An Equestria Covered in Ice

by Solaris Vult

Chapter 6: Following in the Tracks (Part 2)

Petrochem bit down hard on the handle. An ear-splitting series of bangs followed, accompanied by bright flashes of light and a kick that made her teeth ache and head rattle. Two or three of the advancing skeletons were shattered, splinters of bone falling across the ground. “Holy shit,” She muttered between the grip in her mouth.

Basalt flinched at the bangs and fell to the ground, a skeleton dashed at him, but Ethylene, acting fast, speared the thing with her horn, “We need to run!” Petrochem meanwhile, firing another burst from her firearm, lept at the skeletons, ripping them to shreds with bullets as she sprayed the tunnel wildly. “The other way!”

Petrochem, for the brief few seconds when she filled the sky with shredding blasts, ripping the horrors from the depths of her nightmares into tiny shreds, felt absolutely unstoppable… Then the weapon made clicking sounds and stopped working. For a brief second she was disappointed, then she nearly wet herself when a skeleton lept at her, gnashing teeth trying to bite down on her head. Acting on instinct she slapped the monster with the firearm, batting it to the ground where its skull cracked open, but it was still moving, so she stomped on it until it stopped, but that gave enough time for more to come running out of the darkness at her. Gripping her weapon in her magic, she suddenly felt a strange rush as she batted and swatted at the monsters with it. She didn’t hear Ethyl’s shout of “Don’t do that!”

Basalt, pulling himself off the ground, seeing the monsters trying to maul his sister, lept at them and bludgeoned them with his hooves. Petrochem meanwhile, was holding a particularly resilient skeleton at bay by sticking the rear-end of her weapon in its jaw, but she suddenly found herself barely strong enough to keep the thing from stomping on her, meanwhile the skeleton’s bite was strong enough to start to cut into the plastic bits of the weapon. The sudden rush of adrenaline she felt earlier had turned to a strange clarity, and in that moment of logic she shouted, “They’re bone! Organic!”

Ethyl, realizing what Petrochem was about to do, shouted, “Stop! Don’t-”

Petrochem pointed her horn right at the skeleton’s head, and forced her magic through her mind, the magic feeling odd for some reason, slightly twisted… She couldn’t form the right thoughts, she found that clarity turning to icy fear, and she gave the skeleton a hard buck, sending it tumbling to the ground, “The spell didn’t work.”

“You idiot!” Ethyl shouted, rushing over, grabbing both Basalt and Petrochem in her hooves and diving behind a broken down wagon. A moment later, there was a huge blast of heat, fire washed through the tunnel, the broken wagon shielding them from the worst of the explosion, but everyone was screaming in pain from the searing heat that filled the room. Then, suddenly, cold air came rushing back in, just as painful as the heat, and once again everything was coated in a layer of frost, that slowly started to turn to steam as the residual heat, still soaked into the stone and metal of the tunnel, melted the newly coated layer of frost.

“Magical radiation. This entire section of tunnel is deeply contaminated, we shouldn’t even be standing here, and casting a spell, or really any kind of magic, is just going to make things worse!” Ethyl shouted, sounding angry and scared, which kinda surprised Petro.

“T-That’s what that was!”

“It’s a very big concern in certain fields of engineering and physics, those dealing with high-energy spellcasting… I can explain more later, right now, we need to get out of here! Because much worse things than death can happen to those who absorb too much magical radiation.”

“There are ponies on the other side of this tunnel, if we just fucking run for it, do you think we’ll make it?” Basalt huffed.

“You do not have the slightest idea how stupid that idea is, but, as you would say, fuck it! I know I can’t stop you.”

“Starting to sound a lot more like a pony than a machine, I like that,” Petro retorted.

“I am programmed to adapt to my surroundings and administrator's commands. I will explain later, let us now just survive.”

“Now we can agree on something,” Basalt replied.

With that, the three sprinted out of the rubble and through the recently blasted part of the tunnel, that little spell that Petro cast was still going wild, now taking the form of an arc of brilliant energy that was spastically dancing around through the air. It struck a chunk of rock and the rock started to glow red hot and melt, dripping to the ground. They ran past it as fast as they could to avoid getting hit with any residual spell, and once clear of the disaster that Petro caused, they didn’t want to look back, especially after a horrific sound, like a hundred ponies screaming in pain, echoed down the tunnel from back where she had fucked up.

The good news, most of the magically animated skeletons had been caught in the chaos spell that was now rending the tunnel to shreds… Bad news, that was just most of the skeletons, and there was certainly no going back now with the spell-storm breaking out behind them. The skeletons were slowly circling them, clearly just waiting to pounce, “Ethyl…” Petro said. Her former feeling of panic was replaced by a new and alien feeling of… Happiness? No, there was something wrong here, she shouldn’t be feeling- And suddenly she was piss-her-barding terrified again.

“Y-Yeah?”

“Why did my weapon stop working?”

“Either jammed or ran out of ammo.”

“How do I fix that.”

“Pull out the big box on the bottom and slide a new box in, then pull back the lever on the side of the gun, the other side from the handle.”

“I don’t have any metal boxes to fit into this thing.”

“Well… Keep using it as a club in that case.”

“That I can do…” The feeling of fear went away again and in its place came… Sadness… No, no that was really not right, why were all these emotions going through her all at once, something fucky was going on with her mind… Her mind…Her magic came from her mind, and the magical radiation… She stopped carrying the weapon in telekinesis and grabbed it in her teeth. Those strange emotions were still there, but lessened all of a sudden.

The skeletons all jumped at once, they were all prepared though. Basalt turned and bucked two skeletons at once, one with each leg, shattered the skull of one and ripped another in half. The skeletons leaping for Ethyl were batted to the ground by Ethylene’s one working wing, it dented and bent some of the metal of her wings, but she wasn’t flying any time soon anyway. Those that lept at Petrochem found themselves getting slapped hard in the head by the rear end of her weapon and getting their skulls smashed in by her hooves. And that was the last of the skeletons gone.

“Guys, we need to move fast… My… My mind, I’m getting all sorts of emotions I really shouldn’t be feeling right now!” Petrochem said, fear, both genuine and magical, oozing from her words.

“I knew this would happen, we really do need to be getting out of here fast,” Ethyl replied.

“W- What’s going on with my sister?” Basalt said.

“I’m sure you’ve been feeling it too, just less, as you’re not a unicorn and less sensitive to magic. Random mood swings and alien emotions in your mind, it’s the first stage of Magical Radiation Poisoning… And you really don’t want to know what happens at the later stages, I just hope we can get out fast enough before some of that ends up… Permanent.”

“Well, let’s fucking move then!” Basalt replied.

“Agreed… If you start to hear voices in your head, or powerful emotions telling you to do things that you otherwise wouldn’t imagine doing, tell me immediately.”

They set off at a dead sprint, galloping around broken bits of debris and ancient wagons, many of which were… Odd… The ruined bits of stonework had grown hundreds of razor-sharp spikes, while the wagons were glowing a faint green. Bits of the walls looked… Gooey and molten, but didn’t radiate any heat. There were parts of the floor that had glowing green cracks in them, which they carefully stepped around or leapt over… Despite keeping her horn firmly dead, the strange feelings in Petro were growing stronger and stronger, and she swore she heard whispers in the very back of her mind, she couldn’t understand them, but she knew she didn’t want to.

There were bones of ponies half-fused with the concrete, bits of broken metal and stone floating mid-air in green telekinetic fields, ponies turned to stone or gold, a thick green fog that they held their breath for while they lept through it, and nearly fell into a pit of concrete that was bubbling and flowing like liquid with an odd green tint to it.

The whispers in Petro’s mind had faded to the point she couldn’t hear them anymore, and she almost had her emotions back in control. They quickly dodged around more skeletons, some of them melted into the floor, unable to move, but Basalt still nearly got his hoof caught when one of those floor-skeletons had bitten his hoof as he ran past. They tried to ignore the bones hanging from the ceiling, melted together, still screaming in agony even after having been long dead.

There was another puddle of green liquid that Ethylene nearly stepped on, but she caught herself right before, and lept over it. But that’s when they were forced to stop because blocking their path was a wagon surrounded by a thin mist of green fog. This one was clearly designed to haul liquids or gasses rather than ponies or solid objects, it was one big tank on wheels with an electric engine mounted to the front and a small platform for a pony to drive the thing from. Written on the side of the tank was a big sign that said “Danger: Liquid Chlorine Gas”… But this wagon, something was moving inside that tank… They could hear it wiggling, hissing, writhing… They could almost see it, a ghostly green glow that danced around the tank. Whatever it was, they did not want to have to fight it.

They slowly, carefully made their way around it, as Petro got closer to the tanker wagon, she could feel those alien emotions and distant whispers returning, but kept them firmly under control… Then, there was a loud crack as Ethylene stepped on the bone of a long-dead pony, “Whoops,” She muttered… Then, the thing inside the tank screamed a horrible screech, it had heard them, and they needed to Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. There.

They ran, not looking back, but briefly, Ethylene caught a glimpse of the thing as it wiggled its way out of a crack in the tank… A long and slender tendril, like a worm or snake, but made of glowing green gas that was completely opaque.

There was light up ahead, the air was colder, they could see snow drifting in, a ramp was up ahead, leading to the surface… Then another alien creature blocked their path… Some strange hybrid of bird and cat. It was wearing thick wool barding like them, with saddlebags, this thing may not be a pony, but it must be intelligent… Or it could be another mindless mutant created by the magical chaos they had just stumbled through. Petrochem drew her firearm-turned-club, Basalt was ready to beat the thing with his hooves, and Ethylene pointed her horn like a spear… But then the creature drew a long and slender device, almost like a spear but without a spearhead, and bulkier at the base, with the same kind of handle and lever mechanism as Petro’s firearm… The creature had one of its own, and pointed it right at them, looking down a larger but stubbier tube on its top, it pulled down on the handle. Petro closed her eyes, imagining she was about to be torn apart from muzzle to tail root… Only to hear a ghastly and hissing explosion come from somewhere behind her a split second after the bang from the creature’s firearm. “Chlorine Elemental…” The creature said in a strange and thick accent. “You ponies are lucky, you get to live just a little bit longer and die a less painful death, hehe…”

“W-Who are you?” Basalt asked.

“I am a hunter, and you are fresh food, now come along quietly, I don’t want to have to ruin my lunch by having to blow it apart,” The creature raised a small boxy device covered in dials with a pole sticking out of its top to its razor-sharp beak, “I have found more ponies, trying to come up through the tunnels beneath the city, friends of the feathered ones perhaps?” There was a pause, “Da commander.”

“Alright, you ponies come with me now.”

“What if we don’t want to be eaten?”

“Then we’ll feast on your bullet-ridden corpses.” He said, at least Petro assumed it was male based on its voice. The creature pointed upward, and the three saw two more cat-birds hovering above them, pointing more firearms at them, these ones shorter and boxier than the long and slender one the first creature carried. “Katerina, Glendina, help me escort these fine cuts of meat back to the camp. I assume Stretsky has the feathered ponies?”

“Da, Korvo.” One of the two female? Catbirds replied.

“Good, good… Da commander will decide what to do with them, eat them all at once, fatten them up a bit, or just hold them in a cell just in case we have a bad hunting season.”

As the two cat-birds descended and put their weapons right up against their back, pushing them to move forward, Petro realized… “We’re fucking screwed.”

Author's Note:

As some of you may have probably guessed, I wrote this chapter shortly after a four-hour play session of S.TA.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl. And so here we meet the Cheeki-Breeki Pony Hunters... Aka, Griffons. Also, tunnel filled with magical anomalies of pure nightmare fuel... (Which is just a taste of what awaits in Twilight's Tower)

Comments

[Jinxed]

Interesting world you're creating.
Seems to be a mix of a lot of things.

[Eversong]

This a rough day for them