Abominations
Strength is overrated. At the end of it all, survival's a game of chance.

“Thorn!”

The sound that came from my mouth was hardly recognisable as my own. It took all of my willpower not to heave at the sight of his leg, my own positively in perfect repair in comparison. He only sat there, shaking visibly and whimpering with eyes the size of saucers.

“M-my leg!” he managed to blubber out, gasping for breath frantically. His chest rose and fell so quickly that it was almost a blur. Sweat had suddenly coated his fur, leaving him looking soaked.

“H-hey, it'll be alright!” I said, quickly hopping to his side. I ground my teeth at the pain which erupted from my own injuries, but didn't complain any more than that. What right did I have? “We’ll just find some of that… healing stuff, right?”

Thorn shook his head frantically. “That's never gonna fix th-this!” he wailed, sitting on his haunches awkwardly whilst gesturing to the broken limb. The movement made him yelp and he hunched his back. His teeth squeaked. “I’m gonna die! It's over! Something's g-gonna eat me for sure!”

He was right, of course. But I couldn’t leave him there to die.

“Don’t be silly,” I soothed. “If that was true nopony’d survive out here, right? All the little foals would be dead by now, yeah?”

Thorn glanced at me. Fresh tears rolled down his cheeks. New ones welled up in his eyes to replace them.

“Look, up you go,” I urged. I tried not to focus on the bent limb.

Thorn blubbered but nodded slowly, shifting his three mostly-uninjured hooves to below his body. He pushed upwards with a small gasp. He trembled visibly as he heaved himself up onto his legs, his chest suddenly rising and falling frantically at the exertion. As he panted, a hopeless gaze met my own, dull and glistening. When I couldn’t find any words to reassure him, to promise him that he was going to be fine, he glanced down at his deformed leg and took a sharp breath in. Again.

I rose a hoof and pressed it quickly to his mouth. “Hey, hey, don’t you dare,” I said, my tone suddenly a little sharper. Thorn’s eyes widened at the snap and he stumbled awkwardly away from me. I ground my teeth.

Cool it, Klip.

“Look,” I said, glancing around us for anything that might help him. I picked up a half-rotted skull hesitantly, bile rising in my throat. This had been a pony once. “I’m sorry. But we… we need to move. I’m not gonna die in some shitty, dark tunnel, ‘kay?”

I couldn’t really decide whether Thorn smiled or scowled at that, but he nodded. That was enough. He then stood taller—his ears reached just below my chin—and took a few slow, quavery breaths. His magic then cautiously wrapped around his leg, just at the top. With a jerk of his head upwards he took the weight of the useless limb in his horn, hissing at the exertion.

“O-okay,” he whispered, trying not to whimper. That had to be respected, at least. “I’ll… I’ll just follow, if that’s okay?”

I took a slow step away from him before then beginning to cautiously make my way forwards. Pebbles and rocks and skulls with cavities for eyes littered the uneven floor. The trek would be tough for him. “Sure,” I said. My voice sounded terse, I noticed. Ignoring that, I beckoned with a hoof and squinted my eyes, starting on my journey.

The caves were far from silent. Wind whistled through continuously, slipping in from the cracks in the walls. A soft scurrying sounded every few minutes, accompanied by a quiet tap-tap-tap. Bone against bone? It was all I could think of. All of a sudden I felt sick.

“K-Klip?”

I yelped, cracking my tail like a whip behind me before I spun around. In mid-air, my hoof slammed down almost instinctively against the targeting laser on my gun. The red spot fell right at the base of Thorn’s horn, hanging there in limbo. I froze for a few moments. When my eyes widened, I took a step back and quickly threw my hoof to my side, staring at him silently. Not even a breath passed my lips.

He shouldn't scare ponies like that. I didn't know much, but that… That was obvious.

Foolish foal.

I shook my head before I brushed the hair from between my eyes. “What?” I asked. My tone was harsher than it probably should have been. Thorn winced.

“Sorry,” he quipped. “It's just… Can you hear that?”

I froze. My eyes widened and my ears flicked quickly. But there was nothing to be heard other than that incessant tap-tap-tap.

“No,” I said. I hesitated before finishing, “It’s probably just—”

But I never finished that thought. Instead, a loud screech flooded my head, sending me reeling. Thorn hissed and leapt to my side. His injured leg smashed against my cutie mark and drew a scream from his mouth; I hastened to pull him close to me, burying his muzzle into the fluff of my chest so as to muffle his cries. He trembled in my grip. I tried my best to rock him slightly, my head bent back at an awkward angle to avoid the caustic licks against my chin of his magical aura.

“H-hey, it's alright,” I stammered. My hooves quivered as I held him. “Just the wind!”

The sharp scraping sounded once again. It tore apart my eardrums and sent shudder upon shudder down my spine as I focused my eyes on the opposite wall unfalteringly. Pebbles tumbled down determinedly, snapping at my hooves as they rolled to a stop. And then more came, and more and more in showers of dust. I couldn't move, paralysed by fear. My legs stiffened, useless.

And then I saw it. A single, massive claw, easily as big as Thorn, scratching away at the wall. It was chipped and bloodied but still unrealistically sharp. It glinted in the feeble light from Thorn’s horn. With each scratch it drew closer to us, more and more of it being revealed as whatever beast this was began to shove its way through. A long, grey tongue flicked out wildly, barely missing my ear. The ground below smoked slightly as the saliva dropped onto it.

“Klip!” Thorn whispered. His voice was high pitched and so, so fast. He squeaked quietly when the claw momentarily hooked his tail. “It’s gonna eat us!”

The beast faltered in its frantic digging before its momentum returned. A strangled and drawn out squawk shattered our eardrums as what must have been the thing’s beak opened wide. The sheer power of it made the wall crumble like sand. Acrid saliva shot from it, coating our filthy fur. For a moment, I stopped breathing; my entire body screamed with pain, but I couldn't hear a thing except for a high pitched whistling.

A few moments passed, torturously slowly. I pranced on the spot, every inch of my skin on fire! And then, from behind me, I heard Thorn’s gasps. It was a feeble, shaky sound; when I squinted my eyes open to look back, I saw him trembling and panting where he stood. And then my hearing returned properly, and the cacophony that was the beast hammering its way through the wall sounded once more.

“Shit!” I hissed, reality dawning on me. How had I forgotten? I shook my body quickly in an attempt to rid myself of the acidic spray and hastily grabbed Thorn’s ear between my teeth. I tasted blood. That didn't matter right now. With a grunt I heaved him in front of me, then hammering into his rump so as to knock him into a gallop. He almost fell onto his muzzle, what with his injured leg still levitated.

There wasn't time to worry about that.

“Go! Go!” I yelled, ramming his tail once more. With a whinny of distress he lurched, careening forwards. But the beast was progressing quickly now, each slam of its heavy body against the wall cracking and loosening the rocks more and more.

With a resounding boom, it fell through. But I didn't stop to look. It would be the last thing I’d see if I did.

“Move it!” I snapped, nipping at Thorn’s unmarked rump gently. He squealed and shot forwards slightly faster. But it wasn't enough.

There was a moment, a fleeting instance, when I didn’t know what to do. And then an acceptance dawned on me, and I understood something I had somehow missed before; this was the Wasteland. Beasts and horrendous abominations were the norm out here. And god-damn, if I wanted to live longer than two more minutes, I had to learn to fight.

“Don’t stop!” I yelled. I threw on the brakes.

The uneven floor shredded my hooves as I skidded to a stop. A small trail of blood was left in my wake. I didn’t falter. With a few stolen gasps I then spun around and threw myself at the approaching beast with a cry of fury. It was then, in the abhorration’s momentary shock, that I got my first proper look at it.

It was massive! The hind legs alone were easily the same size as me! It crawled forwards slowly with exaggerated movements. Its shrivelled forelegs dragged across the rock so that its overgrown, sickle-like claws sliced the rock below. Its tiny, beady eyes—the brightest of whites—focused on me, or so I assumed. But the lack of a pupil made it hard to tell.

The beast threw its mare-sized maw open, the cracked and scarred beak lined with thousands of tiny, backwards facing hooks. Each one dripped a faintly-glowing goo. The roar which subsequently followed almost knocked me off of my hooves. But I simply screamed and—trying not to think about it too much—I galloped straight towards the thing. And then I leaped into the air, twisting around so that I struck its flaring nostrils with my bloodied hoof.

It squawked and reeled. Immediately after, it rose up onto its hind legs and flared out its massive, almost featherless wings. It flapped them wildly; the dull feathers smashed into me, strong enough to send me careening into the crumbled wall.

I landed with a thud and a scream. Pebbles rained down on me as I quickly rolled back onto my belly and jumped onto my hooves. A huge laceration now decorated my shoulder, but I didn’t feel it yet. I would soon. Instead, I shook my head and shot off a few steps backwards; with a gulp, I then leapt behind a pile of boulders and slammed my hoof onto the targeting laser for my gun. It flared into life immediately. Without a wasted breath, as the beast roared and hissed and slammed massive piles of rock aside as if they were made of feathers, I jumped out.

I hardly even waited for the laser to land before I bit down firmly. The shock of the gunshot sent me reeling onto my back. Shudders coursed through my body. But as I glanced upwards to see what damage I had done to my attacker, a horrific sight met my eyes; the bullet merely bounced off of its chest, heading straight for me! I screamed and tried to scramble backwards, but it had too much momentum! It embedded itself directly into the flesh of my rump. The skin was absolutely tattered, frayed like string! The deep red flesh below peeked out, and that was when I felt it. The cold air bit at the exposed nerve endings.

I hurled, my vision swimming. And then that sickle of a claw hooked under my hind legs and threw me into the air. The beast played with me, letting me land with a sickening thud on my side before it bent down. It snapped its beak at me and snagged my skin; it rolled me across the floor, slamming its puny fore legs down against my wounds as it did so. I wailed and fought to get onto my back, in a position to shoot again, but I simply couldn’t.

This was it!

I bucked out awkwardly with my rear legs, but I made no contact. I snapped at the beast’s impenetrable skin with my teeth and struck out with my forelegs, but the thing didn’t even seem to notice. And then it grew bored, and let me get up—and then it threw me up into the air once more, its jaws opened to swallow me whole.

Something cold and wet and weightless ensnared my body. I howled, waiting for those tiny daggers to hook my flesh—but only felt the horrid thud of my body against the cold rock once more. That pain was nothing in comparison.

Shit! This had been a really shit plan!

I scrambled to my hooves, lamely bucking a few rocks at the beast’s beak. One landed in its open mouth and almost immediately rolled down into its throat. It coughed and sputtered, wheezing momentarily; without a second thought, I ran.

The pain coursed through my body, adrenaline not enough to dull it now. But as I all but slammed into Thorn, who stood waiting terrified just around the next corner of the semi-caved in tunnel, I realised that neither of us could afford to worry about trivial things such as this sheer, unbearable agony that coursed unrelentingly through my veins. It was as if a bucketful of acid had been mixed in with my blood; each step that I took was hell. By the half-strangled whimpers that came from Thorn, he fared little better.

And yet we both still ran. And gallop we did. Because the beast was hot on our tail, still smashing its way through the walls around us with thunderous roars.

The wasteland wasn’t merciful enough to take pity when my vision began to blur and my world began to spin. Was the debris flying now?

A part of me really couldn’t have cared less now. The pain was excruciating and completely endless; any chances of survival I may have possessed had long since diminished. I was a dead mare running. My legs throbbed; my heart burned; my vision began to fade to black at the edges. My skills abandoned me. I stumbled and clumsily scrabbled forwards. My hooves fumbled over footing. My legs wobbled threateningly with each step.

But, if I was going down, I would not be fucking bird chow!

But then, when neither of us could run any more, salvation came. It was a tiny hole. It was so small that I would have missed it had Thorn not fallen. But it was enough.

With a hiss of pain, my bruised and shutting down body protesting at the fact that it was still doing this whole “living” thing, I rammed him through with my muzzle. He screamed. I ignored it and skidded through after him on my underbelly. The extra pain made me yelp—but I didn’t even feel any worse. Because I couldn’t possibly feel any worse than I did now, hauling my broken body across these goddamned rocks.

And then I let myself lie. I got into a comfortable position, which basically meant I stopped. There was no comfort anymore. There would never be comfort. There was never any hope. We were blissfully ignorant of the dangers of this hell hole.

And then it got worse. As my vision finally gave in, and Thorn’s feeble horn light extinguished itself in a puff of magic, I saw it.

Just a few lengths from where we lay, another beast lay twitching.

Level Up!

New Perk: Bird Brained Level One

You made some stupid choices, huh? But at least you won't do it again. Intelligence is temporarily raised by one when talking to a fellow fool.

Author's Note

So sorry for the unacceptable delay, but I hope this chapter makes up for it! As always, please be sure to leave a favourite and a thumb up if you're enjoying it, and if there are any errors in the story or if you have any ideas/questions/general comments, please ask!