Partial

by Halira

Chapter 6: Horrors in Our Heads

Rebecca materialized her avatar, a floating white cloud with a face, into the dream realm. She quickly checked many dreams and made avatars in those dreams as she started tending to them. She then looked around at the plain, unadorned metal walls, the equally uninspired floors, the complete lack of furniture or decoration, and then at the Warden of Order.

"Do you go out of your way to make settings boring?" she asked with a huff. "There isn't even a door to look at!"

"You can look at us," he replied. The plague doctor's mask made him look like a giant bird.

Ghadab, back in burning pony mode, shook his head. "I agree with the glutton. This is a miserable setting."

"He got here first," Phobia, in her shadow with red glowing eyes form, calmly said. "Do we need to complain about the settings every time?"

"I don't ever get to pick one," Yinyu said as she swam around the room in her rainbow seapony-dragon form.

Arbiter hit her staff against the floor. "I think we have enough discontent about it to hold a new vote on the matter."

"Seconded," Ghadab said.

"Thirded," Yinyu said immediately after.

Phobia groaned. "This will be the thirty-ninth time in four years we will end up changing our procedure for this. It isn't even important. Why do we keep wasting time on this?"

"If I may, I suggest we table debate on the subject until someone comes up with an idea we haven't done yet," the Warden of Order suggested. Rebecca decided she was going to start calling him Big Bird. His real name was too hard, and he looked like a giant bird.

"Seconded!" Rebecca quickly said. "We need a little more creativity with our next fix for this. Shouldn't we be talking about Sunset Blessing taking off out of the blue on us?"

Ghadab hissed. "Best not to mention the false prophet's name, Tubby. The sycophant is fuming at the mention of her lover's departure. You risk getting us all whacked with that staff."

The room darkened as Arbiter's hands, now clawed, gripped tighter on her staff. Rebecca decided to float further away from the furious Warden of Song. She wasn't the only one. Everyone backed away from Arbiter. Dreamwardens were invincible in the dream realm, but a Dreamwarden could still be in physical pain if the avatar of another Dreamwarden assaulted their avatar. Well, not pain exactly; more like mild discomfort, but that was as close to pain as they felt here, and no one wanted it. The easiest solution to stop another warden's avatar from beating up your avatar was simply to make your avatar cease to be, but they couldn't predict an assault from another warden to make their avatars vanish fast enough, and they liked using their avatars. Not giving people a face to look at when talking was just rude! There were specific standards of decorum that they followed–those standards just happened to allow them to beat the fluff out of each other when the mood took them.

Making sure she had ample distance between herself and Arbiter's staff, she pressed the issue. "We still need to discuss it. How does this-"

Arbiter swung at her, staff extending in length to do it. Rebecca split her cloudy body in two, giving each new cloud a face.

"Haha! Missed me!" Rebecca's two faces said in chorus. She then stuck her tongue out at the attacker.

Arbiter swung again, and Rebecca split herself again, now into four small clouds with four small faces.

"You have to do better than that!" Her four faces exclaimed in perfect harmony.

Arbiter snarled in rage. She then gripped her staff in both hands and pointed the tip at Rebecca. Before Rebecca knew what her fellow Dreamwarden intended, an inferno erupted towards her, consuming all her cloudy faces.

Because this was a dream, and she followed cartoon logic in dreams, Rebecca came out of the inferno as four blackened bits of char floating in the air, white eyes blinking in confusion.

"That's new. Good shot," Rebecca said, then let herself crumble to the ground in a pile of soot. She remained that way for a second before returning to her single cloud with a face. She floated back up to where she'd been and looked at Arbiter. "Got the violence out of your system?"

Arbiter lowered her staff, but there was still a sneer on her face.

"We do need to discuss my mother," Phobia said. Arbiter immediately turned to strike the shadow, but Phobia moved like lightning, and the shadow's eyes were right up next to Arbiter's in an instant, a shadowy wing holding the staff back.

"I know you are angry she is ghosting you, but this gets us nowhere," Phobia said quietly. "Lower your staff, Tonya; stop this nonsense, or you will learn why Sha'am feared me."

"Don't piss off the Nightmare Queen. Her discipline is cruel," Ghadab muttered.

Arbiter reluctantly lowered her staff. "I can control myself. There's no need for your nightmares; I know my fears. We can discuss Sunset."

Phobia retreated. "I do not desire to force them upon you, but we need you to step back and be rational. My mother is scared to face you, knowing it may be for the last time. She might have avoided sleep last night, but it will overtake her before she leaves. You'll get your chance to say goodbye."

Arbiter crossed her arms. "I'm not supposed to be saying goodbye, not yet. I was supposed to be there with her in the end. I'm supposed to bring her the last dream."

Yinyu hissed. "Stop your pouting and having temper tantrums! Do you think I'm happy that all my foals are going with her? I may never get to speak with them again after tomorrow. Unlike you, I'm not going to lose my head about it. This is so they can be happy and safe. That is all I could want."

Arbiter snarled again, and her staff turned into a blade, and with it, she lopped Yinyu's head off her body.

Yinyu's disembodied head, lying on the ground, stared up at Arbiter in shock before snarling. "Really cute! I lost my head, haha. Phobia, can you please do something about her?"

Big Bird stepped away from Yinyu's still floating body which was not pouring blood all over the place. "Please do; this is unacceptable. Yinyu, pull yourself together!"

Yinyu's head and body flashed, and she was whole again. The pool of blood vanished.

"How often have you been disemboweled or split in two now?" Ghadab asked Yinyu.

Yinyu flipped her tail. "I haven't kept count, but Rebecca may yet surpass my total."

He looked doubtful. "I don't know, you have a considerable head start on her, and you'll be here long after she's gone…if Allah wills it."

Rebbeca smirked at him. "How can someone so foul-mouthed be so pious?"

Ghadab shrugged. "It isn't so hard to be two things at once. You are annoying and fat. You should understand."

Phobia sighed, ignoring the rest of them. "Please, Tonya. I don't want to be at odds with you."

Arbiter pointed at the rest of us with her staff. "Tell them to stop antagonizing me!"

"We'll behave," Rebecca said.

"I always behave," Ghadab muttered.

"Truth is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?" Big Bird asked.

Phobia groaned. "You know how poorly behaved we are with each other, Tonya. I think it is our way of blowing off steam. Don't let them get to you. This is hard for me and Yinyu as well, but we understand this is for the best, even if it hurts. It's possible she might return someday. You know my mother can't help keeping her nose out of things."

The plague doctor lookalike raised a hand. "To get back on track, it isn't for the best, as this will cut down on her efficiency in working on the spell. I can continue to monitor her progress once I retire. The question is, do we need to enlist new help in this world to make up for her absence?"

"Maybe Bob the Unicorn?" Rebecca suggested. "He's the smartest unicorn I know."

"I hate that name," Ghadab grumbled. "Do I introduce myself as Ghadab the Dead Night Pony? Does Doctor Middleton introduce herself as Jessica the Partial? Does The Marshmallow introduce herself as Rebecca the Whale?"

"I don't think he's a good option," Phobia replied. "Yes, he is the most capable mage we could find for this, but his ability to keep things secret is poor. My mother did steal an extraordinary amount of information from him. Perhaps when we get closer to the event, we can employ him, or if we get desperate, but not yet."

"We aren't already desperate?" Rebecca asked. "I thought that was why we were even using her."

"She can keep a secret. We need the most capable mage who can keep a secret, not the most capable mage who doesn't understand the word security," Ghadab countered. "And part of her benefit over other mages was she could just steal from the other mages. We had all their ability and hers; it was ideal."

"And that's the rub. We can find mages capable of continuing the work, but Sunset Blessing conclusively demonstrated that while they might be brilliant and capable, they can't keep a secret to save their lives. You ponies are far too trusting," the Warden of Order lamented. "We shall have to hope our dubious mage will be able to keep up in Equestria–at least for now. What about the other half of that project? Is Jessica Middleton ready to get back to work? We gave her a break."

"It's only been two days," Rebecca protested.

"Oh, I'm sorry. If I yell at the sky and beg the Devourers to take two more days to get here, do you think they'll listen?" he snarled back at her.

"Two days is what most Americans get off for a workweek. A vacation is a bit longer," Arbiter said.

"Americans are barbarians when it comes to work. Only two days off a week? It's the twenty-first century, shouldn't half the jobs be automated and give people more time off?" Ghadab spat.

Rebecca frowned. "You're one of the ones pushing to work her seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, every year till the Devourers are defeated or until life has to start over again."

"Better to be a live barbarian than civilized and dead," Ghadab replied.

"We give her more time. She needs her vacation," Phobia said with a tone of finality. "Rebecca, I want you to have my mother's security checked."

Rebecca did a spin. "I'll get a property redistribution specialist on it right away!"

"How many property redistribution specialists do you know?" the Warden of Order asked.

Rebecca giggled. "Isn't it your job to know all that?"

He crossed his arms. "I don't keep tabs on all the members of your cesspool of thieves."

Her face darkened. "People at the bottom of society, struggling to live, are not a cesspool. Someone needs to fight for them. I do all I can for them here, with dreams. I try to make them laugh, to raise their spirits, but my dreams and laughter don't fill bellies. Doomsday is coming for the whole world, but for people living in the streets, scared and hungry, it might as well already be here. I don't organize them or control them. I just give them a few creative suggestions on how to get food–so they don't starve. If the OMMR or government would devote more resources to seeing them fed, maybe I wouldn't need to get creative about getting them food."

"Our resources are already stretched thin, and our influence with the government only impacts certain policies. We're trying to get more resources, but any new resource needs to be allocated to the spy network," Arbiter said.

Yinyu waved at Rebecca. "We understand your passion for helping the homeless. Having lived on the streets myself and stolen from to live, I won't condemn these people. We only ask that you be careful with all the ways you help people. We cannot let authorities tie these activities back to us."

Rebecca smirked. "Don't worry. Nobody will discover it. I've got a person in mind who is a bit more crafty to test Wabash's defenses. They've done a few more elaborate jobs before. They can assure us that the vaults are secure, although I will have to promise them something for their trouble if we expect they will fail. Sunset Blessing makes me proud of her creativity with her security measures. This is a big risk to my friend."

"Delay them breaking into Wabash until my baby sister takes residence," Phobia instructed. "If they make it out without being caught, we'll arrange something to compensate them. If my sister does catch them, I can speak with her and have them released, and we can still compensate them for their trouble. I won't alert Jordan the burglary is coming. I want to see how she will react. She's tougher than most would give her credit for, but the last time she had to face any real threat, she was still a young foal."

Rebecca bobbed in the air. "I can arrange that. You haven't told us about the new baby! Tell us about your new grandbaby!"

They talked for a while about important things, not-so-important things, and highly critical information, like what the best type of cake to send as a congratulations for a new baby. Eventually, Rebecca had to wake up and take care of other business.

She stirred from her covers, trying not to disturb the bed too much and wake her husband. She'd gotten the cover off and was poised to jump down from the edge of the bed when he stirred—turning over where she could see his cute spotty face.

"Becky?" he groaned, rubbing his eyes with the back of one of his hands. "It's late. Is something wrong?"

She smiled. "Don't worry. I'll be back in bed shortly. I've gotta do a quick task for work. It won't take long at all. I don't even need to dance, just a quick text. Though, if you're still awake after I return to bed, we could do some more dancing under the sheets."

He chuckled sleepily. "I'd love to take you up on that, but we've got to get an early start in the morning if we're going to make it to the airport on time. You just be quick. The bed gets cold without you."

She walked across the bed and kissed him. "I'll hurry. Love you."

"Love you too."

Not worrying anymore about stealth, she jumped off the bed with a short flap of her wings. She noticed she'd lost a feather when she landed and picked it up with her mouth, and deposited it in the trash. She'd missed her normal preening the last two days. She'd need to be extra thorough in the morning.

She headed over to the corner of the hotel room and propped open her laptop. After turning it on, logging into her VPN, and encrypting her data, she texted her bodyguard who wasn't currently in the next room over or even in the same state.

Smore Center<Hey, what's the status on the guy doing the thing?>

She waited several seconds, unsure if she'd get a response anytime soon, but was rewarded with a reply.

Visions<The guy isn't doing any more things. A different guy came and did things to him. Sorry, I didn't track him to learn more about him or why he did the things. I didn't want things done to me and had no idea what I might get into. The first guy hadn't done any new things lately. His truck is still at the hotel. No new cargo. I checked it, and it's empty.>

She frowned. While she was glad there was one less human and pony trafficker out there, this guy Josie had been tracking had been one of their few big leads. She had no idea the scope of who was involved in this operation and couldn't even learn in the dream realm since it seemed to be all non-magical humans involved. Ghadab had some leads from victims but nothing that could lead the police to them. She'd been so close to having some information to go to the police with, then this happened. Well, maybe it was a good thing. The police having to do a murder investigation meant they'd finally investigate the guy and hopefully find the rest of the operation. This wasn't a total loss, aside from Josie having wasted her time sitting around watching the guy. They still needed to figure out if that was a rival gang or vigilante that had killed the guy, but the police could do that.

Visions<So, do I get to come home now? The desert doesn't agree with me.>

Smore Center<Not yet. Need you to find San Diego to ask a favor. Blessingist Zero is taking a long overdue trip. She's not taking all her stuff with her. Need San Diego to check to ensure the stuff she leaves behind cannot take any unplanned trips. Will give details tomorrow night, Tulsa. Also, I need you to check dreams, Missouri, flood victims. Lots of kids have nightmares. More than I can deal with.>

Visions<If it is more than you can deal with, it is way more than I can deal with, but I'll help. Getting details in Tulsa can only be done one way from where I'm at. I'm not allowed.>

Smore Center<It's only a fine.>

Visions<Are you going to be the one to issue the fine??>

Smore Center<Probably. I'll be right there. I'll notice it first. Rules are rules.>

Visions<You better help pay the fine you issued!>

Smore Center<You get paid more than me. You get that fat bodyguard salary. It's a lot of money for me. It's pocket change to you.>

Visions<It's the principle of the thing! You keep safe!>

Smore Center<You keep safe, too!>

Well, that was taken care of. She shut her computer down and headed back to bed. It was time to get back to work. The meeting was done, but there were still thousands of flood victims in Missouri having nightmares. She wasn't the only one dealing with those, but she tended to deal with the small foals. She still had a dozen other dreamers that she'd been trying to nurture, a little filly that was stressing out about an art project, a colt whose parents were going through a divorce that needed a little extra attention, a doctor that was this close to figuring out how to cure a nasty disease but was having a loss of faith in himself, so many dreams to tend to. She still needed to ask the three dead-ums about the most recent developments with the birds. There was never enough time awake day-to-day.

Back to bed. Back to work.

---

Jessica groaned as she woke. Something shook her, and then something poked her.

"Ow!"

There was the sound of rustling covers, increased heartrate, heavier breathing, then two quick thuds.

She sat up. She was still in the hospital. Her sound barrier was still up, so she only heard what was happening in the room. There were her body sounds, and then there were Mark's back under the bed again.

She rubbed her belly and looked over at his hiding spot. "Did you deliberately poke me with your horn? That hurt, kid."

His heartbeat was still elevated. She sighed.

"Sorry for startling you with that yell. I'm not mad. Maybe in the future, stick to shaking me if you try to wake me up and be a little more patient instead of sticking me with your horn, okay?"

She waited a few more seconds for a response.

"Sorry," he said around when she was about to figure out what to do next.

He was talking to her again. That was good. What time was it? It was dark outside. She checked her phone, and her eyes widened when she saw the time. There wouldn't be any traffic now. Her parents and brother had to be freaking out, though. She was seldom out this late–not without telling anyone about where she was. She looked and saw there were about a dozen text messages.

She answered them quickly, making a group chat and telling everyone at once she'd fallen asleep at the hospital and was okay, so they didn't need to worry. She then put her phone away and turned her attention back to Mark.

"Your apology is accepted. Do you accept mine for scaring you?" she asked.

"Yes."

He still sounded shaken, but it was hard to tell. He was so quiet, even when talking. At least his heartrate had slowed.

"You were trying to wake me up," she concluded. "Is something wrong? Do you need help?"

"Pee-pee'd," he replied in a shameful tone.

Pee-pee'd? She sniffed and then looked over to where he'd been lying. There was a tiny damp spot. She wouldn't even have noticed if she hadn't been looking for it, not unless she laid her hand on it. It made logical sense that it was small. The kid was tiny; his bladder had to be tiny too.

She smiled. He might not see it, but a person could always hear it in the voice. "It's okay. Accidents happen. You're wearing shorts. Are your shorts wet?"

"Yes," he answered. He still sounded ashamed, but his heartbeat had slowed to a normal range.

"We need to wash your shorts, and wash all the ur-" Best to try to use his terms. "-all the pee-pee off you. You don't want to feel yucky, do you?"

"No," he answered. She wasn't sure if that was a no to the bath, or no to not wanting to feel yucky, or if it was a no to both.

"Do you trust me to give you a bath?" she asked him.

He was silent. The silence stretched on. This was the problem with children. They weren't logical creatures. Adults weren't rational most of the time either, but you could occasionally reason with one of them.

"I woke up earlier while you were sleeping next to me. I woke up and didn't do anything to hurt you. I went back to sleep."

He was still quiet. She decided to continue.

"If I didn't hurt you then, and I'm not mad about you pee-peeing the bed, can you trust me to give you a bath?"

He remained silent. He trusted her enough to sleep next to her, but he didn't trust her enough to let her give him a bath. He also tried to wake her to tell her about the accident, which indicated he expected her to fix it.

She stood up, and his heartrate jumped.

"Tell you what. I'm going to run the bath and stay in there and wait for you. You can come to me when you feel you're ready. Is that okay?"

He hesitated but did reply this time. "Yes."

"Alright, I'm going to run the bath. Come to me when you are ready," she instructed as she walked to the bathroom. "Try not to take too long. You don't want the bath to get cold."

The bathroom was plain, not that she was expecting luxury fixtures in a hospital. There was a toilet with an odd lever like a gear shift sticking out of the floor next to it that she assumed was for flushing. There was a tub with a shower, some generic soap, and shampoo, and in the back of the tub was a stool. She guessed this hospital subdivided its rooms into pony and human fixtures, with this room being aimed at humans. Why did they put him in a human room? The hospital policies might lump the partials in with humans, but Mark was so tiny that she was shocked he had managed to use the toilet without falling in. A room meant for ponies would have been much more preferable. He wouldn't be able to get over the lip of the tub on his own; he'd need to be lifted in and out. That meant she was going to have to hold him. Did he trust her enough for that?

There was nothing to do but hope. How they didn't look at the fixtures and think they were way too big for him, she didn't know. She'd need to remember to talk to the hospital staff about getting him moved to a pony room. It was uncertain how useful her speaking to them would be since she had no authority over his treatment, but it was worth a try.

She closed the drain on the tub and started the water running. The sound of the water played havoc on her ears, but she put a sound-dampening bubble over it to make it less intense. This was in addition to keeping her sound barrier around the room and bathroom. She wasn't sure what her limits were on putting these sorts of barriers up and maintaining them. It seemed like something she should have stress tested at some point, but it had never come up, nor was it her field of expertise. As far as she could tell, if something was in her range, she could do whatever she wanted with the sound for as long as she wanted, with few limitations. However, it truly was a sphere of influence she exerted. If a sound source was so much as one micrometer past her range unless boosted by electronics, her ability to hear it became worse than the average human's–perhaps because her brain didn't know how to process typical sound at this point.

Not wanting the water to get too deep for Mark, she stopped filling the tub when it would have gone no higher than her shin. Even this, she was unsure was appropriate or if she needed to lower the level some. She pictured her niece in the tub since Eve was the closest comparable-sized person she knew to Mark. Now she wished she'd been able to finish helping Nightscape wash the filly. It would help her visualize the proper water level. Then again, it seemed like the tub had been much fuller with water than this for Eve, high enough that the filly could fully submerge. Perhaps her niece could swim? Eve could certainly climb, jump, and perform physics-breaking acrobatics, so swimming wasn't sure out of the question. She decided that she'd leave the water as it was for now and adjust if need be.

Mark didn't move from under the bed. She could be patient. He had said he would come. She just needed to give him time.

Waiting for him, she pulled out her phone and scanned her messages. Her initial message to everyone had been received, and there were numerous replies of relief. Several family members had been worried she'd been jumped or something. She rolled her eyes. She might not have the same self-defense capacities as Jordan, Jackie, Robby, Nightscape, or any of the three demons, but she wasn't helpless. Sure, she was more likely to get in trouble for defending herself, but unjust as that was, she wouldn't let anyone hurt her just to stay out of legal trouble.

In her haste to send off a group reply, she had also accidentally replied to Jordan. Jordan's message had been about how she'd be moving into Wabash tomorrow–that was fast. Regardless, her best friend hadn't known she had been unaccounted for and was now worriedly messaging her asking why she was in the hospital. Best to ease her friend's fears quickly.

BigMath<I'm fine. I'm just helping a partial kid. He's four, a possible orphan, and he seems to trust me more than he trusts others. I'll chat with you later.>

MotherGoose2024<😍😵🤩>

Jessica tried to determine if there was any hidden meaning in the emojis that she wasn't catching, but ultimately she decided it was just Jordan being happy and cheerful. Emojis made her wary over the last few years, silly as that was, due to a certain intrusive Dreamwarden's penchant for appearing as them. The first time she had seen a two-dimensional floating emoji, she'd freaked out–primarily because it was two-dimensional.

Mark still hadn't stirred. She could be patient, but the truth was, she wasn't very patient.

"Mark, the bath is ready. You don't want it to be cold, do you?" she asked, projecting her voice just a little.

He didn't get startled by her voice. There was no change in his vitals that she could tell by listening. It took a few seconds, but he did start moving, slowly but moving.

She waited. Mark was creeping through the room, trying to be as silent as possible. Humans and most ponies might not have heard him, but he might as well have been beating a drum to announce himself to her. When he was just around the corner of the doorway, still out of sight, he stopped.

"It's hard being brave, I know," she said and heard him retreat a few centimeters and stop again. "Once upon a time, when I wasn't much older than you or much bigger, I was in a terrifying situation. I was trapped in a big building, kind of like this one. It was dark, the power was out, and it was storming outside."

Memory flooded back to her as perfectly as if it had happened yesterday.

Jessie stared out the window as the rain finally seemed to have stopped, leaving clouds so dark that it seemed like it was night. The storm had picked up out of nowhere and had raged for several minutes with so much intense lightning that the sky had been too bright to look at. Both she and Jordan had been frightened by it, but Jackie had reacted like it was the most incredible show she had ever seen. What the pegasus didn't like was the fact that the storm had knocked the power out, and the only sources of light were the windows and the occasional red emergency light in the hallways. Ms. Rosetta, the demons, Robby, and Layla, had somehow slept through all of it.

"Fuck!" Crystal growled loudly from the teacher's desk. The bodyguard then looked over at them and flattened her ears. "Pretend you didn't hear that. I said fudge if anyone asks."

Jessie looked at the lone adult awake. "What's wrong?"

Crystal pushed the desk phone away with annoyance. "The school phone lines are dead, and I don't know why. Even with no power, we should have the phones working. On top of that, I always get an abysmal signal on my cell phone in this place and can't keep a bar up long enough to make a call. We're effectively cut off from communicating or finding out what's happening out there." She looked at Jessie. "You're a genius; got any idea why the phones aren't working?"

"That wasn't the worst part," she continued. "There were monsters in the building with me. If they so much as touched me, I would die."

Crystal opened her eyes wide and gasped. She then jumped down from her seat at the desk and moved towards the door. "Get Layla and the others up, now! We've got trouble!"

Ms. Rosetta started moving right away toward her foals. Jessie didn't question the order; it gave no room to be questioned. She just started shaking her brother. She caught sight of Jackie and Jordan huddling together at the intensity of Crystal's sudden change in mood.

Layla stirred on her own and looked up at the crystal pony. "What's wrong?"

Crystal didn't respond to her, instead turning to Ms. Rosetta quickly. "If going downstairs to the offices, there isn't an option for getting to a phone, where else can we go? Or is there somewhere these blockers don't work?"

The night pony considered for a split-second before pointing a wing up. "Some of the offices on the top floors have landlines, and worst case scenario, the blockers shouldn't work from the roof. What's wrong? Did rioters get in here?"

Crystal gave a worried shake of her head. "Worse than that, your mother and Bill are here, and I'm pretty sure they already got Pin Point and Alexis. They are coming this way. I don't know if they can sense us or not, but they are definitely moving with purpose. We need to get away from here, now."

Jessie shivered as her brother gripped her tightly. The way Crystal was talking, she was talking like Ms. Jean and the other pony were monsters. Weren’t they supposed to be safe in here?

She heard him inch forward, but he remained out of sight. His heartbeat was regular; hers had elevated slightly.

The red emergency lighting cast an eerie glow over the locker-filled hallway. Only a thin, watery light came through the window from the cloudy skies. She knew that they were just lockers, but the dark shapes lining the hallways looked like rows upon rows of monstrous doorways. She kept glancing at all the shadows, sure something was coming to get her.

She told herself that it was just blue lockers and red light, that the blue paint was absorbing the red glow of the emergency lights, casting them into shadow. It was simple physics, something you’d find in the setup of a problem in a math textbook. What color would her textbooks be in this lighting? Or the blue crystal pony on the stairs? When she...

Knowing didn’t help.

There was a monster coming for her back in the staircase. She'd always loved being at school, but right now, it was the scariest place she could imagine. There were supposed to be bright fluorescent lights in the ceiling, despite the new LEDs being better, and crowds of older ponies pressing in on her. It wasn’t supposed to be quiet, dark, and empty. If she whimpered, she shouldn’t be heard over the buzzing of the lights, the dull roar of the air conditioning, and the whirr of the projectors and the computers. Her throat was tight and sore from trying to suppress her whimpering because she knew that Mrs. Jean would hear her and come for her.

"I had all my friends with me, along with some grown-ups. The grown-ups did everything they could to protect us from the monsters, like your grandma did for you, but the monsters got them. Luckily, the monsters couldn't kill them with a touch, but their touch still put the grown-ups to sleep, and we didn't know if they would wake up."

When Robby reached the stairwell door, he stopped and held it open while gesturing for the foals to go through. "Hurry! Up the stairs! Jordan, you've got to move faster!"

"I'm trying!" Jessie heard her unicorn friend scream from somewhere behind her. She couldn't tell how far behind Jordan was from the sound. She could see Jackie off to her side and just barely saw Charlotte on the edge of her vision.

"Jordan, hurry up!" Robby shouted.

Worry got the better of her over good sense, and she came to a halt to turn and see what was happening with Jordan. Jackie, at this point, did the same. The purple unicorn filly was still scrambling to get over the fallen lockers. Jessie looked beyond her friend, and she squeaked as she saw that there was no more fighting going on down the hall. Ms. Jean and the other pony were both standing over the fallen forms of Ms. Rosetta and Layla. The two night pony mares weren't moving. The crystal pony that Layla had stumbled into was only a few feet from Jordan, though he didn't seem to be paying her any notice.

Jackie ran to help her little sister, and Robby shouted after her. "Jackie, she can make it on her own! Get to the stairs!"

Jessie just froze, watching their two now glowing crystal pony attackers. The pair didn't seem to be taking notice of them; they were focused entirely on Ms. Rosetta and Layla. Maybe they really were going to ignore them till they got hungry for magic again.

Jackie steadied her sister with a wing on her side and ran with the little unicorn. As the two were getting close, Jessie turned and resumed her run for the stairs. After passing through the door to the stairwell, she saw the three demons were already well up to the next floor. When she began up the stairs as well, the two sisters passed through the door, too, with Robby right behind them. The door swung shut behind him, blocking their view of the hallway with a harsh metallic slam. They were now on their own, with no adult to help them, against a pair of monstrous ponies that could kill them with a touch.

He was listening but wasn't coming into the room. It was getting harder for her to breathe. Why was she telling him this?

"We were…we were left on our own, against the monsters…" she said, fighting to get the words out. Memory came in a flood now.

"Attention! Citizens of Riverview--

She watched the clock, trying not to listen to the announcement, and the ticking of it seemed to echo through the halls. One second turned into five, five seconds turned into a minute, and one minute stretched on forever. Then her muscles tightened as she heard a new sound, the sound of a door opening. The time had come, and so had their pursuers.

Her lungs were tight as she listened to uneven hoofsteps slowly approach. The form of a mare stepped into view, silhouetted by the dim light of the window beyond. The shadow turned its gaze down the hall, and Jessie could feel those hungry eyes lock onto her and Robby. She wanted to run, but she knew she had to stay still. Ms. Jean had to get caught in the falling lockers. The mare turned and started towards them as the stallion came into view behind her.

Fudge! They weren't moving at the same pace! That meant that they might only end up hitting one of them. This could mess up the entire plan and ruin their hopes of getting out of this. She should have realized they weren't moving the same way; the stallion had gotten caught in that earlier locker fall and was already hurt. Ms. Jean wasn't hurt, though. She was still healthy and ready to take them.

"Attention! Citizens-- She did not need that blaring alarm right now!

Ms. Jean started galloping towards them, with the stallion stumbling far behind. There was no more time. The trap had to be sprung on Ms. Jean, and they'd have to improvise with the stallion. "Now! Bring the lockers down on her now!"

The demons jumped into action. They galloped along the tops of the lockers, pushing off each locker hard as they went. Some merely shook, while others toppled over. Jessie and Robby stood still as the crystal mare rapidly approached them. She closed her eyes, unable to look anymore, and then she heard the deafening crash.

She opened her eyes up and blinked. Only two feet in front of them, Ms. Jean was pinned under a locker with her eyes closed. They had gotten her. However, the victory wasn't assured yet. The stallion was still stumbling towards them, and not a single locker had come close to hitting him. That was a problem, a huge problem. Not only did they need to get by him, but the path was littered with fallen lockers.

She shook her head and her rump as she readied herself to run. "He's hurt and slow. Robby, try to distract him in the air while the rest of us run by! Everyone move!"

Robby took to the air and started flying above the stallion's head. The stallion focused up on her brother and feebly tried reaching out towards him. Jackie and Jordan began running on the far edge, away from the fallen lockers. Jessie followed them but cried out as the stallion turned his eyes back toward her. Jackie and Jordan had raced by him, and the demons were by him as well, but he was now blocking her path, and she couldn't see a good way of getting around him. She ground her hooves to a screeching halt, staring in horror as her brother desperately tried to draw the stallion's attention back to him with shouts.

"Attention! Citizen–" She jumped, startled out of her stupor, as the announcement started back up again.

"I can't fudging move!" She yelled with fear and frustration at her auntie's repeating message. She backed away from the stallion, too afraid to think of any new plan.

Sound flooded her ears. Heartbeats became quakes. Each breath was the sound of a tornado. The electricity going through the wires in the walls was thunder. Blood circulating through veins was a rushing river. There were so many other sounds she couldn't even identify, and yet, the memories did not cease.

Jessie stared in horror at the empty space where Wild Growth had stood before she had collapsed lifelessly over the edge of the building. The greatest earth pony, the one capable of raising mountains and growing forests, the invincible one, had fallen. It was impossible, completely unbelievable, but she had just witnessed it. One of her heroes and friends was now gone.

Why wouldn't the memories stop? She started to whimper.

Burning and broken branches littered the roof as brightly glowing embers drifted through the air. Overhead, the sky flashed with lightning arcing through the thick clouds of black smoke. The trees that had held back the explosion that had engulfed the Bastion continued to grow, the trunks creaking and groaning as they reached up towards the dark sky, uncaring that their shepherd Wild Growth no longer urged them on.

She huddled on the floor; it was impossible to make out individual sounds now. It was just an unending roar.

Then, something touched her, pulling her back to her senses and banishing the maelstrom of sound.

Mark sat before her, looking at her. His eyes were bright blue and seemed just a little too big, despite the rest of his face looking human, giving his face a slight uncanny valley. His hand was on her face, and her face was on the floor, along with the rest of her, huddled in a fetal position on the ground, her face damp from crying.

"Hurt?" he asked her, barely above a whisper yet still laden with concern.

She wanted to shake her head, but her position didn't allow it. She instead closed her eyes. "No, not hurt. I'm scared."

Her eyes were still closed, but she felt him nuzzle up beside her. Needing comfort, she gently embraced him and hugged him. Mark did not attempt to get away.

Comments

[AvoidingFever17]

11582266
I know
Sorry

[PonyofEntropy]

Great story. Added to read list.