Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn

Chapter 2 - Into the Darkness

Chapter 2

Into the Darkness

"It is our only hope. To open those doors, we may die. But to remain here, we WILL die."

Darkness.

Behind us, the door slammed closed.

I had never known darkness such as that. The lights in the stable were only two blast doors behind me – and yet, as I gazed into the mouth of that black abyss, I knew that out there, they were so far away.

I flicked on my flashlight and gasped as the darkness parted.

"Goddesses ... are you ponies seeing this?" Amber Fields trembled.

Bones. I saw bones. Too many to count.

Star Glint nudged a stray rib. "How many people you think died here?"

"Too many," I heard Dew Drops murmur.

I took a step back and my hoof crunched through something brittle.

I looked down and the charred skull of a long dead pony broke like a porcelain jar around my hoof. I struggled against the urge to scream – looking elsewhere, somewhere that wasn't littered by the bones of some dead pony.

I found no such respite.

All that remained were the shattered, howling jaws of ponies long dead. Their grinning skulls warning me to scurry back to the safety of my stable ... the safety that they were never able to enjoy. Their jealous ghosts screamed at me to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the home that they had been denied.

I turned around and peered upwards at the door that loomed over me.

Hooves.

Black, hoof-shaped smears raked across its surface as far as I could reach. They ... they scraped at the door with their hooves until their hooves were gored and worn to bloody stumps.

The door hadn't been opened in two hundred years.

The door hadn't been opened for them. I stood there, trembling in silence among their charred, frozen bones.

There they had lain... all this time.

This entire time we had never known. For our entire lives we had lived, sleeping and dreaming sweet dreams when just outside our doors was this... horror.

Hundreds of people died in that tunnel with food and safety only two doors away.

They were so close ... but not close enough.

"Try not to look," Dew Drops whispered, pushing me away from the mass grave.

But how couldn't I? Even long dead, their bones still cried out for mercy - for some closure from the balefire annihilation that erased them from the face of Equestria.

Those people were the forgotten souls that our ancestors decided to leave behind. They were the souls we decided to leave behind. I wondered if my great grandmare knew. I wondered if she rolled around in bed at night knowing that she survived and millions did not.

I wondered if her Overmare knew that she condemned all of these people to burn.

My wandering, teary eyes came upon a charred, shattered skeleton too small to be that of a stallion or a mare.