She woke to a terrible memory of pain. The taste of pennies and rusty iron, a laughing pink face twisted with insanity. Where was she? Where was she from? P-Pony...

It hurt, why did it hurt so much to remember? Why couldn't she remember anything? What had happened?

Black sand kicked around in the dust-swept plain she had awoken on. There was no life, not even a memory of life like a withered shrug or the desiccated stump of a tree. Just sand and wind and hard-packed dirt. Wait. No that's not quite right. She looked around and picked out an irregularity in the ground, something under the uniform coating of parched gray dust and ash.

It hurt to move, her back hurt fiercely like it had been flayed, she cried out and dropped back to her knee's. Tears swam in her eyes but she clenched her jaw and stood back up. Ready for the pain this time it shot through her but she bit back the scream and moved forward. One hoof, then another, then another. One by one she thought, and eventually she came to the irregularity. Brushing the dust off she saw a glint of metal, black metal, through the grime. Curiosity overcame the worst of her pain and she swept around the metal revealing a monolithic set of tracks. No train she had ever seen before could have ridden these massive rails. The train must be monstrous she thought.

In the distance she heard something, a call? No...

There it was again.

A roar.

Panic welled into her heart. It was strange, ever since she had awoken she had simply assumed she was alone out here. It was so empty that the idea of something living out here was... impossible. The roar repeated itself, echoing across the plains from all directions. It wasn't possible. It was almost as if... She turned her gaze skyward to the dark and twisting cloud cover just in time to see a shadow ripple. The mass of some titanic thing disturbing the dark and doughy mass blotting out the sky. Another twist a panic, was it a dragon? Only a dragon could be that big right?

Wings.

Feathered wings of an impossible size breached the clouds for a brief moment before vanishing.

A low moan of despair whispered through her lips as she backed up and wished with all her heart for something to hide behind or underneath. As she stepped away another sound came to her ears, this one was different though. Distant and powerful. Like a thunderstorm building on the horizon. She stepped back, her left hoof coming down on the raised metal of the rail line. She felt the vibrations.

The train was coming.

For some reason she couldn't quite put her hoof on this filled her with a kind of impending dread. Not the primal panic of seeing that thing with impossible wings. It was a slow mortal dread of something inescapable but no less unpleasant for it. All the same, a train of dread was better than being out here in the open for that... thing... to sweep up. Right?

Something in her heart told her it was right. She trusted that something as she always had. Gut and instinct was always reliable. That was how she had lived.

And how she died

She shook her head, a thought had passed through, grim and defining but as insubstantial as a dream. Lost as quickly as it was recognized. She shook her head, feeling her mane flow out as she backed up and waited for the train. The sound built, slowly at first but the closer it got the faster the noise came. She could see it now, a little, a great black hulk breathing black smog into the sky, red fire burning in it's engine like the beast in those old pony myths that guarded the gates of punishment. The chugging and mechanical roar of the engine began to eclipse anything else, even her thoughts became second to that all-encompassing noise. Finally it reached her, roaring past at incredible speeds she began to worry it would pass her by entirely. Fortunately this wasn't so, she saw it after a moment, the great vessel was slowing, slowly but perceptibly it was slowing to a halt. When it finally stopped a great creaking groaned out and what appeared to be a portable station folded out of the nearest car complete with stairs and ticket booth. For a moment she wondered how she would manage the cyclopean staircase but after a moment noticed a second, smaller, more pony-sized set.

Or I could've just flown

This time she caught the strange thought, fly? She couldn't fly? Right? That was silly. Silly thoughts. She shook her head and ascended the small set of stairs and headed towards the car. She was interrupted by a very dry 'harrumph' from behind her that caused her to stop dead. She slowly turned to face the ticket booth, she could've sworn it was empty. No, in fact it wasn't but was inhabited by a thing covered in so many dirty rags and tattered robes that it barely appeared equine at all.

“Ticket?” it asked in a soft dry voice, like caked ash cracking underhoof.

“Uhm... I- I don't think I have a...” she trailed off as she rifled around and came up, somehow, with a thin black ticket lined in gold-leaf that said in bold yellow:

“S-sorry, I guess I do... here?” she offered the ticket to the figure hesitantly and from a distance, for some reason she wasn't keen to allow the thing to touch her. “Also... it said, uhm, 13 o'clock Train? But that's got to be a typo right? I mean, there is no 13 o'clock.”

“Hmm? Hehheh, no 13 o'clock?” it rasped, amusement obvious in it's voice, “of course there is, after all, if there was no 13 o'clock, then this train couldn't arrive, and here it is, right on time,” it pushed a little worn out clock towards her. She read the numbers but they made no sense, there was only one number, on the little clock face and it was 13, situated right between where 12 and 1 would've been had they not been missing. There was something else that was... wrong... it was almost like the face of clock was too large. As if it had extra angles.

She shook her head, she had always been terrible at geometry.

“Alright... uhm, guess I'd better be going huh?” she said shakily, allowing a nervous smile to leak out as she backed up towards the train car.

“Mmhmmm... you better ought, don't want to be caught out in the rain my little pony, no no,” it's sibilant voice made her skin crawl. She turned to face the door to the train car. It was odd. Almost like the door to a house.

A basement.

It looked a little familiar, she wondered if she was supposed to recognize the way it looked or felt or-

Smelled like gore and viscera, like somepony trying to hide madness under formaldehyde and bleach.

Why did it seem so... bad? It was just a door right? Sweat broke out on her brow and her muscles tensed, they screamed for her to run away, to turn and run and run until she couldn't breath. Until her lungs burned and she vomited blood. That behind that door was something unwholesome-

UNHOLY

What was it? Why did this door seem so... No, she couldn't stay out so going in was the only option. She reached out a hoof, a cyan-furred hoof stained ever so slightly with the brown-red of blood, and pulled the rung to open the door.