Claw, Hoof, and Feather

Claw, Hoof, and Feather

You Win Some and You Lose Some

The rest of the week, until the fated hour of that fateful day, lagged on with monotony, those few days dragging on the same general pace.  Sleep, eat, get geared up, work and get whipped, head to sleep again, and then rinse and repeat, day in and day out.  Predictably, it was utter torture and torment.

Still, before long, it was finally time to put the escape plan into motion.

Birdie looked up as he felt Cobbler prod at him with a hoof.  Both equines smiled slightly at each other, and then, slowly and quietly, they stood up.  They made way to walk to the closed entrance to these hellish living quarters…

Birdie took position by the door frame, opposite the side it would open toward.

“Guard,” Birdie’s comrade called to the Diamond Dog currently stationed on watch.  “Guard, one of the other slaves isn’t feeling so well!”

“Not my problem,” the Diamond Dog responded.  Oh, there’s a big sarcastic “great”… it was “Max”, the Tibetan Mastiff-based D-Dog.

“Well, how about this logic!  If slaves don’t feel good, they can’t work.  No work means you won’t have any gems!  No gems means your Alpha is going to be mad at you!”

That seemed to give the guard on the other side of the door pause… and then, quite quickly, the large canine opened the wooden door.

Just how stupid were these canines?

Immediately, Birdie kicked with his left hoof, giving a clean, harsh strike to the guard’s jaw, knocking him out from that single hit.  As the Diamond Dog felt flat on his face, the green hippogryph could only stare, beak agape.  “… Either he has a glass jaw… or those with pony blood kick hard.”

“Dwell on it later,” Cobbler spoke in a hushed tone as they walked out.  “Let’s go before—“

“HEY!”

Both Birdie and Cobbler looked up at the call… to see another Diamond Dog, this one oddly resembling a poodle.

Then, the canine howled.

This was bad.  They recognized that infamous howl.  Cobbler and Birdie were hardly the first escape attempts since the duo had arrived, and they doubted they would be the last.  Still, they remembered what happened each time after that particular howl was let out.

The attempted escapees were always caught and always beaten into submission… at best.

“RUN!” Cobbler spoke out in alarm, breaking Birdie out of his briefly frozen-shocked state as they both began to run, with Cobbler leading Birdie through the mines.  Together, they were practically green and blue blurs, desperately trying to avoid being recaptured.  They were not trying to be daring fools or Daring Do.  They wanted to live!

The duo scrambled through the tunnels without many options available, their desperation already getting the better of them.  Sure, they ran into a couple of canines that stood in their way.

“Gotcha,” the smaller, Chihuahua-based Diamond Dog, about even in height with Cobbler’s shoulders, let out in excitement with his nasally and high-pitched “Gollum voice” as he tried to grab Birdie.

In response, Birdie quickly back-stepped and slammed a closed claw right into the little guy’s snout, sending the D-Dog onto his back with a yelp of pain.

Cobbler, in turn, rammed into the larger, Doberman-like Diamond Dog, his horn jabbing into, but not piercing, the big one’s belly.  She –and it was a she, as not all Diamond Dogs were male—growled and snarled in a pained response.

Birdie struck hard with a hoof to assist, striking her leg as bones snapped with a ‘crack’.  She yelped and whimpered as she fell over onto her side, fixed on her injured limb.

They broke into a run again, and as they ran, Birdie slowly got an idea.  “Cobbler, stop!” he yelled, drawing the blue unicorn to do just that.

“What is it?” he responded, turning to look at Birdie… just as the green hippogryph grabbed something that, quite frankly, the unicorn had forgotten to take into account.

The Diamond Dogs were fools, but not all of them were as easy to deceive as the one dubbed “Max” had been.  For every slave they had special restraints.  For pegasi and griffins, they had put on special saddles and straps to keep them from using their wings, as well as specific claw coverings for during work with those Griffins and Birdie.  For Earth Ponies, they usually put on special hindquarter restraints that allowed walking but prevented kicking.  For unicorns, though, they had these rings slipped onto their horns that prevent the use of magic.  Oh, and the ‘weaker’ Diamond Dogs were usually beaten into submission.

All of these items and restraints had one thing in common.  To put them on or take them off, one needed opposable digits.

Birdie inwardly thanked whatever cosmic force was out there that caused the Diamond Dogs of these specific mines to not take his unrestrained claws into account.  Quickly, he gripped Cobbler’s magic-restraining ring and slipped it off with a grin…

… Just in time of something to flash by his vision.  He felt a sting, and then… pain and a slight change of perspective.

He clutched his new wound, holding his palm over his right eye, which has been damaged by that passing crossbow bolt, as his grin quickly morphed into an expression of agony and he began to fight against writhing in the pain that consumed him from that spot.  His blood quickly began to drip and flow through the green feathers on that side of his face.

As he screeched and whimpered and writhed, both eyes squeezed shut, he felt the familiar tug of magic lifting him up and moving him, the sound of hoof beats in tandem with the pulses of magic that kept his body aloft in the air.

“Damn it!” he heard the unicorn speak as they seemed to round a corner.  “Hold on, Birdie!  Hold on!”

What did Cobbler think he was trying to do?!  And better yet, hold on to what?!

All the green hippogryph could comprehend was the sound of Cobbler’s hooves against the floor of the caves.

“AGH!”

Cobbler screamed in pain, drawing Birdie to finally look up with his good eye as the magical grip slipped.  He gasped in horror.  Cobbler’s side had a new wound that was flowing with his blood, and near them, brought down by what looked to be a hard kick to the sternum, was a Diamond Dog… with a bloody halberd.  “Cobbler…” he rasped out.

Cobbler winced, looking to his own wound as his legs shook to support his weight.  “… It looks like I won’t make it, eh, Birdie?”

“Don’t… don’t say that.  Don’t pull this cliché on me!  Don't you dare pull this cliche on me!” Birdie yelled, trying to ignore his own pain.  “We’ve been pals for months, Cobbler.  You can’t die!”

As the blue unicorn shook his head, he slowly fell to his knees.  “Death comes to us all, Birdie… I guess it’s just my time…”

“No… no!  Stop saying that!”  He was no stranger to death, having witness family funerals, but to die like this...  It wasn't right!

Slowly, Cobbler’s horn began to glow.  “I can use one more spell to get you out of here,” he spoke weakly.  “One last one… before I die.”

“Then use it on yourself!  It’s my fault you’re here!”

“No,” Cobbler responded as he closed his eyes, to orange glow of his horn getting steadily getting brighter and brighter.  “None of this is your fault.  My plan, my decision to take you with me, my choice to take you into town…  No, Birdie, it isn’t your fault, so..."  He coughed weakly, "so stop saying so.  I will not let you die in pity for me…  Use your head, bird-brain," he jabbed, not meaning any true insult, "Even if I did escape, this guarantees that I'm a goner.”

The green hippogryph’s remaining yellow eye went wide as Cobbler opened his eyes, revealing intense magical energy and focus.  “I can’t teleport two, anyway,” the unicorn spoke out.  “Good-bye, Birdie.”

“DON’T!”

There was intense flash of light, filling the tunnel and blinding the incoming Diamond Dogs… and then, when the light faded… Birdie was gone… and Cobbler closed his eyes one last time, never to open them again.

--

In the quaint little desert town of Dodge Junction, one particular Earth Pony, her curly mane as red as cherries and her coat as off-white as the inside of an apple, was simply taking her time as she surveyed all the cherries in her orchard with those light green eyes.

Cherry Jubilee trotted through Cherry Hill Ranch with a slight smile on her face.  She may not have looked it, but the boss of this ranch was a bit of a farm pony at heart, not just a ranch owner or a business-savvy mare.  After all, her family, like the Apples, started their own business from scratch, and she just… modernized the family business.  Some did it the old fashioned way and some wanted a bit of “horse power” put into production and sales.

She blinked as she caught a spark in the air.  “Hm?”  Taken out of her previous thoughts, which were on the bit of work one Applejack of Sweet Apple Acres had provided and how much money she still had yet to mail to her for her services, minor as they were, she ceased her trot in favor of a slow walk toward the spot she witness the spark at.

Another orange spark weaved through the air, then another, and then another.

Her green eyes going wide, the cherry-picking mare slowly backed up as the sparks began to form a large orange orb of magical energy… and then the orb quickly dissipated, revealing a smoldering crater in her orchard… and in the center, a hippogryph, its green and dark brown feathers singed and its breaths labored from what must have been a great ordeal.

Then Cherry Jubilee noticed the blood, and her shock doubled as worry and fear came into her mind.

“Fruit Tart!” she took charge as her worry for somepony in her orchard became evident, addressing one of the cherry pickers somewhere in her orchard.  Sure enough, a blue Pegasus with a red mane and a pastry-based Cutie Mark flew over from somewhere in the trees, her own gaze going wide at the sight of the injured hippogryph, “git’ the town doctor, an’ quick!” the mare directed of her orchard worker.

Fruit Tart silently sped off like a bullet.

--

Pain… All Birdie thought he could feel was pain.  Ponies that were native to whatever town or city he landed in loaded him onto a stretcher and quickly carried him off to a doctor, the agony he felt causing every word he heard to blur together.

“Hold on, big fella’…” an older mare’s voice seemed to address him, speaking in an Old West stereotypical accent.  Somehow, his good eye caught a flash of red and white.

“Easy, now.  Easy with the patient!” a stallion’s voice later spoke.

Either way, they were all blurry, sound and sight alike.

He felt that pain in the socket that housed the remains of his eye.  His body, in turn, ached from all the bruises and the impact of landing where ever he had been teleported to by Cobbler’s magic.  Worst of all, he thought, was the pain the green hippogryph felt in his heart, knowing that his first and so far only friend in Equestria had given up his own life for for Birdie’s sake.

Damn, he sounded like an emo… but it was true.  How else was he supposed to feel, having his first new bond in this not-so-perfect world literally severed by a halberd-wielding Diamond Dog?

With regret and sorrow consuming him, Birdie faded into the bliss of unconsciousness as he felt the stab of a needle into his left forelimb.

“Don’t worry,” he heard a fading male voice, “we’re just making sure this will not hurt…”

--

And so the doctor set to work.  The brown unicorn stallion, his mane tied back and a surgical mask upon his muzzle, quickly lifted up a tool with his magic… and began the surgery to remove the useless remains of the destroyed eye.

Details were too grisly and delicate to say, but by the end, it was an emptied, clean eye-socket, with the lids of the eye sewed back together in a manner that would leave a vertical scar.  Gently, the doctor lowered in a sterilized glass orb, to at least help shape the eyelids around something and keep everything in place and perhaps help prevent infection…

Upon the moment the glass orb came into contact with the back of the socket, the green hippogryph sprung to life and screeched in pain, quite suddenly tossing back and forth as a red glow unlike anything the doctor had seen began to consume the orb..

Quickly, the unicorn worked his magic, trying to keep the hippogryph still, but somehow even then he fought and struggled against the magical bonds.  “Nurse!” the doctor called in.  “Nurse, I need restraints!  NURSE!!”

As the nurse, a unicorn mare, came in, the light slowly began to die down, and as he was strapped down, the hippogryph fell back into unconsciousness.

The doctor could only stare at those closed eyelids, the scar somehow already healed and the stitching just... gone, wondering just what could have gone wrong…  He… he didn’t dare try to tamper with the hippogryph again, not immediately such a volatile reaction.

So, he slowly and carefully placed a cotton pad over that eyelid and began to wrap half of the hippogryph’s head in bandages.  “Just take a rest, big guy…” he pleaded.

“Take a rest.”

--

AN:  FINALLY A THUMBS-DOWN!  Seriously, I was getting so worried.  I know this isn’t that good and that is deserves at least ONE thumbs-down…  Yeah, most authors like all thumbs-ups, but I feel more secure knowing there ARE some who dislike this story and actually say so.  The only question is “Why?”  See, that’s why I would like comments, so I can know what to improve upon, so I can make this story NOT suck.

That said if the “thumbs-down” rating was given solely for being HiE… Oh well.  It all comes down to taste.  At least it’s not a too horrid one in which he meets and instantly befriends the Mane Six, give it that at least.  Not all of those are bad, but... you know.

As for this chapter… yeah, again, nothing really all that grand, per say.  As for what happened at the end of the chapter… People are not going to like it when the results are revealed, I’m sure.  Granted, it’s part of Chess Game of the Gods, but still… people will not like.