The bells from beyond reality

by Kuroneko

The impossible city

I can’t take it anymore, it feels like a poison is slowly burning my mind, I can’t shake off the fear that took hold of me on that fateful day. When I talk about what I saw people think I’m crazy, oh how I wish they were right, everyday I pray the spirit of chaos to finally drive me insane, if I was mad then maybe everything would finally make sense to me but I still have my sanity and the sunny days of Equestria are only suffering to me and its beautiful nights are filled with terrifying nightmares. I’m writing down the story of what happened to me in the hope that it will let me see something new, an element I could have missed the first time and which would makes sense out of all this so I could finally find peace.

It all began when that monster invaded Equestria, just another one you might think but this one was different, no one had ever heard about this Grogar. He came out from nowhere one day, bringing his accursed city with him and unleashed a torrent of horrors on our lands spreading death and darkness in his wake.

The equestrian army was quickly deployed in order to put a stop to their advance and I, Bright Armlet, as a royal guard was among them. What we faced, no training could have ever prepared us for it, his army was exclusively composed of reanimated corpses. I will spare you our fight against them as there were nothing too abnormal about it although some of these soldiers were strange, it was more than their obvious disgusting condition, something uncanny, like if they were ponies but not exactly ponies at the same time.

I think what disturbed us, even more than the undead soldiers was the lack of a perceptible will behind his actions, it was a weird feeling, like what we felt when Discord was released from his seal but more sinister and inhuman. Grogar wasn’t interested in ruling our world nor did he wanted power or revenge or was trying to feed on us, the only think we knew was that he was slowly turning our world into a lifeless black void. For what reason? We didn’t know and it only made the situation more horrifying.

After fighting for months, we managed to push back the army of invader to the doors of their monstrous city that was now standing were the Crystal Empire once was. Celestia ordered us to stay outside to keep the enemy at bay while she and her sister went inside to fight their master.

Now that I think about it, maybe she knew what was lying ahead and wanted to spare us, simple soldiers, from the horrors of what was hiding behind these tall walls but some kind of cruel god seems to have decided otherwise as I and five of my fellow soldiers succeeded in breaking through the enemy lines and taking advantage of the doors opening to let more abominations out to sneak in, we plunged into the depths of this city of nightmare, pursuing the foolish hope to assist our princesses in their fight.

From the outside we couldn’t see the city being hidden by its cyclopean walls but what we were seeing now was beyond whatever we could have imagined, it felt as if by going through this gate we accidently entered another world. The city that laid before us was composed of strangely shaped solids pierced with numerous opening that we supposed were houses although they looked more like tombstones in a cemetery. Cubes, cones, domes and pyramids as far as the eye could see and arranged with no apparent sense of order or symmetry.

Among them, like mushrooms in the grass, stood extremely big towers that had no door, window or any kind of opening other than one at the very top which was similar to the space that hold the bell in a steeple. It might be my imagination but each time we were close to one of these tower, I thought I heard the faint, nearly inaudible ring of a bell. All of these buildings were made of a strange shining black stone that looked like that dark glass found in Dragon lands but was also harder than steel, the weirdest thing about them was that they were not made of stacked stones but seemed to be built of a single block.

The architecture of the place was strange and alien but the worst was the light or rather the lack of it, when we were fighting outside it was noon but now the skies were as dark as a moonless night. We would have been completely blind if not for strange crystals hanging from the sides of the houses that shed a cold phosphorescent light.

Looking at this supernatural scenery we were overcome with a strange feeling, a sense of dread that seemed to come from the ancient times, our instinct was shouting at us to run away, to flee this abnormal place and to return to our world where things are good and natural but, driven by our wish to help our dear leaders, we ignored it and pushed on.

Navigating through the city proved to be harder than expected, its streets were so narrow that it was impossible for two ponies to walk side by side and we were forced to move in single line. Their organisation was confusing and we often ended up in a dead end, sometime we found ourselves back at our starting point even though we were sure to have walked forward.

At some point our path was blocked by a collapsed tower, we had to move around it to continue our way but to do so we had to walk past its base which was now a hole in the ground. If we had been in any other place it would have posed no problem at all, but here, here in this city of darkness, this hole looked like Abaddon’s gaping mouth, ready to swallow us all if we dared to approach. We pulled ourselves together an moved along the small ledge formed by the space between the tower and the adjacent houses trying not to look into the gates of Tartarus lying wide open at our feet. We were completely silent and at that moment, if someone had made even the slightest noise, I think the six of us would have dropped dead on the spot. Once on the other side we went away as fast as we could without looking back.

After a while we reached what looked like a square, all the streets converged to that point and at its centre was standing a tower surrounded by black crystals that looked even more ominous than the ones we had seen until now. It was shorter than the other and was made of the same phosphorescent crystals that lighted the dark streets of the city. We decided to take advantage of the open space and the source of light to rest for a while before resuming our search for the two princesses.

Each one of us was relieving some stress in his own way. On my left was standing Amber Bolt, I had never seen a pegasus brimming with so much self confidence as her, she would have walked through the gates of Tartarus if needed… and maybe she did, with the rest of us. She was rather short, even for a pegasus but she made up for her lack of size with an athletic body and an indomitable will. Her coat was orange leaning on brown, which made her dark-blue mane look like a fly trapped in resin. Truly she deserved her name as she looked like a tiny gem but had so much energy inside her that she could have subdued an hydra all by herself.

She was chatting with Amethyst Grape, at first glance, you could never have guessed that such a delicate unicorn, with her beautiful pale blonde mane tied in a curious fashion that, according to her, enhanced the circulation of magic in her body, her sweet voice like wine mixed with honey, her beautiful navy blue eyes and her soft pink fur was such a fierce soldier. She graduated from Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns with the honours and then enlisted in a battalion of battle mages. It was impressive to see her on the battlefield, how she protected her comrades or shot down the enemy by the dozen using her magic.

But nothing was more impressive than laying your eyes on Mountain Leaf who was currently scouting our surroundings. Earth ponies had always been the most bulky of all ponies due to their strong bond with nature, but he looked like he was not born from a father and a mother and instead had been grown from earth itself. His legs were four mighty trunks, firmly rooted in the ground, his short fur was like an armor of thorns, preventing anyone from laying a hand on him and his hair was like thick vines flowing down from the canopy. Friendly and easy going despite his appearance, when he laughed, letting his booming voice ring out, he looked like the mighty Gilganeihs of the legend.

Far away, nearly out of sight Golden Vellum was examining one of these blind cylinders that looked like towers. He was a peculiar pony, his thin build, pale complexion and blonde mane made him look like a ghostly candle. He was animated by an unbound curiosity and had a vast knowledge on a lot of things. Although he was a good fighter, at heart he was more a scholar than a soldier and to him this city, despite the horror it inspired in him, was a big mystery he was eager to uncover. As for myself, I was siting near the circle of black crystals, thinking about everything that happened up until now when I heard a voice asking if he could sit next to me, I looked up and saw Buried Star standing next to me.

I was so surprised that it took me a few seconds before telling him he was welcome to come. He never was very talkative and was rarely seen interacting with other ponies which explain my disbelief, in fact you could say his very existence was an extraordinary occurrence, as he was one of the few bat ponies who left their underground homes to live on the surface, and even among them he was a special case as he did not became one of princess Luna’s personal guard but instead choose to enlist in the army as a simple soldier.

He came to see me because he wanted to share his thoughts on the city we were exploring. He told me that his sonar was sending back a signal that didn’t match what he could see with his eyes which confused him, like if there were something more to these stones than what we could see with the naked eye. I replied that I had a similar feeling when looking at the tall buildings, like if their true shape was blurred and I could only see a part of it but no matter how hard I squinted my eyes I could never see it in its entirety.

While we were talking, I took the opportunity to get a look at him, most people think bat ponies are scary, there is all these old legends that say they were once pegasus who were driven out of their homes in the skies and were forced to hide underground and to feed on blood in these dark lands devoid of vegetation, or how they kidnap children during nightmare night to offer them in sacrifice to Nightmare Moon. Lies and foolish superstitions, all of it, these kind of story probably originated from the fact the bat ponies always lived on the fringes of our society, answering to no one except for princess Luna, who was the only pony that has ever got their trust. I, on the contrary, found them fascinating, they were always surrounded by an aura of mystery, like if after living in the night for so long, they had absorbed it’s secrets into their very being.

Our friend Buried Star was a fine specimen of his kind, he was of an average size, smaller than an unicorn but taller than a pegasus. His two golden eyes looked like sunlight coming through the cloudy sky of his cinder coat. His fur was short, with the exception of the base of his neck, which looked like those fancy scarves that the nobles of Canterlot love to wear. Each time he opened his mouth to talk, I could see shining with the light of the crystal tower, two strong and sharp canines that made me glad he was a vegetarian. His calm and low voice was mixed with a faint rattling like a cricket. At some point, he shifted the position in which he sat and stretched his wings, very different from a pegasus ones they had no feathers, instead, they were made of a very thin flesh membrane, the elongated bones making it’s frame were visible and, illuminated by the light of the huge phosphorescent crystal beside us, I could see a scarlet maze of tiny veins coursing through these wings that looked like the decaying claws of a corpse.

Buried star then told me how everything here reminded him of timeless bat ponies stories about uncanny landscapes found underground, of faint unnatural voices echoing through the caves and coming from deep below, or how those who tried to settle too far in the bowels of the earth were never seen again. I couldn’t put my hoof on it, but these stories felt similar, too similar, to our current situation and thinking they may be related sent shivers down my spine. When he saw the effect it had on me, he quickly dismissed it as old fairy tales and told me that I shouldn’t pay too much attention to it.

Trying to change the subject, I said that bat ponies were a rare sight and asked him why he decided to move to the surface and join the army. He seemed to be taken off-guard by my sudden question, he hesitated for a while, not sure if he should answer then, looking straight at me, he started to speak. He said that when Tirek broke free from Tartarus, the bat ponies didn’t act and remained hidden as usual, but even from their cave, he could hear Tirek’s thunderous voice echoing through the air, he felt the ground quake under the centaur’s mighty hooves and the mountains shaken to their core by his fight with the princess of friendship. This is when he realised that the world outside was vast and that the thousands of ponies living there were suffering and fighting for their lives while he was cowering in his hole. He told me how he felt helpless, useless and swore that day that he will never stand aside when someone was in danger again.

I wanted to know him better, I was going to ask him more questions when we heard something that paralysed us. It was the bone chilling scream of pure terror of someone who reached the depths of despair.