Warm, wet dirt presses into the back of my head and everything hurts. That didn’t really seem fair since I’m supposed to be dead, right?

Right?!

I was ready! I let it go! I was… I was ready to let it all go and to finally get some peace and quiet in a world that I’d managed to teach to hate me no matter what I did. I just wanted it to be over! I clench my eyes as tears push their way past my eyelids from where I lay on the ground. I just wanted it all to be over. I know I’ve done so many wrong things but… can’t I be owed just a little bit of peace? The peace of my own death, if nothing else?

Apparently not, or apparently death sucks way more than I had been lead to believe. I push away the tears before they overwhelm me. I have a feeling if I start crying I’m not going to stop for a good while and, whether or not I’m dead, I clearly still have a corporeal body of some flavor so that means I need to get up and- NOPE. Pain slashes into my brain like a lightning bolt the moment I move my head, leaving me gasping for air.

Okay, so that’s not happening. Let’s trying rolling over. I heave to the side, and a sharp jabbing in my stomach reminds me that I’m still holding onto my Journal. Right, well, if that’s here then... that’s a plus, I guess? Now for the real sixty billion bit question: “Where in Tartarus am I?”

Balancing on my knees and one hand, with the other hand keeping my Journal close, I look around. All around me are stalks of rotting corn and the air is filled with the stench of manure, that unique stink of unwashed animals, and... something else too, some kind of thick and coppery stink.

I slowly stagger to my feet and the pain in my head starts fading back to a dull roar as I find my footing. It’s terribly quiet and there’s something in the air… something that’s setting my teeth on edge. My vision swims again and I step backward, trying to get myself situated, and I very nearly trip on a protruding root.

“Ah!” I wince at how loud my voice sounds in the silence out here as I turn around to see a scene straight out of a horror movie.

My jaw hangs slack and for a second my brain grinds its gears trying to figure out exactly what I'm looking at despite it being pretty friggin’ obvious.

It's a tree, sure, that's the easy part. The rest of it isn’t so easy. The corpses of massive swine hang gutted from the bare, dead branches, dripping gobs of viscous, rotting blood onto the ground making the source of the stink all-too-clear. Slaughtered animals would be one thing but what I really can’t tear my eyes away from is what’s strung up against the trunk of the tree.

A human, or at least what's left of it. Flayed and brutalized beyond anything I can imagine. Chunks of meat hang raggedly from its fractured rib cage, and every bit of it that's still there screams that it died in agony. All I can manage is a small choking sound in the back of my throat. I want to scream I want to-

The air is split by a scream, but not mine. I spin around looking for the source, if it wasn't mine then another voice means another person which means I'm not alone here in this nightmare horror-show. Gripping my Journal hard I take a guess and sprint away from the gory tree and towards roughly where I reckon the scream came from. The muck and soil suck at my feet as I run, it’s noisy and disgusting but I can’t afford to be slow. If someone is in trouble I want to help them. Just because I was abandoned…

Nope, not going there yet. Maybe not ever. C’mon repression, kick in, I’ve got more important things to do.

Another scream tells me I’m closer than I thought, I stop running at the edge of the corn and drop to a crouch, peeking out from between the stalks and scanning for the… what the fuck.”

It’s huge. Monstrous, really. It’s… It’s like a human but there’s something horribly wrong with it. It must be over seven feet tall, easily, but its body is lopsided and it looks almost… melted. Its left arm is muscular but twisted and stretched while its face is a mangy waxen mess held together by surgical sutures and crude stitching. Two sharp, feral eyes peer out of the folds of mutant flesh and on its belt is crude, heavy-looking hammer stained with what can only be blood. Its twisted arm is gripping a brutal chainsaw, the teeth of which are clogged with what looks like bits of gristle, bone, and hair.

The thing is so imposing I almost miss what it’s carrying in its other arm. A person struggling feebly, a young man with bright green hair, a red shirt, and brown cargo pants. The thing is so cartoonishly massive compared to the guy's smaller frame that all he can do is wiggle in the monster’s grip. I stay crouched and quiet as the thing moves by. It has a weird kind of loping gait that’s almost graceful. No motion is wasted and it covers more ground than I expect as it passes me by. I turn to watch it as it approaches something extruding from the ground.

What in Tartarus is that? It almost looks like a… a hook. It’s a giant Sun-damned butcher’s hook. What is that thing going to do with-

Oh... oh Celestia, no.

In one fluid, gut-wrenching movement, the twisted creature swings its chainsaw down to a hook on its belt and brings its huge, melted arm up to grab the guy then heaves him up and brings him down onto the hook with a wet, meaty, shunk that turns my stomach. My jaw drops open and I feel a scream build up. I'm about to let it out completely by reflex when a strong, warm hand suddenly sweeps around and grips over my mouth, gluing it shut. I struggle for a moment but whoever it is has a grip like steel and pulls me away from the horrific scene.

I get tossed onto the damp ground and cough as I look up at whoever it was that probably saved my life. Crouching low and holding a raised finger to her lips is a muscular young woman with shorn sides and a red warhawk. She’s wearing a thick military vest and her broad arms are bare but have the kind of heavy, slab-like muscle that suggests she worked for it rather than sculpted her guns in a gym. Her eyes are a sharp, brilliant aquamarine, and her gaze feels like it’s tangibly sticking me to the ground. Especially her right eye; it has a brutal, ridged scar dragging down from her scalp to the edge her lip giving her a kind of permanent slight sneer.

“Don’t move, and don’t speak,” she whispers in an accented voice so low I have to lean forward to catch what she’s saying. “It will hear you. Don’t let its stature fool you, it’s faster and sharper than it looks.”

I just nod, I’m willing to take that advice as read given that I just watched that thing cold murder a guy with a butchers hook stuck to a lamppost.

She turns away from me and scowls in the direction of the hook. “Dammit Spruce, I told you not to go for the box. Idiota," she mutters before gesturing sharply at me. "Come on bacon-head, follow closely.”

Bacon-head?! Red and gold. Not bacon. Red and friggin gold. I follow her anyway though because, yeah, Butcherhook McChainsawface is presumably still tooling around this haunted-ass cornfield and this girl seems like she knows what’s going on. You don’t survive being homeless as a teen girl in the city for long without figuring out who knows what and how to learn that stuff yourself and I'm willing to endure some jabs as tuition.

“Where are we going?” I try to keep my voice as quiet as she had and seem to do at least passably because she doesn't scowl too hard.

“The generator,” she responds in a low voice. “See the tall, metal towers with the high-powered lights rising out of the fog? They’re connected to generators. Getting them repaired and running opens the exit gates.”

“Cool, so we just gas it up and go?” I whisper back.

She shakes her head. “No, there will be seven of them and the exits need at least five running to power the system. We’ve got two them going already but then Spruce got greedy.”

I let the knowledge that we need to get three more of them up and running in the dark, with a chainsaw-clad murder-hobo stalking the area sink in. This does not feel good.

“Here, tocina, take this,” she shoves a torch into my hand. “If you see it try to shine the light in its eyes. The Killers live in the darkness of the fog, so bright light pains them.”

A weapon, then. I feel my first real surge of gratitude towards her. I mean, yeah, she definitely kept me from being butcher bait a second ago but now I have a way to defend myself... not well, mind you, but at least it’s something.

“Thanks, I owe you,” I respond quietly, testing the heft of it. It might make a decent bludgeon if it runs out.

“De nada, just keep an eye out.”

We reach the generator and it’s in bad shape; busted up with pieces hanging off in some places and loose wiring. I assume this isn't unusual because my new guide goes immediately to work putting it back together by sliding bits and piece back into place, and pulling out batches of wiring and sparking them against each other. I sit and watch her quick, sure movements for a few seconds, there’s something fascinating about watching someone who knows what they’re doing work with their hands. It’s mesmerizing enough that I almost forget I’m supposed to keep watch. I turn back and keep my head on a swivel.

Idiot, idiot. What would’ve happened if that mange-ridden psychopath had just walked up while you were ogling? Dumbass.

Another scream, loud and feminine. I start to stand up and move but the girl’s hand shoots out like she know's exactly what's going through my head to grip my wrist. “Don’t, that’s Star and she’s doing it on purpose to keep Billy’s attention. Don’t worry, she’s slippery and smart. I’ll know if she’s really in trouble, so sit. Do you know anything about generators?”

I turn back to her, letting the rock in my stomach settle. I hear ‘Billy’ rev his chainsaw in the distance getting the crows shrieking and cawing at the sudden noise. At least that lets me know that he isn’t close by. “Uh, yeah, before it bricked completely I had one in the station I was… uh… squatting in. It got me through a rough winter before it died but it took a little love and, well, a lot of percussive maintenance.”

Her mouth turns up in a grim smile. “Good, get to work on the other side while Star gives us some breathing room.”

Nodding, I defer to her expertise. If she says we’re ‘safe’ then I'll to go with that, I can only assume she'd know better than me.

I take a quick look and immediately find at least a few easy things I can fix; The exhaust manifold is essentially not even connected anymore, it's hanging off of the main body by a couple screws. I set the torch down and start muscling it back into place.

I wince and twitch at every sound, and lament how fixing a generator is not a quiet process. Fortunately ‘Star’ has kept her scream game on point which seems to be serving as a relatively adequate mask. I shoulder the manifold back into position, and start working on the coolant system. It’s crude but that’s good. Crude means mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering means it’s relatively simple to get it back in one- SHIT.

My shoe slipped. My stupid shoe slipped in the mud putting my angle off as I shoulder a cooling pipe the wrong way, clanging it hard against part of the chugging starter, setting it off and sending a surge through the damn thing. It makes a loud, blinding POP and I stagger back, rubbing my eyes and shaking my singed fingers. I can’t even see properly before my extra-toasty hand is grabbed by my guide and we’re off running.

“Go, vámonos tocina, Billy’s not going to ignore that,” she hisses.

I nod, angry at myself and at the mud and my shoes and everything else. It was stupid and it was my fault. “Sorry, sorry, I slipped and-” A finger presses against my lips as she pulls us into cover behind some hay bales.

“Don’t apologize, just do better next time, comprende?” She answers evenly. I’m surprised at her calm tone, I probably wouldn’t have been as forgiving in her place.

We lean against the bale, catching our breath as we wait for ‘Billy’ to lose interest. He doesn’t seem to be coming this way, but we aren’t gonna break cover and give him a show just in case.

“What’s your name, by the way?” I ask, leaning in close to her to keep my voice as low as possible. “I’m Sunset Shimmer.”

“Tempest,” she responds, “Tempest Shadow.”

It fits her. Imposing, certain, and powerful, she moved like she avoided murderous psychopaths for a living. Who knows, maybe she does. I don’t even know how I got here but I have a feeling I’d be properly borked if I hadn’t run across this girl. Or, if she hadn’t run across me, I guess.

“How did you get here?” I ask softly as Tempest peeks around the bale to scan the area.

“We’ll swap life stories once we’re at the campfire, tocina,” Tempest answered cooly. “Until then, keep it quiet.”

That was a fair point. I nod in response and move with her as she slips out from behind the bale and towards another stack of hay near a run-down shack. We’re moving for almost a full minute, sidling around hay and rotting corn, passing four or five of those gut-wrenching hooks, until we come to a rusting jungle gym.

I scan the area but don’t see any of the towers that would suggest a generator nearby. At least, nowhere close. I tap her shoulder and give her a questioning look. Tempest just shakes her hand and holds her right hand up, making a short chopping motion towards the corner we’re crouched at. I peek around and quickly stifle a gasp. It’s Spruce, hanging from the hook. We’d come around the long way to the approach the post from the other side. I can hear him grunting and struggling. I want to go out, to try and pull him down, but something about Tempest’s wary look and the fact that she hasn’t done that exact thing yet keeps me rooted to the ground.

Finally, I start to lose patience. “What are we waiting for?” I ask softly, gesturing towards the corner. “He’s dying.”

Tempest brings a finger to her lip again, then points around the corner. “Look closer, in the fog past the hook.”

I peek around again, this time focusing on the dark fields. It would be hard to see even in good light but the combination of dim, diffuse lighting and the fog was making it… wait… I see movement. Just barely, but I see it. Something big, loping, and, more terrifyingly, silent is there just out of easy eyeshot.

It’s a trap.

“Puta, it’s using Spruce as bait,” Tempest swore venomously.

I swallow back my revulsion and step back fully into cover before I risked him spotting me any more than I already had. “What do we do?”

Tempest closes her eyes and I see grim determination pass over her face. “We leave him,” she says, and my mouth drops open. “If we’re lucky we can run up another genny and it will draw Billy away from the hook. If we’re not…”

“We can’t just let him bleed out on that fucking hook, Tempest,” I say in disbelief. I know I don’t know her that well but even after everything that’s happened to me, I couldn’t imagine being that callous.

The look she gives me, though, puts a chill in my heart. “Don’t worry, he won’t. Now c’mon, vámonos, we either distract Billy with a genny and stand a chance of saving Spruce or we he let him die for sure.”

We track back around towards our generator, the one I’d botched a couple of minutes ago, and fortunately it’s still in decent condition. The fizzle and popping had stopped and Tempest immediately moved back into position, reached arm deep into the generators guts to start fiddling with something. I went back around determined to finish that damn cooling pipe. This time I managed to push it back into place fully. After a good minute of dedicated repairs, I smile as the throaty, palpitating chug of the engine suddenly gives a loud cough, sputter and then starts running with a steady thump-thump-thump of cylinders.

“Bien,” Tempest mutters, pulling away from the generator, "that’ll get Billy’s attention and-” A thunderclap drowns Tempests next words and I see her slacken, her hands grip the railing of the generator hard and she swears under her breath. “Dammit, I’m sorry Spruce.”

I’m about to ask what she’s talking about when a cold, heavy wind rolls over us coming from the direction of the hook that Billy had hung Spruce from I turn reflexively to see what was causing it and I immediately feel Tempest’s hand on my shoulder. She’s looking up.

“Don’t look away, chica, this is what is waiting for all of us, eventually,” Tempest says in a quiet, almost reverent voice.

I follow her gaze up and my eyes widen. How do I describe it? A coil of blackness, a storm of despair. A cloud blacker than the endless night between the stars reaches down from the sky and twined among the rippling clouds are… things. Living, twitching, spindly claws that remind me of the legs of a black widow; long and thing but needle-sharp and fast as a whip.

Without warning the twisting, asymmetrical claws jab down and I hear a scream. A shriek of mortal horror. Then the claws lift up with a disintegrating body I vaguely recognize as Spruce speared in their grasp. Faint sparks of light and energy flow out of his body and up into the cloud. The legs, or claws? They twitch in what I imagine is ecstasy. I can’t stop shaking. Tempest said he wouldn’t bleed out and she was right. Bleeding out would’ve been a dramatic improvement.

“W-what…” I start to stutter but Tempest grabs me by the hand and lights off with me in tow.

I hear another cough and chug in the distance as another generator goes online. It must be the other girl, Star. The one who was covering us with her screams and quick feet must have been using Spruce the same way we did. One more generator, then? Yeah, one more. Five generators total and we had run up four, one more and then we could all get out. I swallow the panic-vomit that’s threatening to overwhelm me and pick up the pace, getting alongside Tempest.

I see the light array tower resolve out of the fog right about the time I hear the roar of a revving chainsaw behind us.

I experience a brief moment of blind terror right before Tempest shoves me to one side while she wildly dives to the other. A second later I see the huge, twisted monstrosity that murdered Spruce sprint right through the space we had just occupied, his chainsaw swinging back and forth spitting blood and hot oil. I scrabble to my feet and take off in a panic, sparing a quick glance back to spot my pursuer.

I don’t see him, but I don’t see Tempest either. The generator is nearby, I can see the tower so it can’t be more than a half-dozen meters. I can even hear it chugging. Someone must’ve been working on it not long ago. Hell, that ‘Star’ person might be working on it now. I turn to finish the generator, it’s what I have to do to survive. Tempest knows that and…

I hear her scream and every bit of resolve I have to work on that stupid hunk of junk ahead of me vanishes as I wheel around on my heels and sprint toward where I heard Tempest’s voice. She's saved my life more times in the last several minutes than any single person has in my whole life and I'm including Princess Celestia in that.

She had every reason to abandon me to the ‘Beats by Chainsaw’ and she didn’t, even though I'm a complete dead-weight. Instead, she took my hand and tried to teach me to survive even though there was no reason for her to do that.

My friends might have abandoned me when I needed them most I’ll be damned if I do the same thing to someone I owe that much to. Sunset Shimmer always breaks even.

I burst out of the cornfield in front of jungle gym just in time to see Billy bring his hammer down on Tempest while she's vaulting a section of piping and I wince as I hear the sickening crack. I pray for a moment that she lands and keeps running but Tempest hits the ground hard, staggered by the monster’s sharp strike. As it moves around to her it hefts the hammer lightly into the catching it and shaking the blood off almost playfully.

It thinks this is a game.

I grit my teeth as it hefts Tempest onto its shoulder. I see the hook a few meters away and I know what’s coming but more importantly, I know where he’s going, so I slip around him, moving quickly, but quietly through the corn along the edge of the beaten path and sidle around the hook. I hear him moving towards me, huffing and grunting like a wild beast as he stopping at the bloody post and planting his mismatched feet to prepare to heft the muscular frame of my friend upward and onto the hook. It puts his face exactly where I knew it would be as I step out and shine the torch directly into his eyes. He staggers and lets out a long, loud, gurgling cry. Tempest shouts wordlessly in shock as she drops past the hook and hits the ground, but she’s only on her knees for a second before she’s up and sprinting away.

Billy is rubbing at the blistery, melted flesh of his face trying to get to his eyes so I don’t waste any time. Flicking the light off, I sprint after Tempest to catch up. She’s got momentum but she’s still stunned, staggering every few steps. I wince at the bloody patch on her skull and try to pretend I can’t see the glint of bone.

“That was stupid, tocina,” Tempest says as we duck into the corn and get low, moving quietly and stealthily through the thicket of cover. “You should’ve gotten the-” Her words are cut off by a loud, thunderous report and another bank of lights coming on. “-well, never mind, but still. That was a stupid risk.”

I give her a smug smile. “I’m Sunset Shimmer, I don’t just take risks, I make plans.”

Before she can respond we hear a loud, harsh electric buzzing noise not far from us, I look up at her and she’s wearing a grin that’s a little lopsided thanks to the scar. It’s kinda hot actually.

“There it is, the exit, come on Shimmer, move!” Tempest crows and takes off.

We sprint, I try to ignore the stitch in my side as we pound towards the glowing lights of the exit. A jolt of panic spears up my spine as I hear that familiar, horrible revving sound behind us but before I can dodge Tempest grabs my hand and smirks at me as she drags me forward so we're sprinting at a brick wall. The chainsaw’s labouring carburetor roars close behind us. I want to move so badly but the look on Tempest’s face keeps me by her side.

As crazy as it sounds… I trust her.

I cotton on to her plan in the moment before we’re about hit the wall. We split, me diving left and her to the right letting Billy charge between us to impact the wall hard. His chainsaw grinds into the stone leaving Billy staggering backward while trying to find his footing and recover whatever few wits he has left in that malformed skull of his. Not content to give him the time I turn on my heels towards the exit and run, and a moment later I’m beside Tempest again and she’s laughing. Laughing. We almost died and she’s laughing!

Only as we're sprinting down the short, brick and dirt path to the Exit and into the grass and forest beyond do I realise that I am too.