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Bdubs paced the confines of his cage, steadily setting one hoof in front of the other.
Yep. That’s right. Hooves. No matter how many times he closed his eyes, or how hard he shook his unusually long head, Bdubs was a horse; head, hooves, hair and all. And as far as he knew, it was most certainly not a dream, and he was in grave danger.
In other circumstances, he might have been happy. He might have utilised his equine features to their greatest extent; to run, to feel the wind in his mane, to spy on his friends without them knowing (of course). But as it was, he was stuck, god knows where, in some kind of impenetrable chamber built by the horse killer himself, Joel.
Bdubs had known he was up to something suspicious – there was no way that Joel was happy or fine or normal, or whatever he kept rambling on and on about, no matter how many times he said it. It’s not like Bdubs could ignore the enormous blood splatters he found scattered across various plains and fields, and something clearly had to be said for the bodies that had accompanied them.
Joel killed horses, he knew that much, but as to what he did it for he was none the wiser. There was no mistaking he obviously got some twisted satisfaction from Bdub’s reaction, but what else? Why do it when he’s not around? Why collect horses in a place like this?
A place where the only source of light is from the harsh overhead strip lights and the strange pulsing band embedded in the wall. Where the ceiling is twice as high and the doorways look like they could fit a wither through them, no doubt to accommodate his new, significantly larger harpy form.
He studies the room through the transparent cage walls as he walks back and forth, scouring it once again for context, something that might clue him in to Joel’s ever-so-grand plan. A map, a poster, a book - anything that stood out from the brightly coloured architecture, which is practically a vomit of pinks and blues and desaturated reds. The kind of stuff you’d see in a kid’s bowl of cereal. And yet, Bdubs begrudgingly admits, Joel’s used it well. He’s managed stuff all sorts of different hues into this place in a way that’s quite aesthetically pleasing, not too bright, and just the right amount of darkness. He’s really a good builder..
Freaking hell! You don’t compliment your captors, Bdubs! Focus.
The other see-through cells lie next to him against the wall, still empty. The halters still hang silently on the bridle rack opposite him, and beside them a couple of sizeable hay bales are still precariously stacked. Everything is still, and yet the room looms over him like it’s about to topple.
Bdubs is still alarmed at just how big everything is. Larger tools and harpy-sized door handles imply that this place was not designed with humans (or equines) in mind. It makes him feel like a toy. A toy horse in a dollhouse, just ready to be picked up and pranced around.
It was better to focus on the clopping of his hooves against the concrete floor instead, drumming a rhythm that kept his breathing in check. They were starting to ache without horseshoes, but it distracted him from more pressing issues, such as the fact that he, Bdubs, was stuck as a horse. He had hoped, expected that this would wear off at some point. That he could go back to being human. Brush this whole thing off as some weird freaky mistake, or better yet, just escape using his own fingers and beloved opposable thumb (getting desperate enough to miss the joint pain, huh?).
It’s not going away.
It’s simply fate that the one time he gets to be a horse he gets captured and stuffed in a box. Irony at it’s finest. He can just hear the universe laughing behind their silver screens.
He tips his ears backwards. He might actually start hearing those voices if he doesn’t get out of here soon. The smell here is driving him crazy – a mixture of blank chemicals that mingles with the scent of horse, like someone’s poured bleach on a saddle. It lingers in his nose like a numbing agent, making him feel dizzy and warm.
It doesn’t help that the whole place is humming through his feet, rattling his body and the base of his ears with an incessant buzz that makes him feel like his eyes are blurry. It feels layered, varied - implying that this place extends far beyond this room. There’s also a semitone beep that’s been turning on and off at will for the past hour or so, and a high pitched trill he has yet to locate the source of. Nightmare material for any being cursed to hear it.
No wonder Joel’s going crazy. He has to deal with this all the time.
Oh Joel. Bdubs just can’t wait to see how he’s tangled up in all of this. He almost wants this place to be some nightmare horse killing factory, just to prove how evil he is.
From what he’s seen already, it doesn’t seem like a guess too far-fetched.
His breath quickens as he remembers the last time he saw him, the series of unfortunate events he’s run through over and over again.
Waking up in a decidedly un-human body, sun blazing in his eyes as he blearily registers the long grassy field surrounding him. He recalls learning to walk – a painful process when you have legs twice as long and double as much. The herd surrounding him didn’t help either, sniffing him like a newborn foal, nudging him this way and that with their noses in curiosity. Maybe they knew something was off. Maybe they knew it was him. It doesn’t really matter anymore. The herd is long gone.
Because as soon as Bdubs gained his footing and set off, a scream split the air. The last thing he expects it to witness the angel-white shape of Joel, coming down on the horse beside him like a nightmare, practically welded to its back as it tried to writhe and struggle out of his grip.
The herd scattering in a flurry of dirt and a thunder of hooves. The wet of the grass as he pitifully falls over in fright, and air currents flashing over his coat as Joel struggles with the poor thing, flapping his wings in an attempt to stay balanced while the horse chokes on its own blood, releasing sounds more fitting for broken piston.
Bdubs is almost grateful that from there it gets a bit fuzzy. The last thing he remembers is panic searing through his body, Joel’s laughing cry ringing in his ears and…
Waking up here. In this cage, alone, on the tough, flat concrete floor that scratched against his hooves. He hasn’t seen Joel since.
He has tried to make the most of his absence, to no avail. Multiple escape attempts have gifted him sore legs and an increasing mound of irritation he doesn’t know what to do with. The walls that surround him are transparent, yet deceptively strong, able to withstand the barrage of attacks he’s tried to impose upon it. They seem to bend with force, absorbing any type of damage he tries to inflict and bouncing back like a rubber band.
Deeply annoying. And futile, which is why he’s resorted to this.
Thinking.
And waiting.
Trying to keep his breathing steady, taking air in, then out, over and over again.
Bdubs halts.
The air feels strange. Not like it did before. He nervously flicks his ears this way and that, automatically looking for movement.
Something’s off.
Signals his human brain can’t untangle tickle his flight or fight. Something foreign. Like the exact absence of smell. Chlorine. The gap in the colour of scents that reminds him of the fields again.
Joel.
He senses him before he enters the room, every horse instinct alight with fear and the desire to run. He has to ignore it.
I hate him
Bdubs repeats, reminding himself.
I hate him so much, I-
“Hello friend!” Joel sings, rattling his primaries in excitement as his falconish face pops round the edge of the doorway, his talons rasping and clicking on the floor like blades against his skin as he makes his way into the room, tail swishing as he wags it happily. He glances at Bdubs with an itchy joy, eyes lingering on him in a way that immediately makes him feel unnerved. Like Joel’s already got this all figured out.
Bdubs emits a low, disgruntled whinny.
Not your friend.
He scans him for weak spots, soft patches and blind spots he can use to his advantage.
Joel towers over him, at least 3 horses high. Enough to cast an annoyingly ominous shadow that reminds him of the stone monoliths at his base. A brightly coloured one, at that, taking into consideration his vivid plumage. A linen cream colour covers the majority of his body, accented by vibrant oranges and blues that split on each side. One wing is accented in turquoise, and the other copper, trailing along the edges of his feathers like confetti, giving the illusion that he’s harmless. The large scythe-like talons say otherwise. So do his eyes, which stare out unsettlingly like void against the coconut white of his long, beaked skull. His heterochromic irises pierce the darkness of his sclera like flashlights, flicking back and forth in anticipation as he studies Bdubs right back. He’s wearing a fiendish and focused smirk, pupils burning trails into his vision.
He won’t lie. Joel is.. intimidating despite his colours, and might possibly be one thin horse hair away from obliterating him, but Bdubs is at least slightly bigger than his human form, a lot faster, and able to cause a considerable amount of blunt force trauma if his cage kicks have earned him any experience.
He bows his head and scrapes the floor with his hoof, trying to sneer, trying to urge the thought that he’s the one in control here. That whatever Joel is here to do he’ll not have it. It’s the best he can do, trapped behind these walls.
Joel hums lightly, disapprovingly, but continues. “Are you excited?” He reaches the tacking section, flexing his fingers (who’s nails are notably blunted) as he selects the perfect bridle with surprising dexterity. Despite the fact his hands are merged with the tip of his wings, he’s easily able to slip it into position, with well-practised precision. He holds it in his thumbs just like Bdubs would do with his own horses.
“You should be” he coos “today’s going to be so much fun! I’ve spent ages setting it all up.”
Why is he speaking to him like that? Like he’s some sort of.. pet. Like he’s not even here.
Oh god
Joel doesn’t know its him.
The reality of that hits Bdubs fully.
In Joel’s eyes, he’s just a horse. A random horse from a random field that just happened to be near Bdub’s base. One he can capture, keep and kill.
Joel approaches the cage, eyes trained directly on Bdubs as he backs away, tail swishing in panic. The harpy hefts the bridle towards him, a grin splitting his expression.
Crap. Crap, Bdubs, think. What is he supposed to do?
Y’know, maybe they are still friends! Joel wouldn’t kill his own friend, right?
Bdub’s doesn’t dwell on it.
Instead, he goes completely still, lifting his head to look up at Joel deep in his black eyes so hard his luminescent irises sear the back of his retinas. It’s stupid. It’s so stupid, but it’s the only thing he can think of. He concentrates fiercely, practically trying to beam his thoughts out of his eyes and into Joel’s so hard he thinks his head might explode. He quivers with focus, trying to telepathically communicate across empty air. Twisting his weird new facial structure into something he hopes is serious, and knowing, and gets the message across that it’s him.
His breath hitches in his throat when Joel cocks his head to the side, stalling for a moment. He considers Bdubs for a second, looking him up and down. A derogatory laugh escapes him, and he continues to walk, straight through the barrier.
This isn’t working. Joel is close enough to blot out the overhead lights, the bridle dangerously close to his face. His ears lay flat.
NO!
Scuttles backwards with a distressed whinny.
No no no no no!
He bolts out of the way as Joel tries and fails to grab him by the mane, quickly realising the diminishing probability of any kind escape in such a damn small cage.
Pressure builds in the base of his spine, a painful and wrong sensation stretching his nerves as talons grip his tail and mercilessly pull him back. His legs can’t cope with the force, buckling underneath him. The ground meets his side with a thud, sliding past him, dragged like a wet rag towards Joel.
The smell of chlorine overwhelming his senses.
He kicks, blindly, and strikes something hard with a thunk. A squawk pierces the base of his ears and the pressure around his tail evaporates. He scrambles for purchase, scrabbling to get away and desperately throwing his entire weight at the barrier. It mockingly bounces back, unyielding. Goddamnit! If only he can get a good kick in-
The click of talons. The shingle of the bridle. “You’re lucky to be the only horse left, otherwise you’d be dead for that” he growls.
Bdubs freezes in fear, the word dead echoing in his mind
Dead. D-e-a-d. I’d be dead.
Joel’s wings sigh as the harness yanks over his head, the bit driving so hard into his mouth he thinks it might split his skull in half. Leather straps encase him like snakes.
He barely has time to think, let alone try and fight back as he is yanked up and around to face Joel, front hooves lifting off the floor. Lightning strikes up his spine, his head aching like it’s about to disconnect from his spinal cord.
Joel studies him gleefully, proud at his catch.
“Feisty one, aren’t you! Need that if you want to last”
The tension strangling his head rushes away as his front hooves hit the ground with a striking pain, legs struggling to keep up with his head as Joel tugs it ruthlessly through the barrier. It passes over him with a buzz he can barely register from the shock, and before he knows it he’s being led out, leaving behind the comfortable familiarity of the room, and entering the dangerous unknown of the wider complex.
What.. just happened?
Bdubs would rather burn down his forest than obey Joel. He’d cut off a limb at the mere notion of being restrained. If you’d told him that he’d be harnessed, threatened with death and yanked around like his head was trying to disassociate from his body, he would have asked if you were feeling alright, before condemning that reality to a whole different universe.
If it weren’t for the inkling of humiliation he had clinging to his ego, he would be utterly filled with rage.
When he gets out of here, Joel will not hear the end of this. He will not live another day without the embarrassment of knowing he treated Bdubs like this.
Bdubs digs in his heels, discarding the feeling of the floor grating against his nails as he skids across it. He’s going to make this as hard as possible. He will make it impossible.
Joel continues pulling him forward, seemingly unperturbed. His swivels his head like an owl to leer at Bdubs, amused. He winds the rope around both his hands with a chuckle.
“Aw, c’mon, pal” he spits, the word foreign, warped in his mouth “Everyone likes surprises, you should be grateful this one’s just for you!”
Bdubs decides to ignore him. He sits down, determined to weaponise his friction and praying that Joel will just stop walking because this bridle is knifing its way into his arteries.
“It’ll be worth it, promise! I mean, I know being stuck in a lab eternally for the rest of your life just so I can use you for rainbow testing sounds scary, but it’s really fun!”
Bdubs can’t tell if he’s joking. He’s joking, right? Theres no way he would- I mean the idea of- to a horse… eternally…
…
He’s not joking.
“I didn’t carry you all the way here for nothing, idiot! You’re a special one! My favourite!” he giggles “Look, I’ll even give you a name! Howww abouuut-“
A burst of air cuts off his sentence as Bdubs collides, full pelt, into Joel’s back. Shadows falls as his wings expand, too large to stop his descent. His body meets the concrete, heavy, with a sound like a falling stack of paper as it slams against a desk. Joel writhes and curses as he struggles to right himself, disorientated. Bdub’s reigns slip from his hand, pulled away by the force of his wings opening…
Bdubs doesn’t even think, he just runs, ignoring the pain jolting across his hooves and thin limbs like lightning. It doesn’t matter where he’s going, he just wants to put as many blocks as he can between him and that monster. Joel’s laugh echoes behind him over the sound of his hooves clattering down the hallway, over the wind rushing past his ears.
“STUPID HORSE. STUPID-“
A vulture’s screech breaks off his insult, grating the air like a sore wound.
That’s enough to get him moving at speeds he couldn’t even think of reaching. The walls fly past in an indecipherable blaze of colours, the end of the hallway rapidly approaching.
Too fast for the turning.
His side thuds against the wall under skidding hooves, pain lacing his ribs. He carries his bruised momentum forward, bursting into the new hallway with renewed vigour as Joel crashes round the corner in a terrifying flurry of feathers, racing hungrily on all fours after Bdubs. He’s anything but human, a sentient tsunami hurtling after him.
It's petrifying. He's getting closer
Bdubs hastily takes the next corner he sees, legs barely touching the ground they're moving so fast. His flanks sheer the wall, but he clears it, more prepared. Joel, however, crashes by in a hurricane, straight past the corridor entrance and onwards.
He’s lost him. The corner was too sharp, too sudden for Joel to register. He’s used his size against him, letting his momentum carry him straight by - except… Joel’s not one to give up a chase like that. He should have appeared back at the entrance by now, racing down the hallway regardless of one simple defeat.
The approaching turning offers him only one option, which he greedily takes, heart slowly sinking in his chest.
This is wrong. He can hear claws clicking in a different hallway.
He’s proven correct when Joel appears behind him at an intersection he’s just passed, muhc closer than before, ecstatic from the thrill of the chase.
Bdub’s back pricks with the expectation of talons.
He feels blindfolded even though his vision is excruciatingly sensitive. He has no idea where he’s going, panic plain and stark in his mind.
Joel knows where he’s going. Exactly where he’s going. This accursed labyrinth is of his own design, and he’ll know it like the back of his wing. Bdubs will be driven until he can’t run anymore, and at the final dead end Joel will waste no in mercy ripping off his head for what he’s done.
He won’t survive like this.
His pace struggles as he starts to hobble on his back leg, like he’s broken it. Bait that Joel just wouldn’t be able to resist. His body buzzes as the scratching cacophony intensifies.
Bdubs stops, completely, every inch of flesh screaming at him to move. Get away. Run. Hide. Joel’s laugh bubbles up behind him at a frightening speed, crescendoing as he leaps in for the kill.
Just before they touch, Bdubs kicks like lightning.
He channels every ounce of energy into his legs, throwing them back like a gunshot. They connect. A crack; from himself or Joel. He can’t tell. Burning encases his hindquarters as he tumbles over himself in a mess of limbs and sore joints, the explosive energy of the collision catching up to the rest of his body like a shockwave.
It takes him a worrying amount of time to decide which way is up. Time in which his guts aren’t being ripped out, and his head is thankfully still attached to his neck.
Relief and fear flood his system, a wave of muddled emotions. Blood rushing in his ears. Air currents drying the sweat from his flanks, flight feathers batting his face.
He stands up and stumbles back, turning around to observe the wild animal.
Joel is flapping uncontrollably on the floor, convulsing, clearly in a world of pain. He presses his head to the concrete like he’s trying to bury it, clenching and unclenching his talons, crying his pitiful alarm call over and over and over again. Black blood drips from his beak and smears against the concrete.
It worked..
Bdubs watches from a careful distance, expecting Joel slow down, stop moving and pass out. He doesn’t.
The triumph fades into thin pity, and more regret than he’d prefer to admit. He submerges the sorry travelling up his throat with disgust.
He deserves this. He deserves this.
Joel’s face is wrenched in agony. He clutches at his chest, curling in on himself.
He isn’t running. Why isn’t he running.
Guilt mounts in his chest as he tries to tear his eyes away from the thrashing.
He should finish the job.
A harpy dead is safer (and perhaps more humane) than a harpy incapacitated, but he’s desperate to get any kind of headstart while he can. Joel’s moving too erratically to even get a good stamp in anyway, what with the way he’s moving, wings swatting the air. He’ll bleed out. Internal injury. Fatal wound. It’ll be enough. He’ll be ok.
Bdubs casts one last glance before he skitters away. Joel becomes a shrinking white blot on the magenta concrete, disappearing as he turns a corner. His alarm call dwindles into silence as Bdubs ventures deeper into the complex.
He needs to find an exit.
His pace is slower. Still fast enough to prove his worried state, but enough for him to properly pay attention to his surroundings. Although, that doesn’t really matter when all this place seems to be is hallways.
Large hallways, long hallways, short hallways, hallways with doors he can’t open and dead ends under construction. There’s no signs, no decoration, no indication to say he’s not just going in circles.
Bdubs wonders if Joel’s built this place to actually make people go insane.
He’s certainly achieved that with the harness. The bit has buried itself into the back of his gums, grinding on his back teeth and blocking his lungs. The straps have been tightened to the high heavens (deliberately, no doubt), pressing on the angles of his face like they’re trying to morph it back into a human’s. It’s maddening, and the only way he knows how to get it off is by furiously shaking his head.
Of course it happens now that it doesn’t budge. It always happens at the worst time, like when he’s trying to steer his mount away from a ravine, or a lava pool, or Etho’s sword. They always manage to flick their head forward in such a way that the headstrap goes over their ear, and gravity usually does the rest, but try as he might he’s only managed to get it halfway.
He’s bucking and bouncing hard enough to give him brain damage.
Freaking Joel! Freaking harness.
He veers off course, smacking into the wall with a thud.
Bdubs is suddenly incapacitated, unable to move his head. A shot of adrenaline shoots through his heart.
Joel.
He braces for the beak in his neck. The claws in his eyes. He struggles, pulling his head out of his grip as his hooves scrabble on the unforgiving floor.
His grip releases, and Bdubs reels back, the warmth of blood rushing back to its proper place as the halter slips away from his raw skin. Air flows smoothly into his lungs again, clearing his oppressive tension headache as the brain fog fades. Clearer thinking allows him to see the harness, swinging on the door handle it got caught on, so small for something so infuriating.
Bdubs feels like he’s about to fall apart, but he forces himself to calm.
Idiot. Joel isn’t here. He didn’t follow.
He won’t let himself be scared that easily. That whole thing was just the horse-brain talking, so quick to make up things that aren’t real. That kick was surely enough to stop him.
Right?
The image of Joel writhing on the floor flashes in his head, face twisted in agony. Bdubs forces it out of his mind. He brought that on himself.
Joel will be in no state to chase after him. It’s just the paranoia talking.
He listens for the clack of his claws, but all he can feel is the deep, earth-churning hum, and the huff of his own breathing. It’s eerily silent without him.
Suspiciously silent.
He continues onwards, kicking up non-existent dirt onto the limp leathery prison as he passes, triumphant to have beaten the one thing Joel still had over him. The harness took precious time, but he’s free now. Able to breathe. In control.
His neck still tingles with anxiety regardless, every hair on end.
The canter has dropped to a wary walk, allowing him to hear over the sound of his hooves. Though to be honest, he can’t hear much. He tries testing the air for any scents, and receives the same sour chemical smell that’s been suffocating his nostrils for hours. Every miniscule movement around him that he mistakes to be a feather is just a mote of dust, flickering in the spectral light. Claustrophobia plays on his senses like a harp, tickling that little bit of panic in his chest.
He’s thankful when the hallway opens out into a bigger room. Less thankful to witness what it contains.
His front hooves stand on a grated metal walkway, which leads up to and wraps around the largest, most ornate reactor he’s ever seen. Granted, he hasn’t seen many, but the sheer vastness of this is more than enough to rival most, if not all megabases in his time. It towers over him like a cliff, as if he’s an ant on a pavement, one to be stamped underfoot. It’s sides sheer down to the distant floor of the giant room, deep enough to kill any living being that’s unfortunate enough to end up in it’s maw.
This infrastructure is just the means to an end, though. A setup. A mere afterthought that quails in comparison to it’s true purpose.
The real power streams endlessly out the top, a jet of rainbow gushing ceaselessly upwards in a river of blazing light. Strong enough to break the surface. To reach the heavens, make Bdubs squint like he's looking at the sun.
It’s beautiful. It’s terrifying. He simply gazes in slack-jawed in awe at something he can’t fully comprehend yet.
So it can get worse.
This is what Joel’s been planning.
The humming has bloomed into a full-fledged cacophony of noise, forcing its way down his eardrums and into his brain. It hums into his bones and his ears like rods, making his organs feel like they’re on an air hockey table. He’s just about able to continue thinking over the consuming fracas.
He looks around, testily sniffing the air warm against his skin, gathering bunches of sensory information that he still has yet to learn how to decipher.
The room didn’t smell like rotting, per say. Just the strange, weird, sour tang of it. The notion that something more than death was festering here. Otherwise it was just the same. The same chemicals that made his nose feel dry, thinly veiled by the sickeningly synthetic idea of flowers and sunshine and.. whatever. A scent too full of the idea of itself to be real.
The clop of his hooves ring out over the consuming hum, clapping off the sides of the impressively embellished reactor as the walkway rattles below him. He holds his breath, trying to contain the scream induced by the sight of the massive, 1000 block drop whispering darkly at the edges of the creaking (oh void it’s creaking) platform. It shifts hungrily below him through the grating as the humming slowly gets more powerful.
This is wrong this is wrong. This should not be happening- you should be running. You should be safe, at home, not messing with whatever sick, sadistic schtick Joel is concocting in his giant freaking massive tube he’s stuck void knows-
Bdubs inhales slowly.
A breath too long and slow for a human rattles down his face and out his nose.
He’s getting to the bottom of this. Whatever Joel is planning, he will find it, and he will destroy it, because there is nothing here that is good nor worth saving. Just how long has he been lying to him for, lying to his “best friend”? How long will it take him to realise that Bdubs won’t be puppetted to his whim, that he’ll turn against him as soon as he gets the chance?
Oh yes, revenge will be sweet.
The control panel is barely recognisable. It’s long been swamped and buried in notebooks and whiteboards and pens and all sorts of trinkets and ephemera. Glass jars rattle like quivering fairies as he approaches, agitating their bizarre, slickened contents. A layer of pages coat the platform, save for the patches where his feathers have swept arcs of paper away, revealing the rarity of a clean floor. Bdubs almost smiles at the familiarity of his own desk back at home - similarly waterlogged with building plans - but hastily ejects it from his mind, feeling sick.
He will not let himself think he’s in any way similar to him.
The handrails and floor have been ruthlessly scratched into a scribbling mess of chaotic lines by pacing talons. Plumage and down scatter the floor like faint snow, stuck on notebook spirals and rivets.
He enters the radius of Joel’s nest of research, accidentally knocking over a jar with his hoof. He jumps back, still tense, and watches it roll towards the edge. He sniffs it, but senses only a fierce actinic smell. The contents shimmer and waver suspiciously, iridescence dancing over their surface. Nothing good, of course. He can’t tell what it is, but it can’t be anything good.
He nudges it towards the drop, flinching from the cold of the glass on his soft nose. It rolls over the edge, and three seconds later he revels in the satisfying smash that fills the air.
It’s a start, but there’s no time to waste.
He tilts his head to look at the nearest notes scattered on the floor and.. they’re annoyingly indecipherable. Even if he had clearer, human vision he would have trouble reading.. whatever this is. Bdubs can see a range of diagrams and writing, numbers and equations. On some sheets there are just scribbles of anger, others have been ripped to shreds or punctured in the middle. A notable amount have red smeared on them. Bdubs decides not to linger on the reason why.
He chooses one that seems the least destroyed, and tries to untangle Joel’s chaotic handwriting.
Generator continues to be stable. No sign of decrease in power output!! Infinite?
Promising.
Almost ready for stage 3!!!!!
Very excited!!!! (but also tired. Joel why are you
always tiredlike this)Needs further monitoring. PLEASE don’t let this blimming thing explode. Took so long to build please hahahahhaaaa :,)
Bdub’s ears pin back. How long has he been doing this for? Stage 3? Infinite power? This is not good. What is he doing that could possibly need a power source this large? Heck, what kind of project needs a whole freaking nuclear reactor?
The page quickly descends into a layer of lines that, monitoring the generator.
Temperature: 27 °C
Radiation: its fine
Power output (accounting for refraction): 64 HH
Score and scores of notes, each a different texture from the different surfaces he writes on.
Not what he needs.
He swipes the paper aside, heading to the more important ones that have been stashed on the struggling whiteboard.
One in the middle displays the word ‘FUEL’, applied in thick black ink and circled multiple times in a number of colours.
Fuel? What kind of fuel could he possibly need so badly?
Bdubs imagines Joel arranging the horses he just loves to kill into the nuclear reactor, and snorts.
What a stupid idea. As if horse bodies could be actually used as fuel. No, Joel’s smarter than that. He’d be able to smell it, anyway. With or without his fancy new senses.
He looks upwards, at the enormous blueprint pinned to the side of the reactor. Smaller blueprints surround it, with lines drawn from the reactor to each one. Pieces of metal have been welded to the side to act as perches, alongside multiple grips and hooks. A crudely drawn version of the surface - presumably scrawled using the crayons littered below it - spans the top of the collection.
This is the entire facility.
Maybe.. just maybe..
He scans it for information, recognising the sprawling mess of hallways that he had wandered through so aimlessly. His eyes pass over horrifying pastel structures; ‘horse hold’, the ‘laboratory’, the ‘watching-room’. As curious as they sound, he’s looking for something specific in the collage of building plans and sticky notes - a line that hopefully connects the base to the surface when-
An exit!
Finally.
One, small, fractionally narrow exit drawn in red straight to the surface. Perhaps.. not horse friendly, but it’s a world better than nothing. He’ll find a way. He’ll make it work if he darn has to.
It’s only a few hallways from where he is already, too. He just has to turn left out of the nuclear reactor, go straight through the processing plant and..
His eyes halt at a gap in the layer of blueprints. So slim he wouldn’t have noticed were he not studying it intently. It would have been something Bdubs would ignore, if it wasn’t for the gentle beam of light falling between it onto the floor. Light from inside the generator..
He hisses air through his nose dismissively, turning back to the map.
Just ignore it, Bdubs. Focus. Find your way out.
…
His eyes drift back to the light again.
It’s distracting, honestly. There’s no reason he’d actually want to go inside a nuclear reactor, so it must just be the way it’s flickering that’s drawing his gaze. It’s hypnotising, dancing across the skeins of paper in a shimmer of hues, daring him to risk the skin on his teeth for small glance into the yolk of the impenetrable black cylinder. The heart of Joel’s plan.
…
It can’t hurt to just look. Just to see what he’s using to power his rainbows, he tries to convince himself. There’s been no sign of the man since he last saw him in the hallway, either. Not a wing flap or a feather or a trace of his scent. He had channelled his everything into that kick, it had to have been enough to put him out of his misery.
The temptation is simply too strong, curiosity dragging him in like a whirlpool.
Nudging the blueprint aside reveals two blank double doors, one of them cracked open. Supernaturally heavy buzzing creeps out from inside. The light stings his eyes as he leans closer.
Bdubs hesitates, flicking his ears behind him. Nothing.
Its either now or never.
He bursts through all at once, and casts his eyes over something he immediately wants to purge from his mind.
It’s all horse heads. All of it. More than he thought could even exist. Enough to cull his herd again and again and again.
They stare out, eyes blank and jaws slack. Affixed to the wall in an orderly fashion, skin sallow and dim. Evidence of massacre stain their coats in luscious red, dripping down their limp, matted manes like a fungi. Cheekbones and eye sockets carve their skin like scars, shallow enough to reveal the shape of their skull.
And at first Bdubs mistakes it for his own quivering legs (which don’t quite seem to exist anymore), but they’re twitching. Ever so slightly, stiff in rigamortis, shivering neck pulled taught back.
His breath feels shallow and empty. His throat feels ten times smaller. Too many thoughts to decipher whirr through his head. Ire boils through his veins before it’s flooded out by cold fear. Fear for these horses, which died like vermin against the caustic apathy of a vulture. Fear for the hermits. Fear for himself.
He’s lingered too long.
It’s been too quiet.
He has to get out of here
Bdubs breaks eyes contact, turns, and bolts for the door.
He’s almost there. He’s so. Close, when the world decides to tip sideways. Talons cold in his back, hooves slipping from solid earth and into thin air like a dream. He feels gravity sucking him downwards and bottom of the nuclear reactor come up towards him with terrifying speed. Every organ in his body jerks as he’s tossed like a toy in the other direction, upwards and upwards. Feathers flash in and out of his gyrating vision, snapping wingbeats slice through his own panicked screams.
The absent smell of chlorine fills his head.
He struggles and thrashes, until the pain from muscles catching on the talons in his back reaches his brain, and he goes stiff with agony. Each shift in movement feels like a rod thrust deep into his body, igniting each fibre in his delicate flesh.
The floor drops away from him with several sickening lurches, matched by the snap-whupping of large wings overhead, just about able to carry Bdub’s weight. The rocking movement alone is enough to make him feel lightheaded enough to pass out, but fear paralyses him, struck by the thought that at any time he could drop to his miserable, flat demise.
Mercifully, he doesn’t. The vulture’s grip is cold and unflinching, thick scaly skin clamped suffocatingly around his midriff. His screechy victory cry cascades with laughter, like he’s choking on his own joy. It carries him higher, circling on the rising thermals around the nuclear reactor. Wings flapping ceaselessly cast air waves over Bdub’s skin, but he can barely feel it over the pain of the harpy’s clutch.
They circle closer and closer to the reactor. Bdub’s gasps as his grip shifts, talons digging in and out of his skin as they readjust deeper into his body, hefting his weight as if preparing for something.
Bdubs can’t even scream as they bank into the phosphoresence of the thick rainbow stream, submerging him in a weird, tingly heat. He’s immediately jerked upwards, the energy filling Joel’s wings like sails, hoisting him into the sky with a force similar to that of an explosion.
It’s enough to make him feel like his spine is being ripped from his ribcage. The reactor disappears, replaced by the sprawling green surface which rapidly races away from him in a burst of dwindling colour. The ever-present hum is replaced by wind, howling in his ears over the panicked pounding of his heart.
Their ascent slows as they reach a height just under the scattered clouds, the airless day making the sky feel even emptier. Joel catches the faintest flickers of the thermal on his ouspread wings, delicately balancing them on the open air.
Joel's head appears in his vision, bending down to look at Bdubs. One enraged, dark eye focuses in on him, bright, quivering iris piercing through his skin.
“Pest.” He spits, hysteria warping his words, bubbling between his laughter. “You’re a nasty little pest, you know that?”
Joel’s head disappears again as he unhooks one set of talons, teasing, dangling the horse from one foot as he circles lazily.
Bdubs feels the network of muscles rip in his back. Blades sinking deeper. White hot pain as blood runs out of raw wounds and up his spine. Struggling does nothing except make it worse, rocking like a row boat in a maelstrom.
Slow motion. It happens so suddenly, so deliberate, Bdubs feels each talon slide from his skin. The long awaited feeling of his insides evaporating as he drops towards the faraway earth. Glimpsing Joel one last time like a star in the sky before his vision spirals into a dizzying tombola of land and sky.
He can’t stop it. No wings on his back, no ground beneath his feet. The air is cruelly thin and empty, passing cleanly out of the way as he slips through it towards the generator.
Bdubs has only one thought as he tumbles helplessly downwards.
I’m going to die.
Not revenge, or a smart quip, or hatred even anger. Just fear, simple and plain as the back of his hand as he falls to his certain demise. Fear so cold and true that no matter how much he wants to pass out, how desperately he wants to escape this nightmare, he’s kept cruelly awake. He witnesses the world slip from his fingers as stinging tears are whipped from his eyes, trapped in a body he can’t even call his own.
Through the rainbows,
through the colour,
to the ugly bottom,
where he dies with a crack.