way or another. I can at least make it swift if you co-operate.”

She winced and closed her eyes and willed one single thought into her head in vicious repeat. Get out, get out, get out...

She had to get out. The Crystal Empire was Tartarus, and she had to get out.

“Betray your new rebel friends, and I might even spare your life.”

“Shut up...” Winny growled out under her breath. She hadn’t even realized she’d said it, until Opal and Cotton stood dead in their tracks and looked back at her.

“What?” Opal asked.

“She’s talking to Sombra, that’s what,” Cottonfoot said. “Some freaky mind magic thing, I’d bet. I’m telling you Opal, trusting her is the dumbest gods damned--”

“He’s talking to me,” Winny replied. No sense lying about it to these ponies. “In my... In my brain. I can hear it.”

“Great. He’s probably listening in,” Cottonfoot replied, narrowing his eyes. “Nice knowing you, Sombra whore, but this is where we leave you. Goodbye, good riddance, hope nothing but the worse.”

“Is that true, Wind Whistler?” Fox Trot piped up from behind her. “He’s listening to your thoughts?”

“He... I don’t think he is,” Winny replied.

“You don’t... ‘think’.”

“Yeah. I know how it feels when he does. It’s like... Like an itch, in my head. Like my thoughts are fuzzy, like part of them is being stolen as I’m having them. And I don’t... I don’t feel that now.”

“Is this a regular thing for you?” Snowy was frowning. Amber Waves and her were the only two ponies who seemed concerned for her own well-being instead of whether or not she was now a threat.

“Back in the Tower... Yes. Constantly, when he thought I was lying to him or being disobedient. I know what it feels like.” Winny shuddered, and gave a helpless shrug. “This felt more like he was... Taunting me.”

“Right. Well, that's probably what he was doing,” Snowy replied. “Hardly a justification to throw her to the wolves, Cottonfoot. She’s a victim same as the rest of us.”

“You’ve gotta be bucking...” Cottonfoot scowled. “How much longer are we going to keep contending with this bitch’s attempts to get us all killed? Am I the only sane pony in this damn group?”

“Can’t leave her,” Opal replied. “Same goes for any of us. Sombra will just capture ‘em and torture out the information one way or another. And much as any of us can claim ‘they won’t tell,’ the bastard is very skilled at raping somepony’s mind to get what he wants.”

Silence fell between the group for a moment. Muktuk had begun to whimper the moment when they stopped, and Winny only now noticed it properly. The husky pawing at the hard-packed snow and glancing around at the ream of light that encased them thanks to the oil lamp.

“Still happening, Winny?” Opal asked eventually.

“No,” Winny exhaled. “I’ll tell you when it does.”

“Good.” Opal nodded. “What was he saying?”

“Trying to get me to turn back. Give you lot up. Said he’d kill me painlessly if I did.” Winny looked at her hooves, exhaling heavily. “I somehow don’t even believe him on that even if I did.”

“Well. Nopony’s giving anyone up,” Opal returned. “You’d better get that through your skull, Cotton.” She turned back to Winny with a frown. “And you. That... Mind reading thing he does. Always thought it was a rumour that the guard spread to make him scarier than he was. But if it’s true, like you say... Can you fight it? Resist it? Or are you just screwed?”

Winny thought of those last few weeks spent in the Mansion, when she’d been certain he’d read the thoughts off her mind while she fought as hard as she could to keep them muted.

“You can fight it. I did. It’s hard, but... Just think of something else. Drive the thoughts out. He has to focus on one to read it properly, and if you’re determined, he can’t do it.”

“Understood. Everyone hear that? Good. We’re moving.” Opal didn’t wait for an actual answer. She turned tail and continued on, and the rest of them fell into step behind her.

As her hooves took her forever onwards, Winny became aware of that same strange movement, just on the fringes of where their light stretched. The one lit oil lamp they had was held in Opal’s mouth once more, and the orb of warm orange light it cast around the sewer walls seemed forever populated by movement just where it couldn’t properly illuminate. It was... Quick, jerky. Insect like, almost, in that eternally frantic and panicked way that insects were wont to move. Yet with all of the ‘movement’ occurring where she couldn’t actually see it, it was still difficult to rationalize it as anything but a trick of the light.

Or, so Winny thought. It seemed she wasn’t the only one, because behind her she could hear Snowy and Amber sharing a whispered exchange. With their hoofbeats reverberating off the narrow tunnel walls, it was a little hard to make out the exchange between the two soft spoken ponies.

“...No dear. I see it too...”

“...trick of the light, I’m sure...”

“...running from the light. Scared, like we are...”

Winny eventually turned and glanced back at Snowy and Amber. “You see it too, huh?”

Amber gasped as Winny turned and looked away in fright, but Snowy nodded. “Yeah. I thought it was just the way my eyes were adjusting, but... Amber and me are seeing the same thing. And I guess you, too?”

Winny nodded. When she looked back to the front of the party, she saw that Muktuk was panting and mirroring Fox Trot's movements as if the two shared a brain. The husky's ears were flat against his head, his tail was tucked beneath his belly, and he was glancing fearfully all around them still, even as they walked on.

Louder, towards the front of the party, Winny called out; “Opal? Fox Trot? We’re not crazy back here, right? There’s something moving past our light?”

Opal stopped again. She looked back at them with a raised eyebrow, and Winny realized that from Opal’s own perspective it might not have been as easy to see what they at the rear of the party had been seeing. Proximity to the light being cast, compared to their own expanded field of view from the back, meant that they might’ve been seeing something that she wasn’t.

“I don’t... You’re sure?”

“No,” Snowy said. “But Amber, me, and Winny do see something.”

“I do too,” Cottonfoot said. “Didn’t wanna say anything. But... Yeah, the mares are right.”

“...What kind of movement?” Opal didn’t look particularly impressed by the revelation.

Snowy seemed to be weighing how best to describe it in a way that wouldn’t unsettle the filly on her back. “...Quick. Like, something is fleeing from the light. Scattering, spreading out. Moving away from us whenever our light touches it.”

“...Huh.” Opal glanced helplessly at Fox Trot.

“Could be insects,” Fox Trot said. “Wouldn’t think any could live in this cold, but... Who knows. Whatever it is, if it’s moving away from us, at least it’s frightened of us. If it’s there at all. And you’re sure it is?”

“No,” Snowy said again. “Could just be the way the light is dancing off the walls.”

“Most likely,” Opal said. “Whatever it is, as long as it’s going away from us, we keep moving.”

Winny could sense the general feeling on unease that had now crept around each of them. Unspoken, and it did not affect the rate of their expedition, but somehow without confirmation, Winny knew that the beating in her chest and the unease feeling that now gripped her tightly was shared with the others as well.

Regardless, it did not change their goals nor remove Winny’s greater fear of Sombra. Whatever was lying for them in wait in the Sewers, it couldn’t be as bad as the pony she was fleeing.

Or so she hoped.

Author's Note:

Comments

[Odd_Sarge]

Everything about the atmosphere of this fic is so fitting for a long and desperately needed update.

Out of the snow, but still in the cold. Not quite the dark, yet still well within the reach of Him. I’m already looking forward to following the threads you’ve laid out, as well as seeing more of these very, very punchy characters, since its plain to see that there’s going to be a lot of changes and growth needed for them to make their journey. Plus, there’s so many more stories I can see them telling beyond the ones they’ve shared.

I think my favorite part of this chapter is definitely the touches about earth ponies and their magic. Using Winny’s unfortunately intimate familiarity with Sombra to draw a line against aspects of the world that ponies take for granted is just such a beautiful and impactful way to deliver world-building.

[Starlight Nova]

When Sombra finally appears, will he act the way he did in Season 9? I really hope not. I hate it when serious characters get silly.

[NorrisThePony]

11595501
Lol no, he'll be consistent with how he was in the first 2 chapters which were written pre S9

[SPANIARD KIWI]

More necromancy! Yes! 😀

[Turbotune]

Yet another rise from the freezer!
Time to dig in again! There is so much potential in those dark universes!

[RoboRed]

Had to spend a moment to refresh on things since the last update but yeah, this is still really good and I'm looking forward to more.

[Rune Soldier Dan]

It took me no time at all to fall back in love, perhaps moreso now that we're in the meat of things. I really look forward to seeing this develop!