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                          Red Gas                          
               -by Opportunistic Pragmatist-               
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                     Purified by flame                     
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Purified by flame
Hello, my name is Andrew Spolch. Don’t forget it.
I woke up in a city made of crystal, but that wasn’t me biggest worry.
I was in a land filled with talking ponies that reach a little above my waist, that was not my biggest worry.
My biggest worry was the fact that the city was stuck in a snowstorm, my breath came out red and I coughed up blood every now and then. And I wasn’t the only one.
Right now I was in some alleyway along with some of these ponies, huddled around a fire someone started in a bin. It stank but at least it kept us warm-ish.
“So what is the situation here?” I ask, the ponies had bigger concerns right now than what I am and the humans history.
The one who coughed the most often, Hallow Mine, was telling me the story. “Two weeks ago a red mist appeared in the streams of the city, ponies either died immediately or started slowly dying like us. The princess, the guard and the well off ponies decided to leave us behind until the problem either fixed itself or we all died. Nobody is allowed to leave or enter the city.”
The princess sounds like a bitch. “The princess sounds like a coward.”
“AND SHE IS!” Shouted another pony before he curled up in a coughing fit.
Hollow Mine continued “Apparently some sort of cure is being researched in Equestria, but no progress has been made since they announced the thing. Every now and then a pony in strange armor shows up and grabs whoever it can get it’s hooves on, we think that they are trying to cure the plague by experimenting on us. I’m telling you, once we all nearly die they will come back here and expect bucking thanks for what they did! A leader should suffer along with their ponies, not abandon them at the first sign of trouble!”
We sat around the fire in silence after that, competing in an unannounced competition to make the most visible cloud of red breath.
The ponies around me started falling. One of them stood next to me like he was almost fine and then he just dropped and cracked his head open on the floor, nobody moved to help him since once you lose control of your body it’s apparently too late.
“How about we try to cure it ourselves?”
All of the others look at me like I’ve gone mad so I elaborate.
“We had a plague of similar scale back where I am from, it eventually stopped.”
The ponies looked at me and slowly nodded, it’s better to die fighting than just falling over and not getting up after all.
“Gather all the corpses into the middle of town, rally any survivors you find to do the same.” I order before going off to find myself a corpse to drag.
I come across a pony in a terrible state. Blood caked its eyes and mouth. A good amount of the ponies coat had fallen off to reveal torn open flesh, probably the work of a rat or something. I grab one of the ponies frost bitten hooves and pull it back towards the middle of the city, leaving a trail of red snow behind me.
After dropping of my corpse at the soon to be bonfire I returned to the streets once again, this time looking for suitable firewood. Yeah, crystals don’t burn very well so I ended up dragging multiple bins back so that I could empty their contents onto the pile so they act as some sort of kindling.
The stream of ponies bringing in bodies was slowly getting bigger and faster, the ponies who originally set off sometimes being dragged back by whoever went after them.
The pile of diseased corpses slowly grew until it almost touched the crystal castle it was built under. A statue of a heart which was on a pedastool below the castle was now coated with blood from the ponies lying on and around it, if I wasn’t coughing my lungs out then I would think up some sort of symbolic meaning for this.
The pile of corpses was complete and joined by a decently sized crowd of ponies huddling near the single lit bin that I dragged under the castle, we have managed to round up around 25 ponies to help us with our plan.
“BURN THE DEAD!” I declared to the ponies huddled around the fire, they emptied the other bins onto the pile without prompt and swiftly set the pile of corpses on fire.
As the corpses burned, the red mist seamed to lessen and the ponies now huddled around the burning corpses for they were a source of warmth now. The pile probably stank terribly but all of us had long lost the ability to smell so we paid it no mind.
More ponies shambled towards us from the many streets and houses that surround the city center, we were more than happy to share our warmth.
Hollow Mine has survived the corpse gathering and walked up to me. “You think this will work?”
“Honestly? No. But I do think that it’ll bring the ponies hope to know that they are fighting off the disease themselves.” I didn’t see the point in lying to the pony, he won’t be around long enough to tell my secrets anyway.
We both sat on an overturned bin and stared at the curtain of fire which devoured the corpses of the fallen ponies, how it jumped from one pony straight to another and simply refusing to go out. Some of the ponies who weren’t on the pile were actually smiling, probably due to the warmth messing with their heads after such a long time in the cold.
Now, what am I supposed to do next. And I mean after I fix the empire, a new ruler will definitely have to be put in place and I won’t hesitate to start a fucking revolution if that’s what it takes.