A Journey

by Bronythegreat

awaken (revised)

Dreams can be weird sometimes. Like, sometimes you have a dream about what your alternate life could be like, or if you were somepony else. And sometimes, your sub-conscious brain really wants to screw with you. If you get that, then you pretty much understand Pipers situation. She was walking in a dimly lit, slightly depressing hallway with no known end. The candles that poorly illuminated the room flickered in an unfelt breeze. For what seemed to be hours, she walked down the marble-floored hallway, until finally, she saw a door. She curiously walked over to the door, and went to turn the knob. But, to her upmost surprise, the hallway extended, taking the door with it. Shocked by what had just occurred, she turned to run, but smacked into what seemed to be an invisible wall. She rubbed her snout gently, as the nerves in it started to scream at her. She turned, and ran. She ran towards the door, but every time she reached it, it just moved further away. She chased the door for what felt like forever, until that is, she found another hallway. The hallway that branched off was much better lit, and she could clearly see daylight outside. So, she forgot the door and ran to the light. Just as she was about to leave the accursed hallway, she began to feel dizzy. She felt the blood flow to her face stop, her heart beat slowed. She looked down to see that she was falling, her vision blurring with every inch. She looked down at the hard, marble floor greeting her, as if saying “hi, how are you. Nice weather today, is I right, oh and this is going to hurt. A lot. She hit the floor with full force and her retinas were immediately enveloped in a bright, white and green light. She closed her eyes, and remembered no more.

A loud explosion was heard in the distance, but Piper heard nothing but a powerful, high-pitched ringing in her ears. As her ears began to receive sound, she realized how deafening it was. Ponies screaming, sirens wailing, explosions threatening to liquefy her ears drums at any moment. She lay in a smoking crater in the hard, stone paved street. She inclined her head upwards, and saw what she could only classify as a bloodbath. Ponies were bent over dead others, yelling their names, trying to awaken them there permanent sleep. She looked around; only to see trees burning, lasers of energy firing off in all direction. The scorched stones of half destroyed buildings, broken glass and downed power lines everywhere. This was unknown to by Piper, Manehatten, or what was left of it. The changeling army had charged a full scale invasion on Equestria, headed by non-other than the immortal queen of the changeling, Queen Chrysalis. The enemy was everywhere. They were flying, they were running, and some were even floating. Piper tried to harness the will to scream, but she could not. No noise came. One of the changeling soldiers had taken notice of her, and was slowly advancing on her position. It sulkily walked over so her, with is sunken shoulders and hole-filled chitin, breaking glass beneath its hooves. It stood over her now, a fully grown, lethal looking, unicorn-changeling. It charged its horn with a ball of green light and brought it so close to her that Piper could feel the deadly energy emanating from it.

“Aaaaany lassst wordsssss” it hissed, its horrible foul breath washing over her. Its canines extruding from its mouth cut her across the top of her right eye as it spoke. Piper just sat there, whimpering in pain and fear when some pony yelled to her.

“Get down!!!” said the voice. She did so immediately, flattening her back against the broken glass patterned pavement. She inclined her head just in time to see a blue-green flash of light knock the creature into the air, sending it spiraling away. It crashed through the roof of a weak building, which promptly collapsed onto the creature. Slightly stuned by the pure violence of it all, she did not see the guard that came running over to her aid. It grabbed her by the hoof, and pulled her into a “safe” alleyway.

She turned to thank the stallion for saving her, but when she turned, she was greeted by a disturbing flash of green in the guard’s eyes. Dismissing this as her own eyes playing tricks on her she thanked the stallion, but he did not reply. With a puzzled look, she tapped the stallion on the shoulder. He immediately hissed violently, and its skin began to disintegrate. Thoroughly scared now, Piper backed away. There was a bright flash of green, and then there was no guard. There was a changeling. Standing in his place. He moved toward her, but suddenly stopped and cried out in pure agony. An arrow was protruding from its windpipe and it fell dead, its blood pooling around a nearby drain. Piper felt as if she was going to be sick, but suppressed the feeling. She ran out of the alleyway into a deteriorating building. Another guard rounded the corner, but this time, it didn’t even get too close to Piper. With an ear splitting caw, she turned to see a dawnix dive-bombing towards her. This creature was simply beautiful. Its feathers were black as night and it beak was silver grey. Its eyes sparkeled so elegantly, they could put Luna’s own stars to shame. Stunned with fear, the mare couldn’t move. It was as if her feet were stuck to the floor by some invisible glue. The Dawnix ignored her and flew right around her, or rather under her. Instead, it went straight for the guard. Its razor sharp talons extender to the full length, about 3 inches of deadly keratin knives. In one fluent motion, the creature severed the guards femoral and jugular arteries, leaving him instantly dead, face down in a pool of his own blood. She stared at it, as the skin melted off it, leaving a dead changeling laying there.

The Dawnix screeched in triumph, and went into a straight 90 degree turn up wards. Piper ran out of the building, to see where it was going. It landed on the roof, before taking flight again. Luckily for her, the Dawnix flew over the back roads, which allowed her to follow it. She came to a dead end, inhabited only by a sewer cover and an empty fruit cart that was falling apart, surrounded by glass and rusting metal bits. She yelped as she felt a sharp but short pain in her side, followed by an audible “thunk.” She turned to see an arrow quivering, pinning one of her feathers to the wall. On the arrow, was wrapped a small scroll. She untied the scroll and read it.

“Don’t move” she read aloud, quite puzzled.
She saw a Dawnix feather lying on the sewer cover, and went to go pick it up. She looked at the small feather, before she was suddenly falling, the sewer grate having been moved. She fell down, but right before she hit the sickly green water, somepony caught her. Stunned, she looked at her savior. She could not see his face, but knew he was a unicorn. He had a quiver of arrows, fletched with dawnix feathers on his back, and had a mahogany long bow slung over the opposite shoulder. The Dawnix she had seen earlier flew down through the opened sewer grate, and landed on his shoulder, cawing happily, munching on a small mouse.

“You’re welcome” said her savior, who then put her down, turned, and began slowly trudging through the muck of the sewers. Suddenly he stopped and looked back.

“Coming?” he asked, beckoning her forward with a nod of his head down the tunnel. She hurriedly ran towards him

“Who are you”she questioned. The stallion looked at her, which was not hard. She was small as allicorns go.

“My name is Apollo, Apollo Sparkle. And yours?” he asked, in a surprisingly young voice. He seemed to be only a teenager.

“If only I knew” she muttered.

Author's Note:

This is the revised eddition of this chapter. any constructive critisism is still accepted. and please, for the love of god, dont just downvote and hate because the main character is an allicorn. thanks, the next chapter is coming.
~bronythegreat

Comments

[Sagacity]

Instead of deleting comments, you should take this down until you've put it through word processing software or relinquished it to a particularly brave editor.

[GrimDreaper18]

Well i liked it sure you need an editor but this story has promise

[Didlsbrony4evah]

"But, to her upmost surprise, "
*utmost
Also, having split that into another sentence get rid of the but.

"Shocked by what had just occurred, she turned to run, but smacked into what seemed to be an invisible wall. She rubbed her snout gently, as the nerves in it started to scream at her"

Though not massively important here, you coul turn "but smacked" into smacking or running into. A suggestion for the second sentence is to turn "as the nerves in it started to scream at her" into "She rubbed her snout gently, the nerves screaming at her." I suggest this because putting in things like but and pre-action as can break sentence pacing. in the sentence after this get rid of the comma between "turned, and ran", eliminate the period and combine the two sentences into "She turned and ran towards the door" followed by the continuation you have there. In the following sentences you have a few places where commas could be eliminated and wording changed to keep the pace steady, but otherwise this is a huge improvement.
To avoid having a large list of corrections here I'll email you a copy of the text with areas of concern highlighted and suggestions inserted.
Definitely an improvement here, good work.

[Bronythegreat]

2166985 appreciate that. i spent way more time on it this rime, what with revision all. apreciate the advice, allways open to helpful critasism.
~bronythegreat

[Bronythegreat]

2166660 thanks man. this is the evised edition, qnd there is no way i would have written it this much better without my advice giving god, 2166985. he/she is great, and helped alot. keep in mind all you haters reading this, that just because he gave me advice, dosent mea he likes the story. any hate should be directed at me and me alone.
~bronythegreat

[Bronythegreat]

2165991 alright, ill look into that. and i havent deleted a single comment by the way.

[Didlsbrony4evah]

I believe sagacity is referring to the comments that disappeared when you took down the old draft of the chapter before republishing it. I've taken a couple hours to go over this separately and will send you my revisions and suggestions.

Just to clear things up, it's he, and I hardly consider myself a god, though I'm flattered by the, well, flattery.

[Didlsbrony4evah]

2165991
And a particularly brave editor I am indeed. The previous comments disappeared because the chapter actually was taken down at one point, but in order for me to access it to edit it, it had to be resubmitted. We're working on a better method of exchanging the text now, so there probably won't be any more of these 'submitted before they're quite ready' chapters. Otherwise, I'm pleased to see that you returned to check out the changes, and hope that you follow the story into it's coming chapters. BtG certainly has the potential to make this into an enjoyable fic.

[naga]

An interesting idea, but personally I'd revise the story and add more to it, give better descriptions and make it more clear to the reader exactly what is going on. Also work on the grammar and phrasing of words, another thing you may want to change the main character to a regular type of pony instead of an alicorn. They tend to get a bad rap around here.