Fallout: Equestria: Honest Herds

Fallout: Equestria: Honest Herds

By sargecadet

Chapter 5: In Which Things Get Increasingly Worse

“Ya know, there oughtta be a law about how bad things can get before everypony just drops dead...”

I just realized now while telling this story that I haven’t ever described how I looked back then. The truth is, I don’t remember.

It’s odd, really. I can remember just about everything else, whether I want to or not. I still remember my friends, their faces, even up to the point they died, but when it comes to my face I draw a complete blank.

Sweet Holy Celestia, that was a long time ago...

My Waypoint friends. I’d only known them for a short time, but their deaths weighed me down and filled me with rage.

Two was a puddle of green goo. He’d snapped the neck of an attacker before being shot from behind by a glowing bolt of evil death. At the time I’d wondered, Is that what balefire looks like? before realizing the irrelevance of the question. Three had tried to attack the slavers as they walked away from where Lily and I were bound up. She’d landed at least one good knife strike on their leader before four strong ponies took hold of her and literally tore her apart. I couldn’t believe she was dead. It wasn’t an easy thing to comprehend for me. The heroes weren’t supposed to die, at least not like that. And then they killed Lily. Her murder was the worst. I’d been no more than a meter or two away from her as the three slaver bucks... did what they did. As if they were taunting our helplessness, the one missing part of his jaw shot her. In the face. Half of her head sprayed out sideways, her right eye blasted into jelly. And for all three deaths, I couldn’t help any of them.

I think this was when I started losing my faith.

I’d been dragged for several miles through the sand by the time I arrived at the slaver camp. My barding and my sides had been rubbed raw and bleeding. Being dragged by my legs had torturously extended my broken legs. Most of all I wanted water.

Night had fallen thickly over the desert, like a quilt with too much stuffing. The Goddess Luna's moon hung lonely among the stars that shunned it. Fires set up in trash cans lit the slaver camp. I was dragged the largest canvas and scrap metal tent. On its door, painted crudely by hoof, were the words 'The Boss'. From inside I could hear low moaning and heavy breathing, accompanied by slow and scratchy music, probably from a record player. I itched at my ropes, trying to get them off so I could kill the bastards who brought me here, but they were tied too tightly to remove.

The small pony with the big hooves tapped on the metal door five times. I could hear grunting and sheets rustling inside the tent. The mare who was missing an ear swung open the door so quickly that it smacked the big hoofed buck in the face. The jagged and rusty edge cut his cheek.

"The fuck are you getting me up from a good screw for?" she hissed in an angrily-calm way, then, seeing the three bucks standing there, "You fucking idiots! You're fucking late, you fucking fucked-up fucks!" Dear Luna, the language...

"Um, we got the slave here, chief," said tumor buck. His profane use of the word 'chief' just made me hate him more.

She glanced down at me and then back at the three bucks. "Slave?" she asked, "Slave, singular? Slave, Goddess-damned singular?! Where's the other one?! Where's the fucking mare?!" The jawless one glanced downward. Tumor buck scratched at the dirt with his hooves and stepped backwards. Big hooves looked sideways at jawless and shook his head. "You broke the merchandise?" Jawless nodded. Ear lacking mare seethed with anger as she addressed big hooves. "Take this slave," she gave me a quick kick in the back, "and put him in the pen. You," her eyes bored into jawless, "I will make you bleed in the morning. Now all of you get the fuck out of here," She slammed the door behind her.

My three tormentors tried to act tough as they dragged me to the pen

"You won't last a minute with the other slaves, slave," taunted big hooves. His heart wasn't really in the taunt, though.

Tumor agreed with a small "Yeah," but he wasn't really in the taunting mood either.

Jawless said nothing.

The pen was a large, high-walled rectangle of cinderblocks several layers thick and held together by a crude mortar. The gate was made of iron bars that made me think of a jail (which, come to think of it, is exactly what it was). Tumor pulled off my saddlebags and barding, throwing them into a nearby pile of saddlebags and barding. The unicorn guarding the gate opened it for the bucks. They untied my hooves and tossed me inside, quickly slamming the gate shut again.

I must have woken somepony up because a unicorn lit up an illumination spell. The sudden white light forced my eyes to adjust. I could hear ponies groaning from the sudden brightness, but most stayed asleep. The dim light illuminated the scarred old dark-purple face of a kind looking unicorn mare who wore tattered rags.

"So, they got you too?" she asked in a whisper. I nodded. "Your legs are broken, aren't they?" I nodded again. "Those idiots have been doing that a lot recently. Here." her horn glowed with another layer of magic. I could feel the bones in my legs start to knit themselves together. It was not a pleasant sensation, but it was over quickly.

"Thank you," I whispered. I tried standing up but she stopped me.

"You're welcome, but don't get up yet," she cautioned, "The bones in your legs are still soft and need time to set. Wait until the morning." I obeyed her directions. "Now," she said, "what about that hole in your neck?"

I felt at the wad of gauze stuffed in my bullet wound. "I've had worse," I answered.

"That's no reason not to get healed," she replied. She did have a point. "Here, let me fix it," She pulled out the gauze and stopped the blood with telekinesis. I felt each piece of bullet she pulled out, but said nothing. The mending spell itself only took a few seconds. "Need anything else?"

"Water, if you have it. I'm very thirsty."

She produced a thin waterskin and let me sip a small gulp. Water had never tasted quite so good before.

"Thank you," I said again, "but why are you helping me?"

She shrugged and smiled. "There's never a reason not to be kind. Plus, I like to stay in practice."

"Stay in practice? So you're a medical pony?"

"New Canterlot Army Seventh Engineering Brigade's former chief medical officer," she whispered with pride. "Name’s Cross Heart, formerly Major Cross Heart. And you are...?"

I cleared my dry throat. "White Hooves tribe ambassador to the NCR and Waypoint Trading Company employee Fall Hammer-heart. Nice to meet you, Major,"

"It's a pleasure to meet you also, Fall," she replied. She pointed to one of the ponies who had been woken up who rested against the wall. "That's Grim." she pointed to another, "That's Spindle," she pointed, "and that's..."

She was cut off by the guard kicking at the gate. "Shut up in there," growled the guard, "It's not like any of you are gonna see each other after tomorrow anyways."

"Ignore him, Fall," the mare said, lowering her voice more so that I had to lean in to hear her. "Say, how'd you get that Pip-Buck? Those are pretty rare these days."

"It was a gift," I replied, and then changing the subject, "What did he mean? What's happening tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow’s a market day. Ponies get sold on market days," the pony called Grim whispered.

"Owners come from around the region to bid on slaves," the Major said, "I've been here for twelve market days running and I still haven't been bought." She gave a little smile.

"Why wouldn't they want to buy you? Ponies with medical training can't be that common," I pointed out.

"If you were a slaveholder, would you want a pony who wants nothing more than to escape to operate on you?" She had a good point. "Besides, most slaveholders have companies that do heavy manual labor, like mining," I cringed a little, knowing that was a skill they would be looking for. She continued, "I'm too old for work like that. I barely made it under the age requirement for the army, and I only got my rank because of my medical training."

The guard kicked the gate again. "Shut up, and go the hell to sleep, dammit!"

The Major rolled her eyes. "Good night, Fall. See you in the morning."

"Good night," I replied, and slowly slipped off into an unrestful sleep filled with visions of the deaths of my friends.

“Hey, Fall, wake up.”

I rolled over and groaned. “Just a few more minutes, mom.

“I’m not your mom, Fall,” the voice chuckled softly.

I rubbed at my eyes and looked up. The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon and the Major stood over me with a set of clothes (if you could really call them that) held in her telekinesis.

“Oh,” I said. I realized two things at that moment: one, how much her voice reminded me of my mother, and two, how thin she and the ponies around her were. “I’m sorry, I forgot where I was for a minute...” She cut me off as I pulled myself up on my (now solid) hooves.

“No problem,” she said, “Now put these on.” She pushed the rags towards me.

“Why?”

“Because we’re all wearing them,” she replied, “and being different makes you stand out. Standing out is something that gets you sold. Also, you’re muscular and healthy looking. Wearing these makes everypony look like crap.”

I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I put them on. Baggy and tattered, I was surprised they had something as sophisticated as pockets.

In the daylight I could really examine where I was. At least fifteen ponies, give or take, were in the pen with me. All of them looked under fed. All of them wore the same shoddy rags. None of them were pegasi. That made sense, though, because the big cinderblock pen didn’t have a roof. The stallion called Grim was talking to the filly called Spindle. Spindle was a very light blue with an equally light yellow mane. She was too young to have a cutie-mark and definitely too young to be a slave. Grim, on the other hoof, was probably about the same age as my dad. His coat was gray and his mane was a darker gray. His cutie mark was covered by his rags. Grim spoke softly to little Spindle and wiped away each fresh tear that dripped from her eyes. He must have been her father. I never found out for sure.

A group of slaver guards arrived at the pen and began shackling us together in a line. They had a bit of trouble putting shackles on me because of my Pip-Buck, so I ended up with one manacle high and one low. I was third to last in line, with Grim in front of me and somepony I didn’t know the name of behind me. The Major was somewhere near the front, and Spindle was in the middle.

As we passed by the pile of saddlebags I pretended to trip. I grabbed what I could from my bags as the slavers yelled at me. The “Story of the Goddesses” and the orb I’d found in the house with the dead foals were all I could grab. Neither of them seemed particularly useful, but I took them anyways and jammed them into my pockets. I’d been hoping to snag one of the grenades I’d bought on a recent mission, but oh well.

The slavers led us to a big bowl boiling over a campfire, tended to by a pony with two and a half eyes. I say two and a half because the hugely fat unicorn had an extra pupil and iris in their right eye, which gave them the creepy effect of seeming to stare through you. They served up some sort of thin gruel made of... stuff... that the slavers guarding us forced us to eat quickly. It tasted disgusting.

We were marched up to a large makeshift stage with a microphone standing on it, and told to sit down in front of it. Soon, other chains of shackled ponies were marched into the camp from other directions by groups of slavers who I’d never seen before. I hadn’t seen any of these new slaves in the pen last night so I assumed they were from other slave camps.

Groups of unshackled ponies (and griffons, and several zebras, and exactly one buffalo complete with Fire Hairs markings) began arriving several minutes later. These I took to be the potential buyers. Some buyers spoke with each other in loud voices, like pony would with their old friends. Others stood on their own with their guards and entourages.

The entire crowd hushed when the mare who was missing an ear walked on the stage. She tapped at the microphone to make sure it was on, and began speaking.

“Fillies and gentlecolts (and griffons, and others)! Thank you for coming!” she said cheerfully, “The bidding will begin soon, but first, allow me to treat you to some...” she squinted at the sky as she searched for the correct word, “entertainment.” She licked her lips, as if that word were a tasty dessert served after a big meal.

The jawless buck who’d shot Lily was led up to center stage by four guards. He looked downcast and resigned to whatever his fate was, and I would have felt sorry for him if I hadn’t hated him so much. The mare leaned towards her microphone again.

“This fine buck here, is a fuck-head,” she declared, “In my company, I can’t afford employees who damage my sellable merchandise.” She pulled out a very heavy looking knife. I knew what was coming next. She walked over to him and said in his ear, “Do you have anything to say, Trunk?”

Tears gushed from the murderer’s eyes. “Aif vorry! Aif vorry! Aif fon’t fufven doof iff afen! Honiss!” His missing jaw and his crying made him twice as hard to understand, but I could tell he was begging for her forgiveness.

“I know you won’t, Trunk,” the mare answered, and with one quick slash opened up the inside of his chest to the outside air. He fell to the ground, writhing in pain. “Hold him still.” she ordered her guards. They obeyed with wide eyes. I don’t think they’d been expecting this. Next went his hooves, each of them removed after some loud hacking. His crying rang out through the crowd. Some buyers chuckled, and at least one roared laughing, but most seemed disgusted by what they saw. His eyes were her next target. Then his ears... then his snout... then his balls (one guard ran away screaming and crying at this point)... then his horn... Finally, after a solid five minutes of torture (I was amazed he’d stayed alive that long), she lopped off his head. She kicked his head off the stage, walked forward to face her guests, and took a bow. The other two bucks, the one with the tumor and the one with big hooves, were standing by the base of the stage with looks on their faces revealing that they knew they'd dodged the proverbial bullet. They were called up to clean away the mess.

My fellow prisoners and I were brought onto the stage. I looked at the crowd. There were ponies in outfits and uniforms I'd never seen before. I tried to guess which groups were more likely to treat their slaves better, but I couldn't really say. It was a real mixed bag. Some ponies just looked like raiders. Others were dressed in suits and dresses. Most wore barding and outfits that were somewhere in between.

One stallion in a tattered suit took the stage from the mare who was missing an ear, after giving her a playful peck on her blood splattered cheek. He leaned in toward the microphone.

"Gooood morning, everypony!" he said cheerfully. He pointed his hoof to the first prisoner in line, "The bidding will begin on this pretty mare right here. The starting bid is one-hundred caps, starting in three, two..." he slammed his hoof against the stage.

The crowd began shouting commands and prices. The buck on stage responded to what they were saying with a waterfall of gibberish. Occasionally I could recognize numbers in the loud, garbled noise, but everything else was impossible to understand. Guards responded to commands from the crowd by turning the mare, poking her, prodding her, showing her cutie mark. After about a minute and a half the announcer slammed his hoof down again.

"Sold!" he exclaimed, "Sold to the orange unicorn in the back for two-thousand seven-hundred sixteen caps!" Guards unshackled the mare and escorted her to her new owner.

The process was repetitive. Bucks and mares were bid on and sold in the same rapid-fire way. To the buyers we were just pieces of meat, machines to do their bidding, whatever that might be. Everypony being sold saw it a bit differently than that. Some of the ‘merchandise’ cried, others looked angry. Still others just stared ahead blankly.

When it became the Major’s turn to be sold she stared intently toward the back of the crowd at a group of late arrivals. I recognized their barding. NCR Army troops. What would the NCR be doing at a slave auction?

“A hundred caps,” the shortest of the five troopers offered. They were willing to pay the absolute lowest price for this old mare, a veteran of their wars. Was this really how the new Equestria valued the lives of their elders? Did my tribe really want an alliance with these ponies?

“Sold!” shouted the auctioneer. He seemed anxious to rid himself of a pony that had taken up a spot on the roster for twelve market days in a row.

The Major was unshackled. She looked surprised that she was being sold at all, but soon the shock left her face and was replaced by a calm smirk. Before she was led away she gave me a confident and kind nod, as if she was trying to tell me that everything would be okay.

She walked away with the NCR ponies into the still low sun.

Again, the sales were very repetitive. Some ponies were sold, others weren’t. The crowd roared louder for the strong and attractive ones, the ugly and weak garnered less interest. Some ponies were sold and others weren’t, but the next one that is at all worth mentioning was the auctioning off of the little filly, Spindle.

“The next pony on the market is this little gal, right here!” the auctioneer who I was increasingly growing to hate announced, “Like usual, starting bid is two-hundred for little ones! Bidding begins in three, two...”

Grim jerked at his chains. A flurry of prices rose in the air. Spindle was tossed and turned, flipped and prodded every-which-way you could think of. It was chaotic. Caps were literally thrown on the stage in bags. I couldn’t imagine why there would be such a demand for a filly too young to have even received a cutie mark yet, but the whole thing made me feel sick. Grim ground his teeth.

In the middle of it all, a white unicorn with a very short pink mane who wore a business suit magically magnified his voice, and shouted over the rest of the buyers, “SEVEN-THOUSAND CAPS, TO BE PAID IN FULL IMMEDIATELY.”

No more offers were made. “Sold!” said the auctioneer, “Sold to the stallion in the suit!” The guards had already taken Spindle out of her manacles.

At this point Grim launched himself off the stage, taking the entire chain of us with him. I hadn’t expected him to be so strong.

“How fucking DARE YOU!” Grim shouted at the top of his lungs. He struggled forward uselessly, the rest of us in a heap acting like an anchor. “Every time you’re here you only buy fillies! I fucking want to know why, you son of a bitch!”

I could hear Spindle sobbing quietly over her fate. The pony in the suit said nothing. His entourage put a new, cleaner set of manacles and a beeping metal collar I didn’t know the purpose of on the little filly.

Guards rushed toward Grim to hold him back. “If you hurt her, I swear to Celestia and Luna and the Elements, I will! Fucking! Rip your! Goddess-damned skeleton out of your Goddess-damned dick! Do you fucking hear me you shit?! I will end you! I’m going to find you and...!” His jaw was clamped shut by two powerful looking bucks who held him to the ground.

The unicorn in the suit straightened his tie. “We shall see,” was all he had to say.

At that point even I wanted to rush forward and kill him, but I restrained myself. I hate myself for not doing anything. The suited stallion walked away with his purchase without even a scratch.

A minute of silence later and we were still on the ground in front of the stage. A pegasus encased in a heavy suit of armour fitted with a scorpion-like tail was the first to say anything.

“We will pay five-hundred for the gray one,” the pegasus said.

It took a second for the auctioneer to process what the armoured pony had said. “Um, yeah, sure. Sold for five-hundred...”

After order had been restored and Grim had been taken away by the group of armoured pegasi (who I suddenly realized was the Enclave I’d heard about), the bidding continued in a dull manner. Many buyers preferred buying multiple slaves.

I was sold (just my luck) to a mare who I recognized as the one who’d been laughing the loudest during the pre-auction ‘entertainment’. Now she didn't make a sound and kept her mouth shut tight. She was a bright orange unicorn with a green mane with yellow tips. She was definitely an odd pony. After I'd been brought to her she held my eyes wide open and stared intently at them. It seemed like she was examining me jaundice or something and, finding I didn't have yellowed eyes, she shoved me to the ground and clapped her hooves around my left ear. For no damn reason. She did the same thing to every other pony she bought.

My major selling points had been my Pip-Buck (which the auctioneer said was worth a raising of the starting price) and my cutie mark. Mining. Luna-damned mining. I hated my talent then more than I ever had before.

The slave auction went on for the rest of the day. Every group of slave-sellers got their shot at selling their products to the slave-buyers who stayed. The mare who bought me also bought a pink coated, blue maned earth pony mare, a dark green unicorn colt with no mane, and a very unhappy looking zebra. I'd never met a zebra before.

Crazy mare's guards shackled the four of us slaves together when the last pony had been sold. By then it was sundown. I watched the horizon as my new owners fitted manacles above my Pip-Buck. I watched the sun as it dipped beneath the distant hills. I wasn't sure the sun was Celestia's anymore.

We were marched, hungry and dehydrated from a lack of food and water during the auction, across the desert. The pink pony was in the lead, with the colt behind her. I walked behind the colt and behind me was the zebra. The zebra didn't really walk, though. It was more like he... glided over the sands.

The ground became harder as we neared our distant destination. I could feel pebbles and pieces of cracked shale under my hooves. The air was dry and I craved water. My mouth felt full of lumps of cotton. The colt tripped forward, catching a face full of cracked stone. I barely avoided tripping over him. The zebra and I helped him to his hooves. He cried small tears that dripped into the cuts that marred his young face.

"Do not cry, little one," whispered the zebra. I'd never heard that accent before. "You must be strong. Never let your enemy see weakness in you."

Funny, my father had told me that same thing once.

The camp was an unremarkable and uninspired little settlement. It was called the ‘Equestrian Army Research Base 8-36’ by my Pip-Buck and was apparently at about the mid-point of the huge desert. Slaves lived in shoddy tents of decaying fabric, in an area surrounded by barbed wire and rusting electrified fences. The slavers lived in old trailers and small shacks made of whatever crappy construction materials they could find. The camp was built around a mine. The mine was built into a hill... no, not quite a hill, a big stone cube that looked entirely unnatural and out of place. The cube was scored with tool marks and holes that suggested dynamite placement. Why anypony would make a mountain into a giant cube in the middle of a desert was entirely beyond my understanding.

A single, lonely radio blared music continuously in the center of the slave enclosure.

"In the wasteland, sometimes good ponies have to do bad things," said the Bearer of Laughter. The saint was alive. Not an icon or a description on a page, but a living, breathing pony. I felt I should kneel and pray before her. I wanted to ask her blessing. To ask her to help my slowly failing faith. But I wasn't there, and I couldn't move.

"That doesn't change anything," said the short mare, "and no amount of good intentions can bring any of them back. Dead is dead." I had seen her before, but I just couldn't remember where.

The room (and I use that word in the loosest way) began to glow. Green fire began to... exhale (I know that doesn't make sense, but that's the only way to describe it) from the "walls" that held me. The fire was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. A thing to run from and a mesmerizing, ethereal holy light all the same. I felt pain, burning, but I couldn't look away.

And then I saw HIM. Discord, the arch-demon of chaos, the monster who lived in every seer's mind, stared into wherever my eyes would be if I was there. He turned to where the Bearer and the short mare spoke. He wrapped his arm around where my shoulders weren't.

"Fall, my friend," the deity of disorder whispered to me, "you and I are a lot alike."

I shivered at his words.

"Neither of us know all that much about the new world. Neither of us has friends. Both of us are very, very good at failure," he smiled an uneven, mismatched grin that dripped blood. "But that little filly," he said, pointing to that short mare, "she's an achiever. She accomplished her mission. No. Matter. What. Now she's a goddess."

Before my eyes the small mare grew huge. She was as tall as Celestia now and had a set of wings. Her horn was lengthened. She stood atop an immeasurably high tower. Thunder clouds and bolts of lightning were her tools and even the sun and moon obeyed her whims. The thunder spoke in a language all its own: "Dead isn't always dead."

Discord placed his clawed finger where my forehead should have been, "Have you ever felt balefire?"

And then I burned. The loud horn sounded, surrounding and shrouding my final moments.

Green. The tarp over me was green. When I'd claimed the tent I'd found the maggot infested corpse of a mule clutching a unicorn foal. It had been dirty business pulling the two bodies out. I wished I could have known their names or had something nice to say about them when I buried them. Now they were just two more dead unknowns in the wasteland.

I'd been having the same dream every night. I couldn't figure out its meaning. I just woke up, hating the green tarp and the fresh grave. I thought about the little mare who became a Goddess. She was always the rock of the dream, the only pony that seemed entirely real.

Speaking of rocks, I’d been seeing a lot of them. The giant cube was only the top of the mine. Tunnels stretched into the ground farther than I would ever see. In the top of the cube the more “senior” slaves mined magical gems. The newer slaves, like me, mined for metal ores deep beneath the ground.

This particular morning was the start of my third day as a slave. I left my tent and walked the gate. Everypony (plus zebras, donkeys, and mules) were gathering by the exit to wait for the overseers to turn off the electricity running through the fence.

“My collar itches,” the green colt with no mane told me. He scratched at the metal collar with the unlit red light. The slavers had assembled one that was too small for him.

His name was Martyr. I don’t know what parents in their right mind would name their child that. Since becoming slaves I’d tried my best to keep him safe and away from the periodic wrath of the guards and other slaves. I’m not sure why I choose to dedicate myself to keeping this little colt safe, but something about him- his eyes, I think- reminded me of Threeblue. I guess I didn’t want to stop being a good pony just yet.

“At least you won’t have to wear it forever, right?” I replied with a shrug. I wanted to keep the little buck’s spirits up.

He just shrugged in a resigned way. The camp’s head overseer was a muddy brown mare with a dark crimson mane. She was missing part of her horn and the pain that caused with using magic forced her to use more manual, earth pony methods. She flicked the lever by the gate, turning off the spark battery powered electrification of the fence. An earth pony who stood next to her tapped the biggest of four buttons on the gadget hanging on the lanyard around his neck. The little red lights on our explosive collars lit up.

The brand that had been burned over my right cutie mark (a unicorn's head with pointed teeth) itched. It had itched since I'd been given it. I’d never really liked my cutie mark, but this was just deponyizing. It felt like a violation of my individuality. Another violation on top of all the other evils the desert wasteland had already shown me.

Four guards worked together the gate. For a chain link fence it sure was hard to open.

“Alright, you all know the deal,” the bored unicorn overseer said, “Do your work and don’t run away, and you won’t get your head blown off. Get moving.”

Escorted by guards who looked almost as miserable as we were, we walked to the huge, unnatural cube. Outside the mouth of the cave entrance the mare who’d bought me was stretched across a lawn chair sunning herself while wearing sunglasses and sipping a green drink with ice. There was definitely something off about her. Small lanterns were hung from hooks on our collars as we entered the cavern. I grabbed a pickaxe. The little colt grabbed a small shovel.

Little Martyr and I traveled down the dry, black tunnels. We found a cart and searched for a vein of ore in the walls. I took a strong grip on the handle of the pick, gripping it in my teeth, and swung it at the wall. Martyr clenched his small shovel in his teeth since he was too young to use magic. He scooped up the ore that fell from the wall and dumped it in the cart. Together we developed a pattern, a sort of rhythm. The work went on for hours. The two of us shared a small canteen of water I’d scavenged from the corpse of the dead mule.

Breaks between swinging and shoveling contained a little getting to know each other.

“So, Fall, where’d you say you were from again?” Martyr asked.

“The Ghost Lands,” I replied. I’d told him about my home before, but he asked me about it every day. It was almost as if he pretended to keep forgetting what I said just so I could tell him about it again.

He lifted a mound of ore veined rocks into the cart and then put down the shovel again. "What's it like there?"

I thought back to my home. It felt so far away. "It has rivers, mines like this, some small farms too," I said, "Big canyon walls stretch around most of it. All the ponies and buffalo in my tribe work together to keep the other tribe away."

"What did you do there? I mean, you had a job, right?"

I picked at the wall some more, knocking loose bits of stone from the wall. I dropped my pick and gave a sideways glance to Martyr. "Why are you asking me? Haven't I already told you about what it's like back home? Why don't you tell me about what it's like where you're from instead," I replied to the little colt. Picking up a large wooden beam, I wedged it between the floor and ceiling of the thin tunnel. I started picking again.

"Where I'm from?" Martyr asked, "Why'd you want to know bout a place like that?"

"Beecaughf," I put my pickaxe down and tried speaking again, "Because you already know where I'm from, but I know almost nothing about you."

"Um, okay," the little colt whispered. He cleared his throat. "My momma was from these ponies who call themselves... something like... the Legion with Zebras, or something like that. They lived a lot north of here, by a river, a really big river. They lived in tents and my momma said they were nice ponies and zebras to be around..." his voice trailed off as an overseer walked past our little tunnel. He started again in a quieter voice. "My daddy was from some ponies called the Flowers of Pocked Lips, and they helped everyone they met. I think they were from the NCR side of the river, but I'm not sure. Momma told me that one day the Flowers ponies walked across the big bridge over the river. Some ponies with guns came with them. The Flowers ponies wanted to welcome the Legion ponies and zebras to the other side of the bridge, I think. Well, the pony who was the Legion's boss said the Flowers ponies could stay a while. Momma said that daddy saw her while she was teaching some of the younger ponies how to fight good. Momma said they fell in love and..."

"And that's where you come from?" I said.

"No, that's where my sisters came from. They were twins that didn't look like each other. They both left before was born. Momma told me one of them got set on fire." Well, damn. What a thing to tell a little pony. He continued. "The Legion boss pony got killed bout a year or two after I was born, and the next pony in charge said the Flowers ponies did it," he looked down and started sobbing soft tears.

I'd heard enough to piece together what had happened next. I think the boss pony had ordered the Flowers killed. Next, I bet his mother was accused of being a traitor. With no mother he would just be another mouth to feed, so they sold him. How many times has he been sold? I wondered.

I dropped my pick and put a hoof on Martyr's shoulder. "I understand. I'm sorry I asked."

Shouting erupted from a distant cavern. Soon it grew into a violent roar. Slaves rushed down the halls toward the noise. Hadrine, the zebra who’d been bought the same time we were, trotted into our tunnel. “Fall and Martyr,” he said, unnervingly calmly, in his odd accent, “come quickly. There is a commotion arising in the center of the mine. I believe we may be escaping. Follow me.”

The zebra began running through the tunnels again. I nudged Martyr to break him out of his daze. We followed the zebra down the halls, our lanterns swaying side to side as we ran.

The central cavern was crowded with ponies. Overseers and guards were doing their best to hold the waves of slaves pouring from the tunnels. I stood on the tips of my hooves and craned my neck to try and see what was happening, but couldn’t due to the swarm of ponies in front of me. I picked up an out of breath Martyr and put him on the shoulders like I would with my youngest sister, Cactus Flower.

“Martyr, can you see what’s happening?” I asked him.

He squinted his eyes and peered forward. “Uh, there’s a mare and she’s pink... and she’s got her hoof around the top overseer’s neck. I think she’s got... is it?... yeah, I think she’s got a knife,” he looked down at me, “A bunch of the guards have got guns pointed at her.”

I wondered what could possibly be going on. Why hadn’t the guards activated her explosive collar yet?

I heard a guard yelling. “Let her go! I swear on my mother’s horn, if you let her go, we won’t shoot!”

“Bullshit!” the pink pony shouted in return, “Let me walk away from here first, and then once I’m far enough she’s all yours. I’m not going to be a fucking slave!”

I pressed forward through the crowd until I could see for myself what was happening. The mare was backed against the wall, a broken collar lying on the cave floor in front of her. Some of the guards with their guns trained on the pink mare were mumbling. The one who’d spoken before turned to face her again. “Um, well..” she said, unsure of herself, “well, shit. I don’t know, um, maybe you can do that...”

The hostage overseer shouted at her subordinates. “Don’t you dare let this pony get away! We payed a lot of caps for this bitch! If you let her get away I’ll..!” her voice was choked off by the pink mare’s tightened grip.

The tip of the knife was pressed harder against the overseer’s throat, drawing blood. “Shut up! I will kill you! Don’t fucking test me!”

The whole room was suddenly lit by an orange glow. I felt paralysed. Everypony stopped moving. Magical orange tendrils sprouted from the ground and wrapping themselves around the necks of each pony in the room. My eyes continued to roam as my body was held still by this new spell. The mare who’d bought me meandered into the cavern. Her horn glowed.

She sipped at a new drink through a straw. She tilted down her sunglasses to examine the hostage taker. Carefully, she lifted the knife away from her employee’s neck and levitated the pink pony away, laying her on the ground in front of her.

She twisted the knife around in her telekinesis, admiring the way it was built and its balance. The orange mare knelt down to stare into the eyes of her slave.

“Do you know what I hate? I mean really, really hate?” she asked the paralyzed pink mare with an almost unnoticeable lisp, “I hate disobedience. Oh, and ungratefulness, of course. It isn’t so bad here, you know? Three square meals, nice tents, good working hours, kind guards... It’s pretty much paradise compared to a lot of slave companies. Have you ever heard of a slaver king by the name of Red Eye?” she pretended to wait for an answer, “No, I suppose not. Red Eye was like a god-pony. I’ve read a biography about him. Maybe I should run my business like he ran his. Come to think of it, Red Eye is the pony who inspired me to get in the slaving business. Just thinking about him makes me want to," she hissed as she pressed the tip of the blade against the pink mare’s right eye, “change the rules..."

Blood gushed and splattered as the knife slid into the pink mare’s eye. She twisted her blade around, carving out the slave's eye. The crazy mare pressed a hoof down on the pink pony's chest, holding her in place as she released her paralysis spell on everypony. The pink mare with the blue mane screamed at the top of her lungs. The orange mare moved on to the other eye, carving it out in an agonizingly slow way.

"Well, at least this way you won't have to see the changes I'm making!" the orange mare quipped, laughing at her own pun.

"Why would she do that?" I asked Hadrine. He, Martyr, and I were sitting by my tent. Night was falling. The sun was slinking back below the mountainous horizon in a blaze of reds and purples. "I mean, why would she blind a slave she'd bought? I understand hurting somepony if they attack you, but blinding a slave?!"

Hadrine shrugged. "Why do ponies do anything at all?"

Martyr sat chewing on his forehooves, rocking back and forth, eyes wide. He shouldn't have seen that. Nopony should see another pony's eyes carved out, but especially not one so young. I patted the top of his maneless head softly.

After the orange mare had finished her torture of the pink pony she had her tied to a wooden pole in the center of the camp. When we'd finished work Hadrine had asked me if I knew anything about poultices. Before letting me answer he told me the names of several plants that grew in the desert. To my surprise I was able to find them all within the fence. I seemed to have a sense of where to look.

I'd brought the herbs and roots back to Hadrine who concocted them into an odd mixture he claimed healed wounds. We came to the mare at the pole and applied the stuff to her eye sockets. I tore off a strip of fabric from the rags I wore and tied it around face to keep it in place. "Thank you," she'd whispered.

“But why would she carve her eyes out? If she wanted to prove a point, why not just kill her?” I persisted in asking Hadrine. I wasn’t brand new to the wasteland anymore, but there were still some things the ponies here did that I couldn’t understand. As far as I knew, even the Fire Hairs didn’t torture captured warriors from my tribe. Torture was to me the second worst crime. Rape was the first.

“Perhaps the mare in charge receives pleasure from causing the pain of others.” was his answer.

We weren’t served dinner that evening.

I awoke the next morning, dry mouthed and feeling less than rested. Sand had found its way under my Pip-Buck and was chafing at my skin. I hated the green tarp.

Turning my head to the right I saw Martyr. He hadn’t gone back to the tent shared by the other fillies and colts where he normally stayed. Seeing the mare’s eyes carved out had terrified him. Honestly, it had terrified me too.

When I was living with my family I always woke up late because of the hours of my shift at the mine. Now, for some odd reason, I had no trouble I’d been waking in the early morning consistently. I don’t know what had prompted the change, but then again I didn’t really care. The sun rose slowly in the east, climbing its way out from the mountains that imprisoned it. The horn that signaled the start of the work day should have sounded by now.

I pulled on my rags and checked the slowly disintegrating pockets to ensure my two remaining possessions were still there. Trotting away quietly to keep from waking the sleeping colt, I made my way to the fence. A lone mare guarded the fence, leaning on a well used and duct tape covered hunting rifle.

“Hey,” I asked to get her attention, “what happened to the horn?”

She gave me a sidelong glance and let out a breath of exasperation. “Look, slave, I’m not supposed to be talking to you. Please, just go.”

“Shouldn’t we be working by now?” I prodded. I was too bored to leave. Oddly enough, these slaver guards weren’t as bad as I’d expected. I hadn’t been beaten or purposely injured, and they did feed us. During my travels working for Waypoint I’d heard about some terrible slave operations: beatings at the drop of a hat, rapes, working around mutated insects, fights to the death...

“Godess dammit! Go away! You must be the only slave ever who actually wants to work.” she shouted in exasperation.

Getting nowhere, I turned around, only for my dry throat to prompt me to turn back a second later. “Food? Water?”

She sighed. “I have no idea. Just go away!”

I began the trot back to my tent when I noticed something odd. My vision looked less... blue. Then it hit me. My E.F.S. was gone! Granted, I hadn’t fought anything in several days so I hadn’t had much use for it but now that it was gone my eyes felt almost naked. I stared down at my Pip-Buck. It was still working, on, but I didn’t know enough about my Pip-Buck to turn my E.F.S. back on. I walked back to my tent, feeling uncomfortable the entire time.

Martyr was awake, curled in a ball, staring with wide eyes at the faded and hole-riddled tarp. My hoof crunched on a patch of gravel, breaking the little colt out of his trance. He sprang up and ran towards me.

“Where were you?” he asked pleadingly. He wrapped his small hooves around my non-Pip-Bucked leg. “I woke up and you were gone! I thought... I thought...” he stammered, breaking down in tears.

I patted the top of his head. “I’m fine,” I assured him in my most calming voice, “I just went to go see if we’ll be getting breakfast soon. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.” I wasn’t going anywhere.

“I had a really, really, really bad dream, Fall,” he wept, “I thought there were monsters chasing me, and they tore out ponies’ eyes and ate them, and then I saw them kill momma, and then I found you, and then I thought I was gonna be safe, but then you became the mare who cut out that pony’s eyes, and then she tried to tear me apart, but she couldn’t, and then...” He broke down in heavy sobbing again as I wrapped my hooves around him in a tight hug. For a second I was taken back home. For a brief moment I was hugging my youngest sister, imagining she’d had a nightmare.

The food and water didn’t arrive until mid-day. A cauldron of watery soup containing flecks of mystery meat was lunch. The water was a stagnant, muddy filth in a grime covered plastic barrel. I would try to boil out the impurities later, I decided. All in all, it was worse than what we’d been served before.

The soup disgusted me. I couldn’t get meat past my teeth, knowing it had once been a living creature. Martyr didn’t have the same problem with meat, however. I carefully picked out the bits in my soup and dropped them in his. Even the broth was hard to stomach. It tasted putrid. I guessed that the chef had used the same water source as what the barrel was filled with. Hadrine was nowhere to be found during lunch (or “chow” as some slaves called it) leaving me wondering what had become of him.

I experimented with buttons on my Pip-Buck until early evening. Nothing I did turned my E.F.S. back on. All I got was a message in the ‘notes’ section that read:

NOTICE: Eyes Forward Sparkle and Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell systems currently offline.

Please contact a Stable-Tec engineer to reactivate.

The message did absolutely nothing to help me. Fed up, I walked to the center of the camp to talk to the pink mare. She slouched low against her wooden pole. The part of the rag covering her empty sockets was drenched with blood.

“Hello,” I said weakly. What else could I have said? How do you make small talk with a pony whose life has been reduced to the darkness around her and the wooden pole that supported her.

She licked at her lips and turned her head, trying to find where my greeting came from.

“I’m right in front of you,” I told her. Her head turned forward, staring directly at me. “Do you need anything?” I asked.

She licked her cracking lips again. “Water,” she breathed in a hoarse whisper, “I need water.”

I pulled out the cork of my small canteen, realizing then that I’d never boiled it. That had been a stupid idea to begin with, seeing as there wasn’t any wood to use. Still, I decided, any water was better than no water. “Sure, here you go,” I said as I pressed the canteen held between my hooves to her lips, praying the water I was giving her didn’t carry any terrible diseases. She didn’t need any more pain.

She sipped down half of what I had before tilting her head back to signal being done. I pulled the canteen away. “Thank you,” she said.

“Hey, slaves like us got to stick together, right?” I replied. I felt an uncomfortable chuckle rising in my throat, but I forced myself to swallow it back down. I was about to laugh around a mare who’d lost her eyes just a day ago. Goddesses, what was wrong with me?

As if reading my mind, she started laughing. Quiet, soft breathy laughter at first, then getting louder and louder like a madmare. I worried for her sanity. Hell, I started worrying for my sanity! I started wondering if I was just hallucinating the whole scene. Her laughter soon degenerated into a fit of dry coughing.

“So, um,” I said nervously, “want anything else?”

“Ye-yeah,” she said through a cough, “Three things. One, I want my FUCKIN’ EYES BACK.”

“I’m,... well I can’t...” I stammered before she cut me off.

“Two, I haven’t had any, ugh, physical affection in months.” I reached out and hugged her, feeling that I could at least provide that. Physical affection, right? “Well, not quite what I meant, but whatever...” Oh. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

“Number three,” she continued, I want to get out of here. I am hoof-sucking sick of being stuck here. I need to get back to my bunch of prospectors. I want to escape.” She leaned forward, staring with sightless eyes directly at me.

I was about to open my mouth, to give yet another apology for an inability to help, but something stopped me. I’m not sure what came over me. Instead of saying I couldn’t, I leaned forward and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

I was the only occupant of my tent that night. Martyr had rejoined the other young ponies. The events of the day tossed and turned themselves over and over in my head. I couldn’t sleep. Why was there no work that day? Why was the food and water worse? Why had I decided to give that mare hope when escaping seemed hopeless?

My hoof felt around for “Story of the Goddesses”. I hadn’t looked for answers in my beliefs in too long a time. I grabbed the book and hit the lamp feature on my Pip-Buck. As I prepared to open it, a wave of anger swept over me, forcing me to shove it back roughly in my tattered rags.

No, I thought, Celestia and Luna are kind, loving Goddesses. I’ve seen things that loving Goddesses would never allow. They would never let a mare have her eyes carved out, or let a foal see his mother executed, or let ponies butcher and torture each other to death, or let my friends... or let my friends die, or let Lily be...

I decided to stop thinking, and I just grabbed the next closest object. The little orb. A whole new wave of anger consumed me as I remembered the foals in the house, two-hundred years long dead. I channeled all my hate at that little orb, finally falling asleep with a heart full of rage.

The next five days were filled with beatings and pain. Stepped in the wrong direction, you got hit. Spoke without being spoken too, you got hit. Moved too slowly to your tunnel in the mines, rifle butt to the face. Can you see a pattern emerging?

The head overseer had been replaced by a griffon that the crazy mare hired. The griffon encouraged the ponies under her to always treat slaves with as much cruelty as possible without crippling them. I worked in silence and bruised anguish during the ever-lengthening work hours. Martyr, thank Luna, had been able to avoid the constant beatings suffered by the rest of us.

Each night I’d snuck away from my tent, sneaking bits of food and water to the eyeless mare in the center of the camp. It seemed I was the only pony who cared. Her name was Scrapper Line, I’d learned as we talked. She came from a big extended family of ‘prospectors’ (a fancy name for pre-war trash scavengers) and had lived her entire life in the desert. Her family had wandered around, finding facilities that the old Equestria had built in the no-pony’s-land of the desert, collecting here and there bits and pieces of old technology. She’d visited a Desert Outpost on her own one day to find a specific type of old armor that made its wearer stronger. Needless to say, she was captured.

Our conversation on the fourth night went something like this:

I walked slowly, as sneakily as I could manage, towards the pole in the ground. Most slaves were either asleep or tending their new bruises in their tents. The guards had already retreated to their own trailers and shacks.

“Fall?” she whispered into the descending night when she heard the low crunch oh my hooves on a patch of pebbles, “Is that you?”

“I’m here,” I replied, “Thirsty?”

“Fuckin bone dry, Fall,”

I pressed the edge of my canteen to her lips. She sipped in short, stuttering gulps. She tilted her head back and sighed after she emptied what was left of my water. I held a little pouch of swollen oats under her nose, allowing her to sniff the food I’d brought her. She shook her head in disgust. I stuffed the small pouch back in my pocket.

“So,” I asked, “how was your day?”

Her chuckle was dry and cough-like. “Oh, Fall, you joker,” she spat back with a snide smile, “You’re so funny that you should go fuck yourself.”

“So, about as good as every other day,” I smiled back. There was something comforting about talking to this mare. The way she said my name reminded me of Three. The way she swore reminded me of Lily.

“Same old same old. Tied to a pole, can’t see, legs twisted how they shouldn’t be, public example... oh yeah, life’s just fine.”

“Do you think the boss mare is going to cut you down from there soon?”

If she had eyes she would have been rolling them. “Nope.”

“Damn. Well, can’t say I’m too surprised.”

“Neither am I,” she replied. A pause filled the space between us, consuming any words I could think of to fill it. Finally, she broke the silence. “You know,” she said, “I’m still waiting on some of that physical affection I mentioned a few days ago.”

“Sorry,” I replied, “I’m still in the process of grieving for somepony right now. Not that you aren’t a nice mare and all, but...” I really was still grieving for Three, feeling an acute loss when I thought of the close companionship and kindness she’d shown me (and, in a different way, missing Lily also). Plus, the idea of doing that in the center of this slave camp with a mare tied to a pole was an idea that absolutely disgusted me.

“Yeah, sure, I get it. Anyways...” she continued, rapidly shifting the conversation, “got any ideas how to escape?”

Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it. I wasn’t ever the best at coming up with plans, but I doubted that any under-fed, beaten, unarmed slave, no matter how skilled could find a way out of this camp past the electrified fence, guards, and, most of all, explosive collars.

Explosive collars. Something, a question, suddenly gnawed at my brain. “Um, no plan yet,” I admitted, “By the way, how’d you get your collar off that day?”

She leaned forward, as if making sure I could hear. “Some mare -one of the guards, I think- just came up behind me while I was mining. She did... um, something, and the light turned off. The mare gave me a knife, told me to get to someplace called ‘Camp Steelhooves’, and then she was gone. I used the knife to pry the collar off at the hinge,” then, as if she thought I didn’t believe her, “No shit, that’ the honest truth. Really happened.”

This was news to me. News, that is, that I was glad to know. It meant that somewhere around here, maybe we had an ally...

“You know,” she continued, her voice lowered, “I hear things sometimes. There’s a group of ponies who meet by here everyday, right after the mining ends. I think they might have a plan to get out of here. You should talk to them.”

I woke up on the fifth morning to the sound of a loud horn and beatings. The green tarp hadn’t left me in the night. Sad pink light peaked through the holes in my ceiling at an angle determined by the low sun. I hated that tarp.

I stood, groggily, and ended up nose to nose with Hadrine. I took a step backwards to regain my personal space. Martyr stood next to him, gripping his leg. A loud, terrified scream rose up from the distance with a distinctly donkey voice.

“Good morning, Fall,” Hadrine said without emotion.

“What’s happening?” I asked, ignoring his greeting, “Who’s screaming?” Martyr looked terrified. He pressed one ear against the zebra’s leg, and the other he held shut with a free hoof.

“The griffon is beating a slave. As for who, an upper level slave called Gwendolyn. The charge is scheming to escape,” The calm in his voice unnerved me.

I rifle shot sounded in the air. Martyr began whimpering louder. Hadrine tilted his head down slightly and whispered something, a prayer I think, in a language I couldn’t understand. I pulled on my rags, slung my canteen around my neck, and picked up Martyr.

“Stay in the tent,” I commanded. I sat him down, giving him the little murder orb to play with. With yet another pile of anger dumping itself on my already heavy heart, I made my way to the center of the camp.

At the hooves of my bound and blind earth pony friend was the headless corpse of a donkey mare. No, that isn’t quite right. A body-less head, not a headless body. Bits and pieces of what used to be a living, breathing, thinking being had painted the ground a dark red in a grisly circle. Half a stomach, leaking its last few drops of acid into the sand, and a mutilated section of a spine lay at the feet of the griffon.

The griffon smiled on one side of her crisscrossing-scar marred face, apparently pleased with her work. A large scoped rifle was strapped to her back light golden brown feathered back. The pony guards around her wore expressions that more closely matched those of the onlooking slaves.

“No work in the mines today,” the griffon announced, her voice high, tinny, and annoying, “Tomorrow will be filled with fun and games, courtesy of your owner.”

Fun and games? With what this griffon seemed to enjoy, this couldn’t be good.

“Your owner said she wanted to be more like Red-Eye,” the widely grinning griffon cooed, “Today’s the day you dig The Pit!”

Footnote: 50% to next Level

Quest Perk: Sharing Kindness: When you see ponies in need you feel compelled to help them. You gain +2 to both Charisma and Luck for five hours after performing selfless acts (at no benefit to yourself) towards either friends or enemy.

(Thanks go to Kkat for writing the original Fallout: Equestria. Thanks also to OkiiNovice who has been proofreading and discussing the chapters with me)