Fallout: Equestria: Honest Herds

Fallout: Equestria: Honest Herds

By sargecadet

Chapter 6: Brutality

“Here, in the midst of darkness, you see what a pony is really made of.”

Picks and shovels. The entire day consisted of the clanging of picks and shovels making repetitive music as they snailed their way through the earth. The light sand had been dragged away and used to fill bags near the start of our job. After that the ground was a heavy, compact, sunbaked mess.

The hole we were digging was big and circular, the boundaries marked off by a ring of paint laid down by a particularly stupid looking pony. Several guards stood around the ring, making sure we didn’t try anything sneaky. About twenty of us were told to dig. The rest were taken away by the griffon and a group of guards to... to do something. I didn’t know, and I didn’t really feel the need to find out.

Sweat dripped down my brow and into my eyes. I continued swinging my pick at the hard earth. Clumps of stone and dirt flew up with each downstroke. Bits of earth planted themselves in my mane and tail. The elderly gray unicorn stallion with a fading yellow mane next to me dropped his shovel. I glanced over at him. His eyes looked glazed as he stared intently at the ground. His hooves slipped away from him, allowing him to crash to the ground. I dropped my pick and lifted his head and, after unslinging my canteen from my neck and checking to make sure he was breathing, gave him a few sips of water.

I patted the side of his face. “Hey,” I whispered, “are you okay?”

His eyelids fluttered briefly, momentarily focusing forward, before closing again. I began dragging him up the sloped edge of the circle, out of the pit, laying him in the small shade of the pole Scrapper was tied to. A rifle barrel was pressed against my wet forehead. I looked up. The griffon was back. Behind her a mass gaggle of bruised and bleeding slaves (which, I noticed to my extreme distaste, included Hadrine and Martyr) looked around, scratching at the ground and avoiding eye contact with the guards surrounding them.

“What do you think you’re doin’? Hmm?” the griffon overseer asked, a smirk stretching itself across her face. How could she smirk with a beak?

“That stallion fainted,” I informed her, gesturing with my hoof, “I moved him out of the way so he wouldn’t get hurt.”

She presses the end of her rifle harder against my head. “That so?”

“Yes.”

She squinted at me. Suddenly, with speed that I’d thought impossible with so big of a weapon (because it was a really, really, really big gun), she spun the gun around in her claws and slammed the butt into my face like a big metal club. It connected with my lower jaw first, then my cheekbone. I felt my face mushing around the gun as it impacted. The ground reached me quickly.

Writhing on the ground, I spat out two teeth. Blood trickled out out of my mouth. My jaw felt broken, searingly painful. The griffon placed the butt of her rifle on my chest and knelt down next to me, leaning on her gun.

“You left your work, little pony. Leavin’ your work is a real no-no around here.”

One of the guards who’d been left in charge of watching our ditch digging detail piped up. “He was just trying to help, ma’am. The slave was just saving us the trouble of carrying that buck outta the pit,” he said, his face betraying that he regretted saying that the instant he opened his mouth.

Leaning on me harder, the griffon overseer shot the unlucky guard a murderous look. “Oh, is that it, then?” she breathed sarcastically, “He did you all a favor? Well how. Fucking. Generous. Of him!” With each pause she shoved the rifle into my increasingly bruised side. She sprang up and glided over the pit. She grabbed the buck by the neck with her clawed hand and threw him into the wide hole, knocking over several slaves as he skidded to a halt. “You can get out once you’ve learned how to guard slaves properly!”

She motioned to the slaves who’d been followed her. “You. In,” she commanded, then turning to the slaves in the pit, “Out.”

They promptly obeyed. In a few seconds a group of sweat covered, tired, pained ponies had switched places with a group of sweat covered, tired, pained ponies. The old, knocked out stallion was tossed forcibly back in the pit. I attempted to get back on my hooves, each movement another blaze of pain. A guard mare, darkly purple with a sand colored mane, telekinetically wrapped my jaw with a roll of healing bandages, tying it in a knot I couldn’t untie without magic (which I obviously didn’t have), and as payment to herself she took my canteen. Great, now instead of spitting out my blood, I just had to swallow it. Fan-fucking-tastic.

The griffon took us to a small, flat, crudely fenced off section of the camp. By crudely fenced off I mean a ring of barbed wire around the edge with a pony width gap as an entrance. A decrepit and disintegrating armchair was set in front of the the closest corner.

She turned to face us standing on her hind legs in an attempt to appear menacing. “This is your practice pit. Who wants to go first?” she announced. I didn’t understand what she was talking about, and by the looks on the other slaves faces I wasn’t the only one.

“Oh dear Gawd,” the griffon moaned, apparently invoking some deity I wasn’t familiar with, slamming her claw against her face, “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

We didn’t.

She picked up two slaves, a unicorn mare and an earth pony buck, and tossed them into the ring. “Fight,” she commanded.

“w-Why?” the mare stammered.

“Because tomorrow, in that pit you were digging,” the griffon explained, “we’re going to have some entertainment. I want to see which of you’re gonna cut it.” A smile crept across her face. I felt disgusted now that I knew what this was for. If I ever got a chance to kill this griffon I would do it without hesitation. Wanting to watch ponies beat the shit out of each other just got added to the list of reasons why.

Neither the mare or the stallion made a move, instead staring at the ground. These two had no hatred toward each other. Once the stalling had gone on long enough the griffon began searching for something to motivate the fighters with. A little unicorn filly, probably no older than Martyr, was hiding behind the legs of a massive stallion.Her eyes were tearing up as she stared intently at the buck in the ring. Was he her brother? Her father perhaps? The griffon noticed the young filly's gaze. She grabbed the young filly by her neck with her sharp talons and flew upwards, high above the rest of us. A tiny drop of the filly’s blood fell on my bandaged muzzle. The filly’s tears became a waterfall.

The griffon turned her eyes towards the stallion who, like everypony else, looked in terror at what was happening. “Have you ever seen what happens to someone when they’re dropped from this high?” she asked him, “Neither have I, but I have this feeling that if we don’t see some fighting soon we might find out!” Her happy tone was a desperately bad fit for the situation. My stomach was doing disgusted flips as I positioned myself carefully beneath the filly, just in case she slipped.

Something snapped in the stallion. He lowered his head, gave a blood curdling yell, charged. His shoulder caught the mare under the jaw, knocking the wind out of her and throwing her backwards. Soon he was on top of her, slamming his hooves mercilessly down anywhere he could make contact.

The mare kicked hard with her hind legs in retaliation, taking out the buck’s stance from under him. A second kick met his ribs. A sickening cracking sound. She slammed her head forward. Her horn stabbed at his windpipe. A third kick knocked him off of her. She stood.

The stallion tried to get to his feet again. The mare was too fast for him. She gave a hard, double-hoofed buck to the face, smashing his jaw and tripping him into the ring of barbed wire. Her horn glowed. The wire began to wrap around his neck.

“That’s enough,” the griffon said. She slammed down on the ground, casually tossing the filly into the crowd, a unicorn just barely catching her in a magical cloud before she hit the ground.

The mare stared in horror at the murder she’d almost committed, quickly doing her best to untangle the wire from around the choking and bleeding stallion’s neck. He gasped for air, sucking in deep gulps of the hot, dry, sandy air. I put my hoof to the scar on my neck in empathy. I knew what it’s like to not be able to breath. The mare gently lifted him out of the wire, placing him on the ground. Her horn glowed dimly as she began performing a very basic healing spell.

The griffon walked into the ring and, much less gently, swung the wounded buck over her left shoulder. With her free claw the griffon grabbed the mare’s right hoof and raised it in the air, pronouncing her victory.

“Little filly, you’ve got potential!” the griffon overseer sneered. The mare hung her head in shame.

I was up last. The sun was steadily creeping its way towards retreat. The unicorn buck I was paired to fight was big. Really big. He stood at least a head taller than me. My heart sank. I was going to get very, very hurt, and it was going to suck.

The griffon tore the bandages off my face with her claws (“Slaves don’t get bandages, you little fuck!”) allowing me to finally breathe through my mouth again. The magic in the bandages had done its work; I was no longer bleeding and the smaller fractures in my jaw had mended themselves. My missing teeth, on the other hoof...

She’d considered my Pip-Buck for a moment, trying to decide if it was an unfair advantage. Apparently she was familiar with them. After several minutes of attempting to remove it from my leg she gave up, mumbling something about cutting off legs being too big of a disadvantage.

She forced us both into the center of the ring. The battered onlookers groaned. “Start!”

Unlike the stallion from the first fight, this buck needed no motivation to let out his violence on me. Before I could blink he’d rammed me with his horn, slamming the magical piece of bone into my chest below the base of my neck. It pierced skin and muscle, thankfully stopping before it hit bone.

He brought his head back, drawing his horn from my gaping wound. He brought his heavy front hooves down across my face. I fell to the ground. Blood gushed from the hole in me. I began feeling faint, screaming out as pain consumed me. I was going to die. I’d come so far, seeing ponies around me die. Ponies I’d cared about. Would I get to see them again when I was gone? Why hadn’t the griffon stopped the fight yet?

Then something miraculous happened. I’m not sure whether it was my dead friends helping from the other side, or a bizarre side effect of the massive blood loss (probably the blood loss), but I suddenly felt very strong and very angry. I jammed my un-Pip-Bucked hoof into my wound to slow the bleeding, tears of pain flowing freely. I rolled away just in time to avoid the buck’s next strike. Striking out with the weight of my Pip-Buck carrying my hoof forward by sheer momentum, I struck both of his front legs out from underneath him in the split second before he lifted them again for his next strike.

With speed I didn’t know I had, I leapt up and brought my Pip-Buck down on his spine. It did nothing. The buck swung himself off the fucking ground and gave a powerful kick to the leg I was using to slow my blood-flow. I heard and felt the bones shatter. I flew into the barbed wire, but luckily wasn’t caught in it, and landed face up.

He rushed towards me, horn down, hoping to finish me off once and for all. I raised my Pip-Buck. I closed my eyes and swung my hoof down.

It connected. My Pip-Buck and his speed combined, making enough force to chip off the tip of his horn! He reared his head back in pain. Noticing the opening, I kicked at his chest with my back hooves, cracking one or two ribs.

He retaliated against my attack by slamming his forehooves down on my chest. I could hear shattering bone.

I couldn’t take much more. I was preparing for my fate, my mind playing through the prayers before death. One last strike and he would end me. Desperation controlled my final actions. I kicked upwards with my right hind leg, catching him directly beneath his rib cage. His body seemed to seize up as he fell on me. My vision went dark.

I woke up, long after the sun had set, chest down beneath my green tarp tent. I hated that tarp. Pain covered me like a blanket. I felt at the wound on my chest, surprised to find it had been stitched up. My ribs and my leg were unbroken. My teeth were still missing. How am I alive? I wondered.

I turned my head to the right. Martyr slept curled up by my side, covered in bruises and scabbed blood. Hadrine sat keeping watch. His wounds had begun healing faster than Martyr’s for some reason.

“You are awake,” the zebra observed.

I cleared my throat. “What happened?”

“Your opponent is dead,” he replied without emotion, “You hit a pressure point that caused his lungs to collapse.”

How did I do that?!

“The slaver surgeons repaired you,” Hadrine concluded. The camp had surgeons? Since when?

I suddenly by a realization. “Scrapper!” I exclaimed, pain shooting through me as I spoke, “She needs food and water! I haven’t been able to...” Hadrine cut me off and pushed me back down to the ground.

“One of the slavers provided the blinded mare with sustenance,” he informed me calmly, “They spoke of escape.”

The mare on top of the tower. Was it in her hooves that Equestria was held? Thunder clouds and bolts of lightning, rending the sky apart, moved at her command. The sun and moon were hers. Who needs the Goddesses when a lone mare could bear the burdens of the world? I loved her. Not romantic love, but the type of love one feels for a pony who deserves the intense reverence of all. I felt I owed her a great, unknown debt. Perhaps she was the Goddesses...

A stab by my spine woke me from my blasphemous dream. A needle. The sky was still dark. I looked to my right. Nothing. To my right. The dark purple unicorn mare with a sand colored mane held a lantern in her teeth as she magically pressed the plunger of the small Med-X syringe. A crashing wave of relief from the pain that was covering my bruised and battered body washed over me, leaving me (artificially) happy and seeing clearly.

“Who are you?” I asked, immediately realizing how ungrateful I sounded for not thanking her for the dose of Med-X first.

She ignored my question and my rudeness. Setting down the lantern she replied, “You can help the ponies in this desert, Fall. I’m keeping you alive for that. I can see it in your eyes. You’re going to do great things. I’m helping a friend of yours for the same reason.” She pulled the needle from my back.

I suddenly recognized her. “You! You’re the one who stole my canteens and tied my mouth shut with bandages!” I shouted in a whisper, “Why would you do that?”

She opened her saddle bags and pulled out my canteen. She placed it on the ground by my head. “Don’t drink this,” she commanded, “until right before the fight.”

“Why?” I asked, growing increasingly annoyed with each sidestepped question. Wait, what fight?

“Trust that I’m protecting you,” was her final reply. She picked up her lantern again and trotted away into the consuming blackness. How could I trust her when I didn’t even know who she was?

Morning. My Med-X had worn off before the horn sounded. My wounds had healed overnight somehow. Several large, puckered scars had formed on my body. The one on my chest was particularly prominent. I slowly, achingly, dragged myself up to my hooves, hitting my head against the top of the tent. I hated that tarp.

Martyr was clutching my ragged clothes in his hooves along with ‘Story of the Goddesses’ and the ball from Desert Outpost 21 while he slept. I pried my stuff from his hooves, trying my best not to wake him. I failed at that. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. I put on my rags and stuffed my belongings into the pockets. I slung my canteen around my neck. He looked up at me. One of his eyes was surrounded by a large purplish welt. His entire body was scratched and bruised. The lights on our collars flickered on, telling us we were already behind schedule. He nodded to me. I returned the nod.

We trotted as fast as we could to the gate. A gaggle of slaves milled around the unopened entrance. What were they waiting for?

A voice, magnified by magic, boomed out over the camp. “SLAVES, FRIENDS, FELLOW COUNTRY PONIES!” it began, speaking the loud, slightly lisping, and overly excited voice of a certain mare, “I LOVE FUN! DON’T YOU?!”

Fun could not possibly be a good thing around here. “WELL, SINCE I THINK FUN IS FUN, WE’RE GONNA HAVE SOME FUN TONIGHT!” the voice exclaimed with a huge amount of redundancy, leaving my ears ringing, “THIS EVENING WE’RE GONNA HAVE OUR (WAIT FOR IIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTT!)” we waited for it for a straight three minutes, “MONTHLY ULTRA-AWESOME-SUPER-COOL-KICK-FLANK-TAKE-NO-PRISONERS-NO-HOLDS-BARRED-” the sound of a deep intake of air, “FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC PIT BRAWL!”

Shit.

“HERE’S HOW IT WILL WORK, EVERYPONY: TWO TEAMS OF FIVE. WEAPONS FOR PONIES WHO DO REAL GOOD. WHICHEVER TEAM’S GOT PONIES LEFT BY THE END OF THE EVENING WINS! WHOEVER WINS FIGHTS THE NEXT PONY TILL THEY... STOP FIGHTING! RULES! YAY!”

This wasn’t good. I could tell that right away. Lots of ponies were going to die for no reason. No, not for no reason, for the ‘entertainment’ of the insane mare in charge.

“TEAMS! TEAM RED: SERVICE STEWARD, FLOYD, RAINCLOUD FLASH, FALL HAMMER-HEART, SIMPLE MAUVE! YAY! GO TEAM RED!”

Her enthusiasm was sickening and I felt the urge to... wait, my name? I suddenly remembered what that guard had said to me the night before: ‘Don’t drink this until right before the fight.’

Dammit. Dammit all. I looked at my canteen. What was special about it? Why was I chosen to fight? I'd barely even survived the fight the day before. I’d only survived by luck! Why would they choose me to fight in the pit? Wait a second; how’d they even know our names?

“TEAM DARKER RED: HOOFHOLD, FRAGILE GLASS... ONE REALLY BIG PONY I DON’T KNOW THE NAME OF, COURIER, HADRINE! WOO HOO! GOOD LUCK TEAM DARKER RED!”

What? What was that?! Hadrine? I glanced at my zebra friend, my jaw hanging open. He looked back at me. He bowed very slightly.

“NOW, ALL YOU PONIES WHO ARE GONNA FIGHT THIS EVENING, GET A GOOD REST. EVERYPONY ELSE, HAVE A GRRRREAT DAY AT WORK!” the voice ended abruptly.

I just stood there as ponies muttered and shuffled around. The electrified gates opened and the slaves not conscripted to either team were ushered out the door by guards. The movement kicked up clouds of dust. I almost started following them, but I stopped myself. Not only would I be fighting, I’d be fighting on the team against one of the only friends I had left in the wasteland.

Ten of us (plus Martyr, who refused to leave my side) stood by as the heavy, slow swinging gates were closed. We stood eyeing each other for several tension and suspicion filled moments. Finally a mule stallion with an out of place pink shock of hair running through his mane broke the silence, summing up our situation in the simplest way possible.

“Well,” he said, “we’re fucked.”

“Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria,

“Two holy and light-filled Goddesses reigned over sun and moon, day and night. They saw that their land was good and full of peace. But what good was peace? Would sun and moon remember the peace of Equestria? Would the stars remember their maker, the trees and plants the giver of sunshine? Peace could not last. The moon came down from the heavens, the sun scorching the earth beneath. The fire of dragons and the power of spells magnified a thousand times over brought the world crashing to its knees. The foundations of the reality that had been were shattered, the pillars of glass holding truth and order melting beneath the hooves of ponies and zebras. Where was order? Where was purity? Where were the goddesses in the world’s time of need? They cowered like mortals, fearing for their flesh.

“Where were the Elements? Where were the saints, the prophets, the conjurers of the magic of friendship? Could even magic delay the loosening of the bonds of reality? What of love? Friendship and love failed in the face of the fires. That which had surmounted so much withered and blew away like the petals of a flower. Can you see the face of the old Equestria, Fall? Is it even there?

“Brutality conquered beauty. Twisting lies conquered truth. Loyalty became a word uttered only by the damned. The zebra, scattered to the edges of the world. The pegasi, content to confine themselves to their monotonous nation of clouds and militarism. Earth ponies and unicorns shut themselves in steel and concrete coffins, waging their own silent war against the fear of the outside that consumed their rationality and turned them against one another. Ghouls? What of them? Their very existence is the result of the evils ponies offered themselves.

“And what of you, Fall? You are the product of cowardice. The buffalo left, foreseeing the end. Your ancestors followed when they realized they were right. Why did they leave when Equestria needed them most? Their cowardice must have been handed down to you. You let your friends die, the only ponies you cared about in the wasteland. You did nothing. Haha! What are you now, Fall? An empty shell of what you could have been? Can you blame this on some easy target of your rage? Is this the fault of the demon Discord or some unhelpful Goddesses? Perhaps it is just bad fortune or having gained too many enemies? Maybe your earth pony misfortunes or some weak...”

Shut up.

“So, what are you going to do?” Scrapper asked. The sun was high and sweat trickled down her face, under the bandages I’d just changed, getting into her empty sockets.

I brushed the sand with my hoof. “I’ll fight, I guess. Hope I’ll survive it.”

“What about the other fighters? Are they good?” she asked as she scratched an itch on the back of her head against the stake, wincing in pain. Over the past days the skin below her fur on her back and neck had grown red and blistered. Bits of it were peeling off from the sunburn and tufts of fur had begun falling out. Then, in an unrelated question, “Do you have any water? I’m dying of thirst here.”

I looked at my canteens. ‘Don’t drink this until right before the fight’. Well, that only applied to me, right? “Sure,” I replied, pulling off the cork and tipping a little water into her mouth. I responded to her first question, “I don’t really know much about the other fighters. I guess that if they got chosen they must be good then, right? Oh, and the zebra got picked, too.”

Scrapper wasn’t listening. Her head lolled back, a large shiver ran through her body. “Fall,” she said in a very rushed voice, “why are you talking so slowly?”

I rested in the shade of my tent, rolling the orb from Desert Outpost 21 back and forth between my hooves. Work at the mine had ended. Martyr rested nearby, watching me. We said nothing for at least an hour. It was too hot to talk, even now as the sun began nearing the edge of the sky. In a few minutes the fights would start. Finally, Martyr piped up.

“Fall?” he asked

“Yeah?”

“Where did you get that ball?”

I looked down at the little dark sphere. “I found it a while back,” I said. I figured an incomplete answer was better than telling him I’d found it on the corpse of a two-hundred years dead pony guilty of mass foal-murder. He nodded, as if to say that it was a satisfactory answer, then opened his mouth to speak again.

“Fall?” he echoed his earlier question.

I sighed, not exasperated at him but at the despair I felt about the upcoming fight. “Yes?” I replied as I picked up the orb and stuffed it in my pocket.

“What happens when ponies die?”

Damn. I hated questions like that. I didn’t know. From what I’d seen of the wasteland so far I wasn’t even sure if the Goddesses even cared enough for there to be anything after death. So, I decided to say what I’d always been taught and wasn’t sure I believed anymore. “Um, when ponies die, they go somewhere special so they can be with Celestia and Luna forever. Everypony else who's ever died is there too. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“PONIES! IT’S TIME FOR FUN! TO THE PIT!” blared the magically enhanced voice.

I stood up and Martyr did the same. Taking a deep breath, I began walking with the young colt by my side towards the center of the camp. The crowd of slowly trotting ponies grew thicker the closer we got to the pit. The sun had dropped below the distant mountains. The crowd stood in a ring around the pit, deeper than I’d remembered and surrounded by barbed wire and torches stuck in the ground. Just a hole in the ground, what made it so special? Was fighting to the death in the dirt a northern tradition? If it was, it made me want even less to do with the NCR I was supposed to find than I already wanted to. From where she was, my blinded friend would have had a great view of the games if she could see.

“Red team, over here!” a unicorn guard buck yelled. I closed my eyes and breathed, then turned to walk towards the guard who’d called. Martyr started following me. I put my hoof down in front of him.

“No,” I said, turning my head to look down at him, “stay here. You can’t come with me.”

Tears began forming behind his eyes. The little colt who’d lost his entire family was now worried that he’d lose his only friend. He bit back his sadness and trotted away back into the crowd. I continued to were my team was gathering.

The donkey with the pink in his hair, a purplish earth pony mare with a sickly brown mane, a bright blue unicorn stallion with a mane of different shades of orange and a small tumor beneath his right eye, and a white unicorn mare with a black and white spotted mane, plus me made Team Red. We definitely did not look like a formidable fighting force. The unicorn guard held a clipboard that was too big for the scrap of paper it held. He glanced at the note, reading over the poorly scrawled words covering it. When he was certain she understood the instructions he looked up at us.

“Alright you poor fuckers, here’s how it’s gonna work: Floyd, you’re up first.”

The donkey hung his head at the news of his bad luck and gritted his teeth, letting out a low and very angry ‘fuck me’. I didn’t envy him going first.

“After that’s Raincloud, then Mauve, then Simple, and then if the other team isn’t all dead yet, Fall.” I was last? Finally, some good luck! Maybe I won’t have to kill anypony after all... I remembered my scars... or be killed.

The guard buck put the clipboard in his saddlebags and pulled out fives bandannas, each of them red. “Put them on,” he commanded. We did as we were told. “This way,” the buck said, motioning us towards a tall tent that had been set up away from the pit. Team Darker Red (featuring my friend Hadrine) entered with their darker red bandannas the same time as us. Inside was the griffon standing beside a lawn chair bearing the crazy mare who owned us all. She sipped at a drink through a straw and wore a pair of dark sunglasses despite the descending night. She rolled off her chair and telekinetically passed off her drink to the overseer.

Her glasses slid down her snout slightly. She inspected each of us, turning our heads, contemplating our scars, checking our teeth for some reason. She bopped two of the unicorns on the horn for some reason. When she came to me I craned my neck back slightly. Her breath was foul and her mane had bits of... something in it. She put a hoof under my chin and brought my head back forward, then gave me a very unexpected and extremely unwelcome wet kiss. I was immediately overwhelmed by the urge to wash myself. She then turned and got her drink from the griffon, returning to her chair.

The griffon spoke next. “Alright, you sacks of shit, line yourselves up over there.” she said, pointing a dagger-like claw towards a two smallish ditches positioned on opposite sides of the pit.

The guards with us prompted us towards these smaller pits, dividing us into our teams. I stood between the donkey and the unicorn buck. The griffon flapped her wings and flew over the pit. Her body was lit dimly by the ring of torches.

“Slaves,” she began, “tonight you’re getting a real treat. In some places ponies would kill to get to see a fight like this,” she snickered at her own pun, “First fight is between Floyd the donkey of Team Red and Click the earth pony of Team Darker Red.”

The guards on both sides dragged out the contestants and shoved them down the sloped walls of the pit. With the crowd blocking my view and being in a ditch I had some trouble seeing what was going on. I barely noticed that the boss mare had moved her chair for a better view. Beside it she set down a box with contents I didn’t know.

"Fight!" commanded the griffon.

I heard dull hoof strikes. Grunts of pain. One of the fighters got flipped at least once. Strangely, I heard a cheer. Not a very loud cheer, but a noticeable holler from a pony in the audience. Another pony joined in the cheering. Soon the entire bunch of slaves ringed around the pit were cheering for their favorites. The sound of the fighting rose in volume so as to be still audible over the crowd. I could see the boss mare smile wickedly in approval. So much approval, in fact, that she drew out two knives from her box and dropped them in the pit.

Now I could hear steel against steel. A loud cry of pain rang out over the crowd’s loudness as one of the fighters was forced to drop their knife. Another slash, a gurgle of pain, and the crowd grew much louder.

“And the donkey wins!” the griffon proclaimed, "One point to Team Red."

The hoof stomps of the crowd became overwhelming, drowning out other sounds. Two guards worked together to telekinetically lift the earth pony's corpse and the knives out of the pit. Dark crimson blood drenched the equally dark red bandanna as it seeped from the dead pony's almost completely detached neck, held on only by the spinal column. The guards laid the body down beside the boss mare's chair. My stomach did flips as I watched her dip the tip of her right forehoof in the puddle of blood and taste it. I desperately fought the urge to vomit, knowing that losing food and water would only make me weaker for when I had to fight.

"Darker Red's unicorn Pilot Light enters the Pit!"

A vividly green unicorn mare with a white mane was pushed into the pit, disappearing from view. I could hear kicks and magical shimmering sounds as the fight began, screams of pain from both fighters. The cheering crowd's cheering became more cheerful as they watched two people with the same right to live start using all they had to kill each other. I heard the mare scream loudly along with a vile crunching noise. Then I saw flames shoot into the sky out of the pit. An incendiary spell, the unicorn was conjuring fire as a weapon. A stray bolt of flame set the rags of one of the ponies in the audience on fire, causing their screams to join the cacophony of noises. Floyd the donkey's sizzling skin was audible over all the other noises somehow, only adding to the disgust and sense of illness I was feeling. Knives were dropped in. Another loud scream and then hoofbeats against the ground as one side of the crowd showed their approval for the winner.

"And the donkey wins again!" Oh Godesses, what!? The fighter who'd just been burned alive by a huge magical-incendiary spell had won!? How? "But it looks like he won't be participating in the next fight..." the griffon both smirked and cringed as the guards lifted out the two corpses from the pit. The unicorn mare had been slit open from below her ribcage to the base of her horn, cutting several arteries in the process somehow. The donkey was more terrifyingly disfigured. I would say he looked like a ghoul, except that would be an insult to ghouls. His flesh dripped like molasses from his bones, the handle of the knife clenched tightly in his jaw that refused to open. The smell was terrible. I'd smelled burned pony-flesh before but this was worse.

"Next in is Raincloud and Mercantile." the two ponies were thrown in without so much as the cloths on their backs. The fight was brief. Raincloud was a skilled magical fighter. He dispatched the next pony after Mercantile equally easily. For a moment I let myself regain the hope that I wouldn't have to kill anypony after all.

Then it was Hadrine's turn. When I'd met Hadrine, the day he was bought, I hadn't pictured him being a steely eyed killer. Raincloud and the two ponies on my team after him didn't stand a chance. I had the (oh so lucky) opportunity to watch Hadrine and Simple fight each other, being moved forward to the edge of the crowd so that the guards didn't have to push me too far. The zebra and the unicorn circled around each other like wolves, waiting to strike, in the dirt wet with blood and charred by incendiary spells.

In a sudden moment (if I'd blinked I would have missed it) Hadrine threw himself clear across the pit, his hooves tipped forward so the edges would strike instead of the flat part. Simple tried to dodge with a roll, but was too slow. Hadrine's forehooves tore through the mare's body, one entering through her neck, tearing a gaping hole as it exited, the other cracking through her ribs and lodging in her body cavity. The mare twitched for a few seconds and then coughed blood as my zebra friend withdrew his hooves. She fell to the ground, dead.

As the guards lifted the former fighter to join the boss mare's pile of corpses while the griffon announced the winner, Hadrine stared at his owner, channeling all the hate he felt at that moment. And then he looked at me. A wave of despair crashed over me as he offered a knowing nod.

I remembered my canteen, remembered that one guard's instructions, and pulled out the cork, taking a sip. Then everything became really slow and my vision was tinged purple. I could feel each beat of my heart and could hear my bones as the joints shifted. My muscles quivered and tensed. I felt faster despite the speed everything else was moving at. The guards tore off my rags and pushed me through the gap in the barbed wire, down the slope of the pit, landing and turning myself in agonizing slow motion to face my opponent.

The command to fight sounded distant. Hadrine took a stance and began circling me. I went the opposite direction, my violet tinged vision kept steadily on my enemy. When he pounced I noticed something odd. His hooves faced flat instead of pointed. As he drew near to me I lifted my left hoof, knocking aside his attack as I delivered my own jab into his side. The sudden change in momentum sent the zebra to the ground. His attack hadn't been to kill, so my next move wasn't either. I felt like I was walking against the current of a river as I moved to where he lay and wrapped my right foreleg around his neck, hoping to choke him just enough to knock him out. He was having none of that, flipping me over his head with a powerful backwards hit to my stomach. I felt my heart stop momentarily and then return faster than before during the time it took for me to reach the ground.

He wrapped me in a chokehold of his own (better than the one I'd attempted) and began squeezing my neck. As I began losing the ability to breath, I panicked, flailing my hooves wildly in an uncoordinated attempt to get free. I felt his free hoof jab into a point in my side. Searing pain jolted through my body as I felt my muscles seize up.

He whispered, just loud enough so that I could hear him over the crowd, "Kill me," and then let go.

I fell forward, feeling relief from being able to breath (incredibly slowly) again, and feeling terror at the idea that Hadrine had killed all the other competitors just so I could kill him. What was his reason? Why me? I was nothing special!

A double hoofed buck to my side, cracking two ribs, brought me out of trying to understand. I howled in pain as my slowed perception forced me to somehow feel my broken bones more intensely. I rolled to my hooves, planting them firmly down. Hadrine lifted himself into a standing fighting stance on his back hooves. It wasn't a very strong stance, however. He was open so that I could land a hit on his breastbone. I took the opportunity.

I lowered my head and rammed his chest with the top of my skull. As quickly as I could I pinned him to the ground. I raised my Pip-Buck over his striped head, readying myself to bring it down with all the force I had.

Two things stopped me. First, his face had no emotion. An equine should at least feel something before they're about to die, but he just held an expression of serene, lock-jawed contentment. This buck had been one of my only friends since I was made a slave, and now I was about to kill him at his request.

The second thing was the world sprinting back into full speed. It felt like a hammer smacked against my head. My muscles twanged and rebelled against the feelings my nerves threw on them. I felt like vomiting again. I opened my eyes, my vision moving in and out, making me feel off balance and sicker. Oh Goddesses, it was like being hung over, but ten times worse!

Hadrine jammed his hoof hard against my jaw to break my out of my daze. He shouted at me but my ears were ringing loudly. I couldn't tell what he said, but I'm sure it had something to do with killing him.

I looked down at him. I couldn't kill him, not like this, not for the entertainment of these freaks, not when he'd asked me to. "No!" I shouted, my own voice sounding underwater and distant.

He responded by flipping himself off the ground, kicking me just above my groin. Dull, aching pain shot through me. I lay doubled over on the ground. A knife landed handle up, blade in the dirt, next to my head. I picked it up with my teeth and pulled myself to my hooves. My groggy, pained head throbbed awfully. I squeezed my eyes shut, tears welling up behind my eyelids.

I opened my eyes to see Hadrine balancing on his back hooves with the same open stance. He held his own knife in the crook of his right forehoof. He gestured very slightly to a spot on his neck, asking me to kill him again. I couldn't move. My hooves felt cemented to the ground and my heart beat without a rhythm and slammed with pain every time I breathed. He interpreted my hesitation as refusal. Before I could blink he'd put me in a headlock, one leg choking me around my neck, the other gripping his knife menacingly by my head.

"Fall, listen," he whispered with the strong sound of command burning through his voice, "my death is a piece of the larger puzzle. You have the need to continue north, I need a good ending. If you don't survive this fight, things will become very difficult for everyone. Now put aside your morality and give me a believable death!" He drew his knife across my right shoulder as he released his grip, letting me drop to the blood-soaked dirt and grime underhoof.

My shoulder exploded in pain. The deep gash he'd given me oozed blood. I screamed. My open mouth dropped my weapon. The chems that were wearing off in me magnified the intensity of the agony I felt. I glared up at him. What plan? What morality? I understood the necessity of killing, I just didn't want to kill him! Hadrine had been my only ally in the camp since our purchase as slaves. But something in his eyes, something about the way he'd spoken told me there really was a reason for all of this.

I picked up my knife again, stole my nerves and brought my aching, shaking muscles under control. He stood in a pose that appeared menacing but revealed his neck, opening himself up to death. I gritted my teeth, grinding them around the dirty knife handle, and attacked.

Blood. In the White Hooves the blood of an enemy was something to be washed away carefully. Special prayers (that I realized then I'd been neglecting) were said by warriors as the sponged off the lifeblood of another from their coats and manes. These prayers asked for two things: forgiveness for killing, and the endowment of the power of the dead on the warrior. 'Celestia forgive me for the death of one of your children, Luna give me their strength.' The first line of the first prayer.

This was what was said for an enemy, but what could I say for a friend? Hadrine's blood drenched my coat, drying on my muzzle, sticking in my nostrils and coating my eyelids, seeping into my open wounds. I couldn't breathe right. Time twisted itself. The minutes after I'd killed him were choppy, unreal, fast and slow at the same time.

"Team Red wins!" the griffon had exclaimed.

The crowd, which had been loud before, got much louder. Somehow they either hadn't noticed or were ignoring the falseness of the fight. If Hadrine had been fighting to kill I would have been dead. But instead of seeing the truth they just stomped their hooves against the ground and cheered. I remember feeling sick.

"Good. Everything went according to plan. You even look beaten up," said the mare who'd given me the drugged-up water. She had led me through the crowd away from the pit and given me my stuff back, including a freshly refilled canteen. I felt inclined to tell her I looked beaten up because I was, but felt to tired and shaken to be witty. "Now what's next is important," she informed me, "Since you've won you're going to get a private audience with the mare in charge of this slave operation. I have no idea what she would want to talk to the winner for, but I need you to kill her. Messily, if at all possible."

My buzzing, addled brain could only give a one word response. "Why?" It wasn't that I was particularly against the death of the pony who'd forced me and nine other equines to fight to the death in a pit, who carved out the eyes of a mare who only wanted to escape, who liked to taste of pony-blood. I just didn't know why this mare who was supposed to be a guard was plotting her boss's demise using me as a tool. And why me? Wouldn't Hadrine have made a better assassin?

I looked over my shoulder toward the pit. Hadrine's body had been thrown in the crazy mare's small mountain of corpses. I'd slit his throat wide open. It had been quick. The blood-- damn, so much-- had amazed me. How much blood was in a body? How much blood had I seen in my short time in the wasteland desert? A ponds worth?

"Because we have plans for you, Fall," the guard mare answered, "The desert and the people in it need a pony like you, and fewer ponies like her. We're sending a message."

Martyr walked next to me as the mysterious guard mare led me toward the gate. His eyes were wide and he kept silent. He'd never seen me kill before, and I was sure that he was wondering whether he could trust me.

My shoulder oozed blood through the bandages wrapped around it. The area just above my groin ached as a bruise from Hadrine's kick formed. My brain was being stepped on by my tribes chief as pounding waves of pain crashed on top of it. Withdrawal from whatever I'd drunk was much, much worse than any hangover.

The mare had done something to my collar. The light had turned off. She'd warned me to keep it hidden under my rags so it would be less visible.

I turned to the little buck next to me as we walked. "Martyr," I started, "are you alright?" What a stupid thing to ask. Nopony was alright here.

"Mmm, I don't know. Hadrine is dead. He was nice to us," he glanced up to meet my gaze, then quickly looked toward the ground again, "Are you alright?" His voice sounded strained, almost like he was holding back anger.

"Shut up, both of you," the mare hissed, "We're almost to the gate."

I saw the griffon standing by the gate, the lock shut. The griffon was looking at the dark sky. Her rifle was slung over her wings in a way that made her appear uncaring towards the rioting crowd of slaves behind us.

I shoved my freshly filled canteen towards the little unicorn buck. "Share this with the mare who doesn't have eyes. I'll see you later."

He nodded like a pony in a daze and ran back to the lit pit in the center of the bloodthirsty crowd of ponies. Only a day ago they'd been calm and normal, most even kind. How did ponies slip like that?

I turned my eyes to the griffon in front of me and gulped. All I knew was that I was the only friend that Martyr and Scrapper had left. I would get them out of here. We were going to run far away from here. We would find the NCR. Together. I wasn’t going to lose anypony else.

"Do you even know the damage you've done? You're much more of a monster than I could ever be. You... you’re right up there with Red Eye and the Stable Dweller... maybe even as big of a monster as Fluttershy. Incredible. Truly, I'm almost inclined to say I'm impressed. Almost."

I said shut up! Dammit, I won! You don't get to give me a speeches.

"Oh, come on, Fall. You’re not serious, are you? Together, we've created a new, stronger world. The NCR couldn't have achieved this. My ponies couldn't have either. But together, look what we've made. It's beautiful..."

There isn't anything beautiful about war! You aren't anything but a raider!

“Please, give me a little credit. Do common raiders build nations to last generations, armies of thousands, cities on the knife’s edge of foreverness? If I'm just a raider, then what are you? A genocidal maniac? You’re already halfway to monsterhood as you are! No, you're better than that. Yes, I suppose I am impressed by what you've accomplished in such a short time. I don't want my followers to forget this, not for as long as we’re around. You should write it down. Hurry though. By the looks of it, you won't be able to remember for much longer..."

I don’t want to remember. Not long now though...

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Intense Training: Your experiences in the wasteland have forced you to endure a lot. This perk adds +1 one to your Endurance.

(Thanks go to Kkat [as usual] for writing the phenomenal original fic. Thanks also go OkiiNovice for reading my fic and consistently giving me his honest opinion on it. Thanks go out to the FO:E fan-community and the great people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in it)