Discovery Horizon I

"At this rate, we'll reach Baltimare twenty years from now! Faster, you worthless pieces of shit, faster!!" Our master- a unicorn mare named Blaq Tar- shouted as she cracked the whip loudly above our heads. The other slaves did as they were told and trotted faster. Aside from the sound of the chains rattling, hooves trotting against the barren wastes, cracks from my Blaq's whip and occasional screams coming from the rear, everything was quiet as we traveled toward the coastal city of Baltimare.

"Daisy, come here," Blaq Tar said. I stood and walked across the platform to my master, but the chains bound to my neck and ankles only allowed me to go so far towards her. She sat there with a bored expression on her face and her head propped up on her hoof.

"Yes, master? How can I be of service?" I questioned with forced yet genuine politeness.
"Be a dear and check on my wife," Blaq Tar replied with a smug smile "I'm sure you've heard her alerting enemies to our position."

"I heard her screaming, master. I'll go and check, but I'm positive it's contractions again," I said, "oh, uh, master, could you could remove my chains first so I may go?"

"Ah, yes. 'Bout forgot," Tar said, pulling out a key attached to a necklace from behind the collar of her shirt and removing it. She sat there for a moment and watched herself twirl the key around her hoof as if rubbing in the fact that I was enslaved and she was not before getting up and trotting over to me. Blaq Tar slipped the key into the lock of the chain around my neck and unlocked it. The collar immediately popped open and fell onto the floor. I watched as the rest of my binds popped off and fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

"There. Now hurry on and check on my wife," Blaq Tar said as she slipped the key back around her neck, "I love her to death, but her screaming to the high heavens is getting on my nerves."

"Yes, master," I said, watching her return to her chair. I trotted to the edge of the large platform, jumped down on the hot wasteland sand and proceeded to make my way to the separate platform being carried behind Blaq Tar's. I climbed onto the platform and entered the tent in the center. Blaq Tar's wife sat laid back in a chair close to a vanity inside the tent. Four other slaves, one of them being a young filly, tended to her every need.

"Ugh! Thank Celestia you're finally here, doctor," Blaq Tar's wife, Bomb-Tastic, groaned "my body has decided to give this lil' piece of shit an eviction notice."

"Would you like some painkillers, Mistress?" I asked.
"No, I've felt worse pain and got through it just fine. Now stop talking and get this thing out of me," Bomb-Tastic replied through clenched teeth.

"Will one of you go fix a bucket of cool water and find a rag? And can somepony go see if Master Tar would like to be present for the birth?" I questioned my fellow slaves.

"I'll go fetch Master Tar," A soft-spoken, blonde-haired unicorn mare replied. The filly trotted away with the handle of a rusted metal bucket clamped between her teeth. While we waited for either slave to return, the remaining two helped me move Bomb-Tastic from the chair to her makeshift bed and helped me with other preparations. The young filly trotted into the tent with a bucket full of water and a rag draped across her muzzle. Soon after, the blonde-haired slaved returned with Blaq Tar and the delivery of her child began.

Sometime later, as the sun began to set, a healthy filly was born into the wasteland. After tending to the baby, I was dismissed from the tent. I returned to my place on Master Tar's platform and sat down. One of Tar's slavers approached me and chained me to the platform. Idle chatter was exchanged between us as he worked. I watched the slaver walk away when he had finished. He wore makeshift armor and carried a pistol on his side. The setting sun seemed to make his golden mane glow.

Most wastelanders assume all slavers are horrific monsters and treat their slaves like shit. In most cases, those assumptions would be correct. For the past year, I have been enslaved to as many slavers a gun clip can hold. The majority of my previous owners and those working for them had been just that; monsters. However, a few of my previous owners had been a few steps short of 'monster' and treated me and other slavers with a bit more respect than most others.

Blaq Tar bought me three and a half months ago from my previous owner, a unicorn named Moise, at a makeshift slave auction just a few miles north of Los Pegasus. Blaq Tar only owns a few slaves personally, me being one of them. The rest, in her eyes, are simply cargo she herds across the wasteland and sells at various slave auctions. Just like any other slaver in the wasteland, Blaq Tar is loud, strict and short-fused. But unlike any other slaver, Blaq Tar, for the most part, treats her slaves with respect, so long as she's in a good mood and they do as told.

Her significant other, on the contrary, isn't as respectful and kind to us slaves as she is. Bomb-Tastic is more or less like any other slaver, loud, obnoxious, crude and rude, and has an even shorter fuse (no pun intended) than Blaq Tar does. But thankfully, Blaq Tar keeps her in check and gets on her case whenever she's disrespectful towards us. Not long after starting our journey to Baltimare, I had gone up to Blaq Tar and asked her why she had been so kind to us slaves.

"I won't lie to you, Daisy," Tar had said "I'm not nice to you lot just for shits and giggles. The only reason I treat you and the others the way I do is so that none of you run away."

"As if," Bomb-Tastic had butted in "Blaq-y here actually gives a fuck about you and our other slaves. She's rather attached to you lot. It's such an inconvenience, especially considering someday, we'll sell you all."

"Don't listen to her, Daisy, the pregnancy hormones have her brain in a knot," Tar had said "a runaway slave means one less slave to sell unless they're recaptured. But do you know what one less slave to sell means, Daisy?"

"Uh, fewer caps that you will earn?" I replied.
"Exactly. The only things I care about are Bomb-Tastic, our unborn child, money, and living," Tar had said.

"Don't forget about our slaves~" Bomb-Tastic had snickered. Blaq Tar and Bomb-Tastic had then proceeded to argue.

Before becoming a slave, I had lived a normal life in a small, quiet town a few miles outside of Fillydelphia. The town had been called Cloverfield before a group of raiders ambushed, pillaged and burned it down to the ground. The occasional traveler had wandered into town, stocking up on supplies, trading and things of the like before wandering into Filly. Most of them had stopped by my office to purchase medical supplies, a few had needed to be patched up. Before becoming a slave, I even had my own name, one given to me by my parents. Sew-And-So. Now, however, I was only a slave named Daisy.

Being a quiet town, nothing exciting had really ever happened in Cloverfield. Raider attacks had been a surprisingly rare occurrence and slavers had never passed that way to get to Fillydelphia. One day, a group of badly injured travelers had found Cloverfield and two out of the three stayed for a little over three months. However, one of them, a mare, had passed away a few weeks after their arrival. The other two, a female griffon and a stallion, recovered and left Cloverfield. During their stay, the griffon- who called herself Skull- and I had become rather close since she spent most of her time by the stallion's side in my office. Skull's upper half was grey while the rest of her was a rusty red color. Her beak and claws were the typical yellow, her eyes were blue and the tips of the feathers on her head and the area around her eyes were a light red color. I had soon learned the three of them were the last of their group called the Knights of Iron Glory and the ordeal they had been through.

Months after they had left, Cloverfield had been attacked, ambushed rather, a group of raiders. The children living in Cloverfield and I had been locked in my office, hiding behind a makeshift fort made of tables and chairs. Outside, we had heard our neighbors, loved ones, and friends being slaughtered and the cackles and howls from the raiders. One raider- a pegasus- had broken down the door and found us huddled in the corner. He had green eyes, green messy hair, and an orange coat. I had taken a protect stance at the point over the children, ready for that raider to attack us, but he had just stood there, staring. Eventually, he had spoken, telling us to leave out the back window and that he would cover for us. As surprising as we had found it, the children and I did not hesitate to take the opportunity to escape unscathed.

We fled through the window and out into the wasteland, never once looking back. Over time, the children and I had slowly became separated. They had either been taken in by caring wasteland families or had succumbed to the terrors lying in wait. Eventually, I had ended up wandering the wastes alone, occasionally stumbling across others needing my help.

A month before becoming a slave to a stallion named Blue Mane, I had stumbled across a ragtag group of wasteland adventurers. We traveled the wastes doing odd end jobs here and there. Everything had seemed to be going well for us for the longest time, that was until we had found ourselves in the middle of a slaver-raider rivalry. The raiders had killed our leader, a male zebra named Rizt, and taken the rest of us hostage. We had stayed captive at their camp for what had felt like an eternity until they eventually sold us to slavers for food and caps. That day, I had become a slave. In the past, I've had some shitty days, but that day, in particular, had been the worst of them all.

Snapped from my thoughts by the sound of gunfire, I'm forced to watch from my binds on the platform as blood suddenly erupts from the heads of two slavers. A few slavers abandoned their posts in order to find and eliminate our attacker. Somepony shouted that a sniper was attacking, but from where, nopony knew. Blaq Tar ordered more slavers to find the attacker and kill them. Just as they stepped over the hill ahead of us- their weapons drawn and ready- we watched as they were ripped to shred by bullets from we could only assume to be a minigun. Panic swept over us slaves as we tried to run and hide, but our shackles kept us from going very far. Most of the slaves who had been pulling the platform along simply dropped to the ground and covered their heads. The rest of us stood there trembling hopelessly in our chains as we watched more and more of Tar's slavers die.

As I stood there cowering on Tar's platform unable to run or hide, the chains binding me to the platform snapped suddenly. Instinctively, I attempted to bolt away and find cover, but instead, something grabbed ahold of my tail and yanked me backward. My body is forced to spin around and face the source preventing me from running away. Blaq Tar's muzzle came inches from my own as she gently shoved a soft, wrapped bundle into my chest. I looked down to see the cute, sleeping of an innocent little baby.

"No matter what happens, you keep this baby safe," Blaq Tar said as she gave me a small saddlebag, a makeshift baby carrier, and a revolver.

"Y-yes ma'am," I said nervously.
Blaq Tar looked out at her crew and her slaves before looking back at me with a sigh.

"Listen, this'll be the last time we'll see each other," Blaq Tar said "with the way things are going now, I know my guys and I won't win this fight, and all you slaves will go free. I just want you to know, Daisy, that I genuinely respected and cared for you. Those others slaves, I could honestly care less if they happened to die or not in the crossfire, but you- on the other hoof- I care if you die. I care if you live and if you don't run now, you won't at all. So go, take care of my baby and keep her safe."

"I won't let you down, Master Tar," I said "good luck."
I watched as Blaq Tar hopped down from her platform and charged headfirst into battle. Without looking back, I jumped off the opposite side of the platform and ran away from the scene as fast as I could. I quickly navigated the desert, zipping past cacti and tumbleweeds, a cloud of dust stirring in the wind behind me. I skidded to a stop as the ground suddenly shook. Parts of the sky above flickered and changed, turning to black in some places and a whitish-blue color in others. It reminded me of how a terminal screen would do if one pressed a hoof against it. The scenery all around me began to do the same and seemingly fall apart.