A subtle breeze blew over the abandoned battlefield, carrying dust from one place to another. Frosty Charmer carefully walked across the scattered debris, looking here and there for something worth scavenging. He chewed on nothing as he searched, every fibre of his malnourished body ready to spring into action at the first sign of danger.
Then something caught his attention. Beneath the shade of a twisted piece of metal embedded in the ground, a subtle hint of movement and a sound, along with a distinct if oddly misshapen form. The turquoise unicorn stepped closer to investigate, still careful about his surroundings. He pushed his yellow-striped green mane out to way, to make sure he was seeing right.
There was a mare there, a pegasus it seemed, her coat white and her mane a fierce red. She wore the same kind of military green clothes as Frosty, though hers weren't as tattered and worn out as his. They didn't fit her quite right though, her swollen and bloated stomach bulged out from beneath them in an unnatural way. Infected, clearly.
Frosty pulled his tarp off his back and opened it on the ground. Carefully, very carefully, he lifted the mare's body up in his magic and placed her onto the tarp, where he got a better look at her. She was beautiful, truly beautiful. There was something around her neck, a dog tag. Frosty picked it up to get a better look at it. Elise Adler, that's what it read. "Elise?" he asked, turning towards the mare.
She didn't answer, her expression more than a little hazy. The unicorn considered his options. He wasn't yet short on supplies in his base. And right then, taking the mare to safety took priority. He could always scavenge more at another time, there didn't seem to be much worth finding in the battlefield anyway. With one last look around, he grabbed the corner of his tarp and began to pull.
A few minutes of being dragged around under the sun seemed to have some effect on the mare. Her light blue eyes came more into focus, though her gaze was still rather directionless compared to the unicorn's. She began to groan about two minutes in, and by the time she was able to string together words she was asking to be killed. Sloshing sounds came from her ballooned-out belly, and she was sweating far more than the temperature justified.
Frosty felt sorry for the poor, beautiful thing. She truly must have been in pain. "Don't worry," he tried to reassure her as he walked along, "I'll help you get better. You can trust me, I'm a friend." He pulled the tarp and her over a small hill. "You'll see, I'm taking you to my place. You'll feel better there." He looked towards his rusted wooden hovel, not too far from where they were. Just a little more walking to get there.
Frosty finally reached the front door of his would-be house. It was dangerous to stay in a single place, especially one as exposed as the old and half-broken building, but there were advantages to it too. The unicorn had chosen to go for the more dangerous but more rewarding accommodation, he was tough and skilled enough to defend himself in case of raiders or more likely thieves.
The worn out door slid open with a creak, and Frosty stopped dead in his tracks as he looked inside. Drawers had been flipped open, things lay discarded on the floor, and in a pile to the side a cyan earth pony was digging through his belongings. The frighteningly skinny mare looked up towards the duo, her eyes deep inside her skull. She cackled, a bitter and hollow sound. "Sea's a little far, what's the whale doing here?" she barked, noticing Elise.
Frosty grit his teeth so hard it hurt. His horn glowing, he stormed forward, as a floorboard flew up and the fire axe he hid underneath it levitated to his side in the grasp of his magic. He reached the mare in a blink, and a moment later he'd hacked down onto one of her hind legs, leaving a bleeding wound behind. The pony fell to the ground, screaming and suddenly begging him to stop, but he didn't listen.
He kept striking the wound, severing muscles and splintering bone with hit after hit of the blunted blade. The pony below him thrashed around and cried, her bones threatening to cut through her skin as she moved left or right in search of a way out. But he held her down, easily overpowering her malnourished form, even as he heard her clearly visible ribcage crack between his weight. Again and again the axe came down, no matter what the mare tried to do.
Finally, with a hollow thud, the blade hit the wood of the floorboards, right after cutting through the last strip of flesh and skin that still held the now dismembered leg attached to its owner. Frosty let go of the weapon, and punched the mare straight in the face, colouring her tears of pain with blood from her broken nose. Then he began to walk, forcefully carrying her along as she left a bloody trail on the floor.
He dragged her all the way to the backyard, and the mare began to shiver in fear even before she saw what was waiting for her. The smell hit her like a brick as they turned a corner into the corridor leading there, and it only got worse from that point. As they finally walked out the door, her worse fears were confirmed, and she was forced to stare at the pile of rotting corpses they were slowly but steadily heading towards.
She screamed and thrashed around more and more, but it was all pointless, the hold of the stallion's magic too strong for her. Without ceremonies, she was hauled on top of the pile, landing with a squelch over the decomposing mass of other ponies whose faith she was destined to share. Before she had even a chance to get up, she felt the unicorn's magic envelope her limbs, then heard a crack as all three her remaining legs were broken.
The scream that came from her throat was so loud it hurt on the way out. She wanted it all to stop, but it was useless, there was nothing she could do. Just lie there and suffer, as she bled out to her death. She couldn't even scream anymore, even if she tried her voice was hurt too badly. No moving, no help, just suffering and whimpering. Just how long would it last? She prayed, not for safety, but for the blood loss to make her pass out, and oblivion to welcome her
Her one and only hope was for her death to come soon. She looked dead ahead in front of her, through the tears in her eyes, only for two eye-sockets eaten out by crawling maggots to stare back at her. Only then did she notice the chest of the pony they belonged to was still rhythmically rising and falling, the half-decomposed husk of bone and skin still barely alive. Fear froze the blood in her veins, terror kicking in, and she began to scream and thrash again.
Frosty closed the door to his backyard, cutting off the screams of a mare now beyond sanity, and quietly walked back to the entrance. "I'm terribly sorry about that," he said to Elise, as he cleaned the axe with a nearby cloth and hid it back below the floor. "Nothing bad happened while I was gone, right?" He walked up to the bloated mare, making sure she was still as he'd left her. It would have been such a tragedy if she'd been attacked while he was dealing with that intruder.
Sighing in relief once he was sure she wasn't harmed, the stallion began to pull her into the house. After her head passed through the door without issues though, her large and overstretched belly got caught in the frame. Frosty made a frown as he gave another tug, but the mare appeared to be stuck. Thoughtfully biting his lower lip, he moved back towards her to get a better look and try to figure something out.
The mare was twitching, unnaturally so. Nervous spasms wracked her body and limbs, clearly out of her control, and her eyes had a watery, faded tinge to them. She looked like a pony with a very serious fever or illness, though her temperature wasn't too high. The skin on her belly was pulled taut, filled with stretch marks, and the contents of it seemed to slosh around and growl and poke up in places, almost like there was something trying to get out.
The stallion took hold of the tarp again. Pulling in with his hooves, and softly, gently pressing on the mare's distended gut with his magic, he finally managed to pull her through the door. Then he carried her further inside the house, locking the door as he did, and ignoring the mess the intruder had made. There would be time to deal with it later, Elise was more important now. "You're quite heavy," he said to her, "but that's not a problem. I'm a strong stallion, you see."
The duo finally reached the would-be kitchen of Frosty's humble abode. "There now. I've got something for you." He set her down on a side of the floor, then began to go through a set of cupboards on the other end of the room. "I know it's here somewhere," he said, rummaging through it. Then there was a thud. "Ah-ha!" the unicorn exclaimed, emerging from the wooden shelf with a jar held in his magic.
He quickly fetched a spoon, then plopped down at Elise's side. "Open wide," he said, sinking the spoon into the now open jar and bringing it to the mare's lips. "I keep it for special occasions," he added. With a little help from his magic, he let the spoonful of sugar slip into the pegasus' mouth, while he leaned to her side and lovingly rubbed her inflated belly. "Everything is going to be alright now," he said, running a hoof across the beautiful mare's stretched out skin.
Author's Note
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