My name was Bradley Tenpenny.
I grew up in Ponyville, leading a life that was as simple as it was wonderful; a life that was positively brimming with the promise of great things to come. After a few years of hard work and dedication, I’d finally gotten promoted to second shift forestallion in the gem mines, becoming the youngest ever to hold the position. Though the position was demanding and carried a massive burden of responsibility, the pay was substantially better and I’d finally saved up enough money to buy an engagement ring. Eventually, I’d worked up the courage to go along with the ring, finally proposing to the love of my life, a beautiful mare named Carrot Top. I was so sure I was going to be snuffed that I’d continued to ramble on and on even after she’d said yes twice, before she finally silenced me with a kiss. Three months later we were married, and two months after that we were expecting. Yes, life was coming up spades for me.
At least, until the accident.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“Hey, Nails! Quit looking lost and get over here, I’ve got something you gotta see!”
At the mention of my nickname, I whipped my head around to lock onto the source; a grey mountain of a pony by the name of Spike. Spike was the foreman for the first shift, and he was far more anxious to get off shift than I was to go on. With a deep sigh, I set off from the rail platform that ferried the workers to and from the mines, stepping over the rocky ground with a dubious look on my face. ”Something you’ve gotta see” usually entailed a lewd magazine centerfold or a booger that could best be described as ‘big enough to be anatomically improbable’, at least when it came to Spike.
Even as I drew near, I could tell that this wasn’t going to be the same old triviality that it usually was… there was a crowd gathering ‘round Spike even as I approached.
Well… this looks promising.
Shouldering my way through the crowd was no issue for me; I stood half a head taller and was a bit stockier than just about everypony else, with the exception of spike. That joker is a friggin mutant, I swear it… there’s no way a normal pony grows so large. Breaking free of the throngs that had gathered, I came snout-to-snout (more like snout to neck… did I mention that Spike was a monster?) with Spike. The aforementioned pony-shaped-monstrosity had the single smuggest look on his face that I’d ever seen, quite a feat considering he always looked smug. What really caught my attention however was not his expression or even the gathering crowd, but that which he held in his hoof. Despite being draped with an oily rag to obscure it from view, whatever it was that he was holding was emitting a strange crimson light. I stared at the object for a moment, spellbound by the shifting lights and the promise of what lay underneath the rag.
Usually, Spike was given to comically overwrought theatrics when displaying one of his “treasures”, making outrageous claims and ridiculous boasts to any who would listen (and a few who didn’t want to). Today, he was doing none of these things; he merely panned his triumphant gaze silently across the crowd. As he cleared his throat to speak, every whisper of chatter was instantly quelled. His gaze once more returning to meet mine, he spoke up.
“I’m not going to waste your time, you know what this means as well as I do.”
Even as he said this, my heart leaped into my throat, seemingly in a desperate bid for freedom. With agonizingly slow movements, he raised his trunk-like limb and grasped the cloth with his teeth, pulling it off a centimeter at a time. For one brief instant, my thoughts were not with what was under the cloth; instead, the only thing in my head was the simple observation ’Man, I’ll bet that rag tastes terrible… ‘. All external thoughts ground to a halt as the improvised curtain was lifted, revealing the treasure within: a Fire Ruby.
The Fire Ruby is a legendary gem of incomprehensible value; the stories around the stone were nearly too fantastic to be believed. In fact, the entire existence of the stone was once thought to be mere myth, a remnant of the dark ages before the Unification. It wasn’t until Starswirl the Bearded came forward and announced the discovery of an actual tangible Fire Ruby that the stone had been accepted as actual entity instead of a legend. The tale of the Fire Ruby doesn’t stop there, though; Starswirl had heard the same legends as the rest of ponykind, and was all too eager to test their veracity. It was by this manner that the gem had moved from a mythical tale to a bona-fide legendary object. Starswirl’s experiments disproved the legends, but not in the way that most had foreseen; the legends didn’t come close to matching the sheer power of the stone.
It was said that a Fire Ruby held the same magical essence as a dragon’s flame; this was false. Compared to a Fire Ruby, Dragonfire was a mere candle. Using the Fire Ruby, Starswirl was able to send not just a piece of parchment, but an entire LIBRARY to the Princess, building and all. This is said to be the origin of the “Starswirl the Bearded” wing in the Canterlot Archives. The heart of a Fire Ruby is said to be fire incarnate, a piece of the sun frozen solid and sent plummeting to earth. While this was disproved and generally regarded as just plain silly, the core element was true: the heart of the ruby was possessed of a great amount of raw magical energy. Without a unicorn or other magical apparatus to shape the magic and form it into a useful spell, the Fire Ruby would discharge its entire magical essence in the form of an explosion, a massive ball of scarlet flame that would melt rock and ash everything else.
All of this power, and so much more… and it was resting in Spike’s hoof. Mouth agape, I lifted my gaze from the gently shimmering gem to the pony who held it, an expectant look upon his face; he was waiting for me to ask the question.
“Have you informed the Princesses yet?”
“Nope.”
“Good, we’ll want them—wait, what? No? Why the heck not?!”
“I wanted you to be here for this one. There’s more.”
“M… more? More what?”
With a triumphant smirk, Spike turned away from me and set off for the office, beckoning me to follow. The crowd had amassed in startling numbers to see this marvel for themselves, yet it parted like fog to make way for Spike’s passage. I quickly fell in behind him, not wanting to be swallowed up by the crowd as it closed in his wake. The entire journey to the office took less than a minute, but with the way my mind was running faster than a chicken in a twister, it felt like an hour. The entire time we walked, my mind kept stumbling upon the same word, over and over again.
More. More? More of what? There can’t possibly be more. There’s no way that there is any more of this stuff, can’t possibly be any more. But what if there is?
My train of thought was interrupted as soon as I reached the last question, my mind going blank as I walked into the office. Spike wasted no time with showmanship, striding straight through the office to a map tacked up on the far wall. With a thump that shook the very timbers of the building, he placed his hoof at the end of a dashed line, indicating the exploration shaft that had been under excavation for three months now, snaking its way in the very heart of the world and claiming the distinction of the deepest shaft ever dug. The day the shaft had begun to be sunk was the happiest day of my life. No, I wasn’t even at work that day, or the three days after; that was the day that Carrot Top and I had exchanged our vows. The three following days were for… recovery purposes.
The spot he was pointing to on the map corresponded to a segment just meters shy of the end of the tunnel, the point at which the excavation would simply cease and the tunnel would be re-purposed into a storage facility or some other similar purpose, so long as we didn’t hit a vein of gems. The air around us seemed to thicken, pregnant with dread purpose, as Spike tore his eyes from the map to lock onto mine.
“Nails, this isn’t the only Ruby. We struck a vein of Fire Rubies.”
So there it was. The first Fire Ruby discovered in over a millennium, and it wasn’t alone; it had brought friends. Swallowing became impossible as my throat parched and tightened, forcing me to fight to ask my next question.
“Ahem… how… how large are we talking?”
“According to Dirt… this is almost a quarter the size of the strike up in Flankorage.”
My Jaw hit the floor. Dirt was our senior geologist, and there was no mistaking that the guy knew his dirt… hence the name. Even so, his claim that this was a quarter the size of Flankorage… it was unbelievable, unfathomable. The gold strike up north had been discovered four years ago, and they were still pulling nuggets out of that mine. For this to be even close to that was… incredible. In the next two minutes, Spike laid out the basic details of the find.
They had just blown another segment of the shaft and were in the process of removing the debris to prep for the next blast, part of the never-ending cycle of life in the mines. Spike was at the blast face, chipping away at the loose rocks so they didn’t come down on some unlucky worker. He hit a strange, glossy black stone when he dislodged a particularly large boulder. Chipping away at the stone, he found that it shattered like glass. Recognizing it as obsidian from his highschool days, he chipped at it a bit more to see how deep it ran. The whole stone shattered suddenly, causing a small cave in and nearly crushing Spike in the downfall of rock. As the dust cleared, a single, shimmering crimson stone was visible from where it peeked out from behind a rock. He picked it up and took it to Dirt, who just about had a conniption when he saw it. Next thing you know, they were back at the face and Dirt was drooling on the floor as his horn glowed, probing the shape and composition of the vein.
A moment later, Dirt was finished with his “interrogation” of the rocks (that’s what he calls it, at any rate) and was busily drawing on the floor. At this point, Spike handed me a crude sketch on a piece of paper, telling me that they copied it from the floor-sketch. The image was a series of jagged edges and kinks, forking this way and that, growing thicker and thinner in a familiar looking pattern; it looked like a lightning bolt… at least in my opinion, anyways. He took a moment to enlighten me about a peculiarity if the sketch.
“Now, we don’t really have any way to pinpoint the location of the actual rubies themselves, but Dirt says that the obsidian is a carrier ore or something. I forget how he explained it exactly, but the basics are that the rubies are in the obsidian somewhere. He can’t penetrate the obsidian though… some technical mumbo-jumbo.”
My eye was drawn to a circle around one of the thinnest sections of the depiction, and as I squinted and brought the paper closer to my face, I could see that it was actually a small segment that was detached from the rest of the vein by a thin sheet of rock. I looked back to Spike, still wearing that smug look.
“Spike, what are you smirking at?”
“You notice anything missing from the map? Something that you find on every map?”
I cast a sarcastic glance up from the paper.
“Coffee stains? Spelling errors? I don’t know. Why don’t you just tell me?”
“Heh, coffee… alright, quit your whining. A scale. It’s missing the scale.”
“So it is. Now, why do I care?”
We both knew damned well why I cared, but I figured I’d give him one last opportunity for theatrics. He gleefully obliged.
“How long do you think that segment on the end is, Nails?”
I looked back at the sketch, looking for anything that would give me a hint and finding none.
“I don’t know, mate… fifteen meters?”
“Try seventy.”
Once more, my jaw hit the floor. If that segment of the sketch was seventy meters… then that would mean that…
“The whole vein is over twelve clicks long?”
Spike just nodded smugly. Bastard.
“Sweet Luna… “
“Amen to that, Nails. We’ve got to get through about thirteen meters of stone before we hit the rest of it. Considering how quickly I was able to get through the obsidian earlier, we could be looking at nearly double the speed we’re producing gems now, and of Fire Rubies, no less. We now control the only source of Fire Rubies in the world.”
The world went white around me for a second as my brain tumbled across a nigh-forgotten fact. A few years ago, the owner of the company had hit a bit of financial difficulty, offering stock in the company equivalent to a tenth of their pay. I had known the owner of the company, and had actually spent some time one-on-one with him as I tried to learn the ropes. A gristled, gruff old coot by the name of Rocky, he was the meanest sonofagun you’d ever meet if you got caught doing the wrong thing. Once you got him away from work, he was simply Rocky Top; a caring father, a devoted husband… my father-in-law. I’d met Carrot Top briefly in school, but I’d never interacted with her in any great degree until I’d started working at the mines. We’d started dating before I knew who her father was, and by the time I found out I was too head-over-hooves to care.
It was because I knew Rocky so well that I’d offered to take my entire paycheck in stock that month, and half my pay in stock for the next three. At the time, I was just doing whatever I could to help ease the increasing debt until the next big strike. At the end of the third month, we hit the biggest lode of gems any of us had ever seen, and the stock that I’d collected was forgotten in the mad rush that followed. Since then, the company had increased its size tenfold, the value of the stock rising with it, a fact that I’d never considered up until this point.
Good thing I hadn’t remembered this sooner… I might’ve tried to sell the stock to buy Carrot’s ring…
I shuddered at the thought of how much I would have lost. A vague memory of a conversation I’d had with Rocky all those years ago came floating back through the mists of my mind.
“I appreciate what you’re doing, sonny. Your decision to take stock instead of pay has helped ease the pain around here, if only slightly. I want you to know that I’ve matched the stock that I paid to you with my own stock; by my estimates, you now own about ten percent of the company.”
Ten percent of the company in its current glory is worth more than the entire operation was at the time. And now, with the Fire Rubies… I saw golden bits floating across the ceiling. I’d be able to buy Carrot the house of her dreams and never have to work again in my life, freeing all of my time to spend at home with her. Wait, rewind a minute. Ceiling?
Blinking, I sat up from where I lay on the floor. Spike was looking at me like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be concerned, cocking an eyebrow inquisitively.
“You alright? Didn’t know it was your nap time already, jeez. C’mon, get up.”
I climbed back to my hooves, still feeling a bit wobbly in the knees.
“Nails, I wish I could just take a nap wherever I wanted. What’s your secret?”
“Shaddup, before I sock you one.”
“You can try, if you’re feeling froggy.”
My head was still swimming a bit as I stood up.
“Yeah, maybe later. So, what now, Spike?”
“Well… we report it. Grab your gear, let’s go down there and talk to Dirt, draft up the report. Gotta make this one look good, it goes all the way to the top.”
“Alright, meet you at the shaft in ten.”
“See you there.”
I struck off for the lockers to get my gear for the day. Across the compound, there were scattered an assortment of buildings for various purposes, all constructed from the same thin metal sheeting. There was the Lab, where Dirt spent his days examining his namesake, there was the Barracks, a place that the workers could elect to live for a small deduction from their pay. Compared to off-site housing, the barracks were a steal, and most of the young workers chose to live there to get away from their parents until they’d saved enough to buy a house. There was the Mess Hall, where a portly but well-natured cook would serve us the best chow some of us had ever eaten, cracking jokes with us all the while. The large chocolate colored fellow endearingly called us all his “children” and asked that we simply called him “Chef”. While some of us found it a bit odd, Chef’s upbeat personality and incredible cooking far overrode any misgivings we might have had.
The Mess Hall was one of a cluster of three buildings, being situated on the right side of them group. The barracks were on the left of the group, and my destination was smack dab between the two: the Showers. Though it had been built primarily for the barracks personnel to use, it was not uncommon for the other workers to shower on site before heading home. Mostly, this was due to Chef’s no-nonsense, no-excuses rule that you WILL NOT come into the Mess Hall unless you are clean. Every so often, a new worker would disregard the brightly colored warning sign just outside the door and find himself being chased out of the Mess Hall with a spatula. The showers served another function though, and that was as the Locker Room. While there were only about two-dozen shower stalls, there were dozens of lockers arranged in rows, providing space to store your gear when not on shift.
I made my way to my locker (number sixty-nine, of course… the most highly coveted locker of them all) and withdrew my safety gear. I swapped the batteries in my headlamp with ones fresh off the charger, donned my cargo vest and emergency air tank, followed by my Forestallion’s vest with its distinctive reflective piping. I conducted a radio check with the operations center, and as soon as I got back a positive reply, I set off for the elevator shaft to meet Spike.
I was damned near floating; it was as if all of my dreams were coming true. Carrot and I could move into the country and build the house she’d always dreamed of, and neither one of us would ever have to work a day in our lives to cover the bills. Carrot’s farm could become a hobby rather than a necessity, not that it had ever really been one. Without having to work to support the family, I could spend all day with my beautiful wife and our baby, helping to raise him or her into a responsible and well mannered adult. Yes indeed, life was coming up in spades. Considering the smile on Spike’s face, it was pretty easy to see that he was having the same thoughts. I took my place beside him in the cart, flicking on my headlamp as the doors slid shut with a clang.
Through the grate of the door, I could just barely make out the shape of the sun as it dipped down behind the mountains, signaling the end of another day; the end of this chapter of my life. By the time the sun rose again, word of our discovery would spread like wild fire, and life would never be the same.
As the elevator lurched and began its hasty descent, the ground rose up to swallow us, the last rays of the sun vanishing overhead as we plunged into the abyss. Life would never be the same, alright; however, it would not be the paradise I’d imagined. The residual illumination from the sun slowly faded, only the beams of our headlamps staving off the darkness. Suddenly, everything went black.
I turned to look at Spike, seeing if his light had gone out as well. I looked in his direction, seeing him perfectly clearly against the blackness, as if the light on my helmet had come back on. This couldn’t be the case though, because there was nothing else in the blackness but him. It looked like he was saying something to me, his face contorting into a mask of terror as he screamed silently in slow motion. I began to notice a faint ringing sound in my ears, ever so slowly increasing in volume and pitch.
Okay, this is getting creepy. What’s going on? I tried to ask this question, but my mouth refused to cooperate, remaining slack-jawed despite my efforts. I tried to close my mouth, tried to move my tongue, turn my head, blink, do anything, to no avail. I was frozen; I was a statue. Spike’s pupils narrowed to pinpricks, so incredibly small it was scary to look at… almost like he had no pupils at all. Staring at him despite my will, his mute screams finally registered as a recognizable word to my mind:
“RUN!”
And then the world exploded into flames, emanating from within Spike and spreading outward, burning everything into ash.
I could feel my flesh sizzle and pop from the flames; though I was unable to move, I was able to feel. I felt the flames wash across my face, unable to close my eyes, and was forced to watch as everything went red, then white, and finally black. The flames raced down my throat, burning me alive from the inside out. This pain was transcendent; purifying me from within. The ringing in my ears had grown to a terrible, piercing roar, a drill boring its way into my skull and driving a pick of ice and fire into the space behind my eyes. Faintly, a part of me recognized the sound as that of myself screaming. In this moment, I had become the embodiment of agony. I couldn’t hear anything but the sound of my own pain. I felt nothing but the screams of my nerve endings as they begged for death in the wrath of the fire. I saw nothing but flashes of scarlet and white as each wave of pain rocked through my nervous system. I tasted my own burning tongue, and I smelled the stench of my coat being vaporized, and of my flesh blistering and popping in the conflagration.
Celestia, how long could this last before I finally died? How long would I be tormented by the flames before given the sweet release of death?
Dear Luna, end my pain. Take from me this suffering, give me peace!
Please, let it all end, let me die.
Please… kill me.
Kill me.
KILL ME!
My pleas for death fell upon deaf or uncaring ears as I was swept along the sea of madness, carried by the waves of pain as they crashed over me. In this sea of eternal agony, I thought I knew despair; I thought I knew pain. I was no longer Bradley Tenpenny, husband of Carrot Tenpenny-Top, soon-to-be father of one; I was pain, and pain was me.
We are me.
I am One.
I don’t know how long I existed like that, if I even existed at all. All I know is that eventually, the waves of pain tossing my form upon this sea of madness slowly abated, washing me upon the shore of consciousness. The swells of pain caressed me still, though they failed to sweep me once more into the tossing surf as before. The pain I felt was concentrated in the second joints of my limbs, and my elbows and knees felt as if they were on fire.
Fire…
At the thought of fire, a series of images flashed through my head, each painful in its intensity.
The elevator shaft, descending into the void.
The stale air in the tunnel, dim lights flickering overhead as they dangled from bare wires.
Stepping through puddles of ground water that had seeped in, navigating the numerous tunnels and secondary shafts.
The raw face of the exploration shaft, black obsidian glistening wetly.
Dirt, with the biggest ear to ear grin I’d ever seen.
Lightning forked behind my eyes, breaking me out of this dream… was it a dream, or a memory? The sound of voices came from the blackness around me, muffled as if it was a great distance away.
Instinctively, I turned my head to look at the source of the sound. Or at least, I tried to. My head refused to move. I reached up to feel my head, trying to find out what was going on. My arm remained stationary, as if weighed down by a trillion tons of rock. What the hay… ? I tried to move everything, finding myself unable to move anything. No movement whatsoever. I took a deep breath to call for help, call for anybody to help me. I could hear the voices still; I knew they were out there. With a sickening pit forming in my stomach, my lungs continued to work just as they always had. I tried to hold my breath, and my lungs refused to heed my call, bend to my will. My eyes are glued shut, likewise refusing to open and permit me a glance at the world around me.
From the bottom of my heart and soul, I wanted to scream, NEEDED to scream, but the terrible silence stopped me. I needed to scream, needed to let somebody out there know that I yet lived; it was to no avail, something that made me need to scream all the more in a self perpetuating cycle of madness. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t see.
I watched as the flames danced across my eyes, vision shifting from crimson to white before finally fading to a static-filled black.
Lightning arced across my body, causing it to convulse of its own accord, taking me along for the ride. A bit of the fog of pain lifted, allowing the conversation to drift in a little bit louder, as if the source was closer now.
“… subject we’ve been looking for. No cerebral activity whatsoever.”
Another voice drifted out to meet my ears, that of a young female.
“Doctor, are you sure this is okay? Won’t he suffer terribly from the trials?”
“Nurse, I assure you that your fears are unfounded. His cerebrum has suffered massive and irreparable damage. His brain stem has been entirely severed, maintaining his autonomous functions and nothing more.”
I could feel the weight of the doctors words sitting upon my soul with all the crushing finality of a mountain caving in upon me.
The sound of an explosion and the roar of a collapse deafen me, reverberating through my core. I feel my world pitched violently to the side as a large rock strikes me upon the helm.
What the heck was that? Was that a nightmare, or a memory? The sound of a male voice, different from the first, drifted through the fog.
“He’ll never know what’s happened to him.”
“Correct. Nurse, had I not been sure of this, I’d not have committed him to live. It is impossible for the separated individual to experience pain, pleasure, memory, dreams, or thoughts of any kind. This young stallion shall be as unfeeling, as unthinking as the dead until the day he joins them.”
LIES! Please, help me! I can feel, I can think! Please, wake me from this nightmare!
“He is the perfect biological specimen for our needs. We’ll be able to evaluate the effectiveness of different methods of treatment without the need to use volunteers as test subjects. Any further questions, nurse?”
“No, doctor.”
“Good, good. If you would, please prep the feeding tube so we can be ready for the procedure this afternoon.”
“Yes doctor.”
“Very well then. I’ll be taking Jim for a tour of the rest of the facility now; I expect everything will be ready by the time we get back?”
“Yes, this should only take a moment, doctor.”
“See to it, then.”
I heard a pair of hooves walking away, leaving me alone with the nurse at my bedside. A deep sigh came from my left somewhere, followed by the sound of silverware on a metal table. The sound of the utensils being shuffled for a moment was replaced by the sound of drawers and then cabinets being opened and closed a moment later, as if somepony was searching for something. The sounds became more and more harried as they circled back to where they started and began the process over again. A single set of hooves approached the door, and the voice of the doctor from earlier rang out in the nearly silent room.
“I walked off without my clipboard, can you believe? Wait a second. Nurse, why isn’t the feeding tube in yet? This is a simple operation, stop wasting time.”
“I’m trying doctor, but I can’t find any anesthetic for the procedure.”
“Nurse, the subject has no sensations whatsoever; the anesthetic would be a waste.”
“But doctor, --“
“Enough, nurse. Perform the procedure as ordered, or we’ll find another nurse who will. Don’t forget, I’m the one who is writing the internship reviews.”
“Yes, doctor.”
A satisfied snort, and then the hooves retreated once more. The silverware sound returned once more, a short scraping sound indicating that one implement had been pulled off the table.
Not silverware, medical instruments. Scalpels.
I felt a hoof gently probe my neck below my Adam’s apple, the physical contact both soothing and reassuring to me. I might not be able to move, but at least I could still take comfort from the touch of another. Oh, Carrot… how I wish I could feel you in my arms once more. To feel the caress of your mane against my neck as we embrace, to inhale your lovely scent as I nuzzle your neck… the memory of the feeling was so vivid, it was as if I was there again. The feeling of Carrot pressed up against me as we lay together under the covers, a lazy Sunday morning just spent cuddled together and relishing the tactile sensations of another’s body against my own.
My ability to feel went from a blessing to a terrible curse as a line of ice was drawn beneath my voice box, fire spreading from the point like rays of the sun breaking over the horizon. I felt something warm streak down my neck, followed by another streak on the other side. A familiar coppery smell rose, and I knew all that I needed to; my neck had just been sliced open. The moment the fact registered in my conscious mind, the pain doubled and then redoubled, crimson streaks painting my vision in time with the agony of each pulse. This pain was nothing to the sensation that followed. Another scraping of tools on the metal tray was followed by the insertion of something ice cold into the incision that had just been made. The cool metal initially offered a glimmer of relief, but only for a moment. The implement expanded, opening wide the wound and facilitating the next implement of agony.
The next sensation was that of a serpent slithering down my throat, wiggling and squirming of its own accord as it was pushed along. The feeding tube felt as large as a tree trunk to my inflamed throat, scraping, ripping and tearing as it was forced into my stomach. The waves of agony washed over me once more, threatening to tear me from the shore and sweep me back into the sea of madness. Another silent scream welled up within me, another cry of anguish to which I could give no voice. At the very edge of consciousness, the next phrase drifts down to me as if in a dream, uttered by the nurse as she spoke to herself.
“I can’t help but feel sorry for this guy. He had a real nice wife and a good job… just look at him now… just a slab of meat strapped to a table. No arms, no legs, and no mind, yet he lives on. Luna, give me strength… Luna, may he find solace among your stars.”
Just a slab of meat. No arms. No legs. As the tube bottomed out in my stomach, the sudden flash of pain and the new knowledge that I was a mere slab of meat, a test subject… everything melted away as the tides of madness swept me to sea once more.
With no arms, how can I hold Carrot? How will I provide for her, take care of her when I can’t even take care of myself anymore? I’ll never be able to hold my child… the thoughts came to me, unbidden, despite my efforts to push them away.
The last image that came to me before drifting away into madness was one of me sitting at the edge of the fireplace on hearth’s warming eve, as a small foal bounced excitedly around me, a present in its mouth. The present was deposited upon my lap as the filly looked up at me with the biggest eyes, so full of love it made me melt.
”Open it, Daddy” she says.
All I can do is regard it wistfully as I wiggle my nubs, before replying with a hitch in my throat “I can’t.”
The sea of madness rose up to greet me, the waves of pain crashing over me mingling with the psychological pain of discovering that you have no legs, no arms, and no voice...
~*~*~*~*~*~
I awoke with a start, blinking in the bright light.
Wait. Blinking. I steadied myself for a moment, preparing for the worst as I tried to open my eyes. The light assaulted my eyes like needles, but this was immaterial; I could move! I tried to turn my head, discovering much to my delight that it actually cooperated again. I was so ridiculously excited; I could’ve jumped for joy. I didn’t have a chance to, though; my further jubilation was stopped cold by what I saw beside me. I was not in the hospital, but in my very own bed. There was not a nurse performing surgery while I was agonizingly awake, but rather Carrie lying beside me, still snuggled up in the blankets in that adorable manner of hers. She even had the little smirk she gets when she’s having a good dream… Slowly, so as not to wake her, I shifted my weight to my elbow and leaned over and kissed her softly on the cheek, as yet unsure if she was actually there or not. My lips caressed her soft skin, and I knew. I kissed her again, hungrily drinking in her intoxicating scent and savoring the flavor of her on my lips.
Could the nightmare be over? Was it all just a terribly frightening and horribly lucid dream? Oh, thank Luna above. Never before in my life had I ever been so glad to have had a nightmare as I was at that moment. With a newfound admiration for my limbs and a renewed adoration for my life and the ponies in it, I continued to plant kisses on Carrie’s cheek and down to her neck, smiling as I did so. Her cute little smirk grew into a contented smile, her eyelids fluttering open as she turned and favored me with an affectionate kiss. With a voice made low and sultry by sleep, she purred at me.
“Mmm… Good morning, Brad.”
Hearing her voice saying my name so sensuously just made me melt into her with another flurry of kisses. As we broke our lips’ embrace, I pulled back and cocked an eyebrow with a smile.
“Good morning? So far, but I think I know how we can make it a great morning.”
To further illustrate my intentions, I punctuated this with a wink. Carrie replied only with a small moan and a smile, shimmying her hips before purring “Oh, do you now? Well, I think we can arrange that.” Her voice was silk wrapped in honey, and I was powerless to resist. I leaned in for another kiss—
The world rocked around me, and suddenly I was back in the tunnels of the mine, dust in my lungs and an air tank on my back. I blinked in confusion, looking around for a second in disbelief. Spike was standing just in front of me, waving a hoof at me.
“Hello, earth to Nails, come in Nails, over. Dude, snap out of it. Do you want to see the face or not?”
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs out of my brain. I was in the tunnels, on my way to check out the rock face containing the Fire Rubies. Hadn’t I just woken up a second ago? What happened to the ”fun time” I was about to have with Carrot?
What the… how did… Man, I’m really losing it. I might need to take a break off of work if this keeps up.
Smiling, I recalled the implications of finding the Fire Rubies. After this, I could take all the time that I needed. I was light on my hooves as we walked down the tunnel, the lights overhead becoming fewer and farther between as the floor became rougher under-hoof, marking our descent into the shaft under construction.
As we walked farther along, I began to notice a high-pitched whine, not unlike that of a rock drill, growing steadily louder as we traversed the tunnel. By the time we were nearing the turn-off into the exploratory shaft, the noise had grown so unbearably loud that I had to clamp my hooves over my ears. Nopony seemed to notice the noise but me, and even with my hooves pressed tightly against my head, the noise grew louder still. The aural assault drove me to my knees, my discomfort finally becoming evident. Spike turned to look back at me, concern written across his features as he ran back to where I’d fallen.
“Nails, you feeling alright brother?”
The noise was so loud I could feel it boring into my ear. I had no chance to reply. As soon as I opened my mouth, I could do nothing but scream, the sound pouring forth from me as if under incredible pressure. The scream took on a life of its own, and the world shook as its timbre rose. The noise had grown so incredibly loud that it had acquired a color; the color red. The world around me was shaking itself to pieces under the wrath of the noise, and a large chunk of ceiling was sundered from the ceiling to ricochet off of my helmet. Lightning flashed before my eyes as I was swept bodily off of my hooves and hurled to the ethereal breeze, falling out of space and time to land flat on my back with a jolt.
Everything around me was black, not merely absent of light but seemingly possessed of a tangible aspect; it was so thick that I could reach out and touch it. I waved my hoof in front of my face to see how dark my world had become, or at least I tried to. My arm hung limply at my side… or what was left of my arm, at any rate.
Once more, I was trapped within the prison of my own mind, the walls of the prison being none other than my own flesh and bone, refusing to bend to my will. If I had any sort of power over this body that had become my tomb, I would have wept.
Had I dreamed, or was I dreaming now? Were they memories?
But they were so REAL, so VIVID... too real to be a dream… right?
To have been given this respite from my damnation only to be thrown back into it… it broke something in me. How many more times would I “wake up” from this nightmare and go back to my life just to be thrust back into this horror? Every inch of my skin itched from the burns, even on the limbs that were no longer there; my lungs were full of glass and fire, burning me alive from the inside out with each breath; and there was a ringing in my ears that sounded like the scream I wished I could voice.
The passage of time had ceased to mean anything to me. I’ve cried out in anguish, cried for help, and begged for death… all silently. I cannot tell days from hours. I can’t tell if I’m alive and dreaming or dead and remembering. How long I have been like this, drifting from dream to memory to… this… I cannot say.
Steps once more approach, echoing off of the tile floor. Two female voices drift across the ether to tickle my mind.
“… from that explosion the other day.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. Know what happened?”
“Not really, do you?”
“No. that’s why I asked you, genius.”
“Hey now… all I know is what everypony else seems to know. There was an explosion in the gem mines, and a bunch of ponies died or were injured. That’s where we got this thing from.”
Thing? THING?! I’m not a thing, I am a pony, you twit! I am a living, breathing, thinking, FEELING pony, not some science experiment. At least… I think I’m alive.
“Oh, okay… wow, that’s terrible. He’s not a thing, he’s a pony. Or at least, he was. Still, have some respect for the departed.”
Thank you, whoever you are. Thank you.
Words cannot express my appreciation for somepony still recognizing me as a pony and treating me with respect, even if only a bit.
“Alright, you win, you win. I’ll refer to him as the subject instead of a thing. Happy?”
“No, but its better. So tell me… what’s the hammer for?”
“We’re testing a new injection that’s supposed to help bones heal much faster.”
“Okay… how do we do that? He’s missing his limbs from the joins down.”
“Simple; we carefully administer a break to one of the major bones that’s still there, and then sling it and inject this into the break site.”
“That sounds terrible… let’s get this over with.”
No… No, please no…
“Grab his right leg above the stump and at the hip and put it into the brace.”
“Alright… I can’t watch this, though. Just… no.”
I felt cold metal and leather straps being affixed to my leg. Desperately, I tried to call out to them, to give them any sort of sign that I was still here, that I could feel. The straps cinched tight, pinching and binding along the inside of my thigh. The straps rubbed against the burned skin like sandpaper, sending fresh flashes of agony coursing through my nerves. The worst part about it was my heart. It should have been racing a hundred kilometers an hour as adrenaline pumped into my bloodstream. Instead, it kept its steady pace, entirely oblivious to what was about to occur.
“Okay, you don’t have to look, but I need you to hold it in place for me.”
“Um...oh… okay then. I’ll just… hold this then… “
I felt hooves gently placed against a very sensitive area, touching me so lightly, the might not have been there at all.
Please, someone stop them… don’t let them do this to me… please… no. No. NO!
“You got him over there? Be sure you’re holding him tight.”
“Yeah, I’ve got him.”
“On three; One.”
No! Stop! Please don’t do this, please!
“Two.”
Nononononononono…
“Three.”
NOOOOOOOOOO—
My protests were cut short by a massive blow to the inside of my thigh, so much power behind the blow that I thought they were trying to break my leg off of me entirely. The waves of pain once more pitched me into seas of madness, though only briefly; I didn’t even have time to dream before the voices brought me back to shore.
“Dangit, this is why I told you to hold him tightly. We didn’t get a break, so now we have to do it again. We’ll have to keep doing it until we get one, so you might as well hold tight.”
“I think I’m going to be ill.”
“Do it over there and then come back. I don’t like this any more than you do, but you know how the doctor gets. If we don’t do it, he’ll get someone who will, and you and I will both have to find another job.”
“You’re right, you’re right… I just need a second. Just a second, okay?”
“Alright, but make it quick. We don’t want to keep the doctor waiting.”
Not again. Why, why must I suffer like this? Who did I harm to deserve such a punishment? Have I not been a loyal and faithful husband, entirely dedicated to his wife? Have I not been a model son-in-law? What have I ever done to deserve this?
“Alright, let’s do this.”
“Are you going to hold him tightly this time?”
“Yes, just do it already.”
“Alright, here it goes… “
Luna, give me strength.
There was a sickening, meaty thud as the hammer struck flesh, though it was permeated by a sharp crack, as if somebody had broken a sizeable branch over a leg. My mind was reeling as the pain flowed anew, and I was feeling pain in a new and terrible way. Without any form of control over my body, even the involuntary things like getting a massive dose of adrenaline after an injury like this simply didn’t happen. With no natural resources to dull the pain, I experienced every terrible sensation as my broken limb flopped about.
“Okay, see? Wasn’t that bad. Now let’s set this thing and splint it, then we’ll bring in the doctor to do the injection”
“Not that bad… yeah, right. Let’s… let’s just do this and have it be done.”
Once more, I felt a pair of hooves being placed upon me, though this time they were joined by a second pair on the opposite side of the fracture. There was no warning with which to brace myself, and the sudden pulling and twisting motion that caused the jagged fragments of the fracture to grate against one-another caught me entirely off guard. I could feel each and every sliver of bone as it scraped across its counterpart on the opposite side of the fracture. What’s worse is they way they’d tried to get it back where it came from, a method that consisted of pushing the broken halves of the bone together as they rotated the limb, apparently looking for it to catch and snap into place.
Pain. Agony. Torment. Anguish. Suffering. Excruciating. Unfathomable. Each and every one of these words falls pitifully short when trying to describe the pain I was in; there simply was no word for this feeling. To call it a feeling would be a grave injustice; it was not a feeling, but a separate plane of existence, a realm where the only thing that is, was, or ever will be is a never-ending scream from your nerve endings. No, these words fell short of the sensation.
The grinding sensation ceased as the Nurses decided that the break had been aligned properly, taking instead to splinting it. The straps of the contraption were released and the lack of tension on the limb caused it to shift again, daggers of fire knifing through my gut from the point of the break as the ragged edges of bone once more ground together.
Inside, I was screaming. This… this was the worst pain I’d ever felt. Worse than being burned alive, this agony was somehow more potent. Mockingly, my heart continued its steady beat; heedless of the trauma inflicted, refusing to dispense even a drop of adrenaline to dull the pain. Had I been able to move, I’d have ground my teeth to dust and torn every hair from my head. Should I have had the capability of speech, I’d have screamed until my throat bled, screamed until there was nothing left in me.
Entombed within my unresponsive husk of a body, fully sensate and cognizant, I had no such reprieve; instead, I was forced to endure this torment in silence, the inside of my mind echoing with the sound of screams I could not voice. Each touch of a splint, the caress of a hoof as bandages were affixed and knotted, even the ethereal brush of the nurses’ scrubs sent a fresh volley of knives out from the wound.
Why can’t I wake up? They can’t hear me; they don’t know that I can feel every terrible moment. I could be stuck like this for years! Please… please, either let me wake up from this nightmare or let me go to sleep and never wake… anything but this.
The sounds of approaching steps pierced through the haze around my mind with each sharp clop of hoof on tile. The silky sound of the timid nurse’s voice came to me like a whisper on the breeze.
“Doctor, the patient is splinted and ready for the injection.”
“Very well. Were there any complications?”
“No sir. Everything went smoothly.”
“Well, shall we get started then? Yes, we shall. Syringe?”
“Here, doctor.”
“Nurse, make a note that the injection is being administered to the fracture site at precisely zero eight one seven.”
“Yes sir.”
I felt the icy kiss of the needle just before it was plunged deep into my leg, almost as if it were apologizing for what was to follow.
The hypodermic syringe was jabbed fully into my leg, into the very fracture itself; I felt the tip of the needle grating against my bones before everything went numb, icy relief flooding out from the site as the potent elixir swept through my veins. As this new wave crashed over me, it carried me not once more unto the sea of madness, but into a resplendent cove of peace and rest, finally freed from the pain that afflicted me so.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I lay there dreaming of a better time, a time when everything seemed to simple, so right. Back to a time where my biggest concern was what would be for dinner, or how I could surprise Carrot to let her know I loved her, that I was thinking of her. This dream came and went of its own accord, alternately taking me back in time to revisit fond memories and spinning new tales of what might have been in dreams of the future. All I wanted was to stay in this dream, this bliss; I dreaded the inevitable return to the shore of consciousness and the pain that would come with it.
I felt a strange sensation on my neck, one that was slowly driving away the dream as I fought to hold it close, alas to no avail. The harder I fought to stay in the dream, the quicker it fragmented around me; skipping like a broken record.
No… please come back… don’t leave me here alone…
My sluggish mind finally began to rise to the surface, pulled from the depths of unconsciousness by the strangely familiar sensation on my neck. What… where had I felt this before? What is this tickling, caressing sensation on my neck, and why do I feel… happy?
My eyes opened slightly, permitting the first soft rays of the rising sun to penetrate my gloom.
No… not this again. Please, not this, I can’t take this. I can’t be happy in my old life only to wake back up in that bed, in my own prison…
Kisses. The feeling on my neck was that of kisses, sweetly rousing me from slumber. I smiled despite myself, reveling in the sweetest sensation before reality came crashing back down around me, wiping the smile from my face. This was all just another dream, and I’d wake back up in the hospital with a tube in my throat and no limbs. The hoof that snaked across my chest, pulling me into an embrace… it felt so real. I could feel it in every exquisite detail, from the way it was slightly colder than the room to the way it tickled my chest as it encompassed me. No, this wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening, I was still dreaming. The kisses on my neck ceased; a light nibble on the ear taking their stead.
I felt her hot breath as it caressed my ear, felt the warmth of her teeth as they gently pinched my ear, and felt the scrape of teeth on flesh as she pulled away. Everything was so vivid, so incredibly real… is there any way this could possibly not be real? I’d never had any dream even remotely so vivid. But if this was real, then was the hospital a nightmare? No, no it couldn’t be; never in my life had I ever been in so much pain, such exquisite agony.
The pain is here, to tell me that I’m still alive. Alive to fight another day; alive to reveal and turn the page. The pain tells me that I’m still alive; it reveals the most truth. I know the pain is the truth, because I hate it. This pleasure, this comfort… it can’t be real. I know this is a dream… I wouldn’t… I couldn’t dream of such pain. I could never dream something I hated as much as this.
So that’s it then. This is all a dream, and I’ll eventually wake up to whatever terrible fate waits for me there on the shore of consciousness.
I might as well enjoy this while I can.
My eyes fluttered open, permitting the first crimson rays of the day to lacerate the darkness of my world. I rolled over to look at Carrot, simply drinking in every aspect of her form to carry me through the darkness ahead. Most of all, I was stricken by the shifting tones of her emerald eyes; the little flecks of gold in her irises caught the light of the rising sun and seemed to glow from within, as if illuminated by flames from the inside out.
Flames.
Unbidden, a vision of immolation assaulted my mind; walls of flame collapsing around me, a constricting conflagration with no escape. Pressing ever closer upon me, tongues of flame licking my legs, burning my coat, OH LUNA MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP!
At some point I’d begun to scream, finally voicing the torment and anguish within me, venting my accumulated despair and desperation. Curled in the fetal position with my hooves covering my ears, I screamed until I had nothing left within me; until I was as empty within physically as I was psychologically. Then, I took a deep breath and screamed again. I screamed with every ounce of might that I had, tearing my throat to shreds with each bellow.
From somewhere in the darkness beyond my clenched eyelids, a band of iron encircled me, pulling me into a suffocating embrace; yet I screamed still. It wasn’t until the feeling of something softly stroking my back and the sound of gentle words whispered softly into my ear that I stopped screaming. The last scream died in my throat, intensity fading to become a drawn out wail. I broke down into sobs, weeping the tears trapped within by the sepulcher of my husk. Wracked by silent sobs as I let my pain and fear flow out of me, I could hear Carrot’s voice in the back of my mind, whispering sweetly into my ear. Despite her reassurances, her voice was shaking; she was clearly terrified, though not so much by me as for me.
In the years that we had been together, not once had she ever seen me cry. Not a single tear had I shed, though not for lack of reason. I’d lost a close friend in a cave-in a few months after we met, and yet I’d shed not a tear for my fallen brother; I couldn’t help it, it just wasn’t in my nature.
Or at least, it didn't use to be.
I sat there in Carrot’s embrace, letting the emotions I’d always suppressed finally come out and freeing myself from their crushing burden. How ironic it is that it was only in a dream, and only after massively traumatic injuries and experiences, I was finally able to crack my own shell and open up to Carrot. What a wretch am I?
As I sat there, my emotions finally laid bare to the one I loved, I could feel it all slipping away. The embrace which encircled me was no longer one of iron, and the scent of the one I love was fading as well. The details began to blur as everything slowly melted together. Disregarding the futility, I held on as tightly as I could, desperate not to be alone again. The last thing to fade was her voice, lingering like a ghost in her wake; the words “I love you” hanging in the ether. As the waves of pain slowly lapped around me before finally washing over me again, I held the image of Carrot in my mind as I resurfaced on the shore of consciousness, once more battered by the now-familiar waves of pain that crashed in time with my pulse.
I was not greeted by the voices of nurses, nor by the sound of hooves; the air around me was as still as a tomb, the silence around me hanging like a cloak and smothering me. In the endless darkness that was my world, without a voice or other sound to break the stillness, it was easy to feel myself being smothered by the darkness as the walls closed in around me. I could feel them pressing in, ever closer, threatening to crush the life from me. Never before had I been claustrophobic; but in that moment, with the pregnant silence enshrouding me and snuffing all light… I knew what it was to fear.
How truly sad it is to be a blind colt, and afraid of the dark.
Silently, I screamed.
