Silence.

Such agonizing silence. Truly this was Tartarus. She couldn't remember what she'd done to belong here, but the horrors visited upon her were such that she must have done something. The silence is only ever broken by that hideous laughter and then she is brought to the center stage, ready to face more pitying stares, more tears, more sobs that she would so gladly echo, but her voice was gone. The voice that had earned her Cutie Mark. That was gone, too.

All gone.

Tartarus. Yes, this was Tartarus and she'd forgotten what she'd even done to be here, but here she was.

She was sure of that fact after the last visitor. She'd been so foalish, allowing herself the most forbidden thing: Hope. Never have hope. It hurts too much. So she'd hoped and he'd fought, a magnificent stallion and oh joy! He'd even wounded her captor. But then she was punished for her transgression. For daring to smile and express any other emotion than sorrow.

Well, she'd been taught her lesson. She was allowed to beat futilely against her prison, granted some limited mobility only so she wouldn't forget to try now and then. She'd screamed but her voice was gone and the stallion was bleeding so much.

Gone.

Again.

All gone. This time she was resolute. She would not hope, even if she saw the impossible, most unlikely thing. She would not hope. Well, this was Tartarus and they'd heard her resolve and thought to test it not long after. Or was it very long actually? So hard to tell. But tested she had been, yes.

Such a voice, so deep and coarse, so unlike the usual, refined mannerisms of even the most hopeful contestor to her captor's throne. Such things he'd said. She thought his accent was strange, but he spoke the language well enough. The language that had once, long ago been the medium of her song, which had given her joy.

Joy was not a bad emotion, she couldn't even transgress and feel it by accident anymore. So she could safely nurture the concept of joy and keep that much hidden from Tartarus. But the strange creature, not unlike a pony, yet very different. He had said such things! Did he know she was there? Did he suspect?

Of course not, that would be hoping and she wasn't allowing that. She settled, poised to give nothing but her sorrow to the creature. It was all she had to give. He'd seen her, but his reaction had not been as strong. He didn't even flinch to look upon her, which was curious, but not worth transgressing over. She would only give her sorrow to this strange stallion. He did stagger a bit, perhaps his face was just stoic? Nevermind, now to watch him die like the others.

Ah, Tartarus was cruel indeed, tricking her into hoping, but she wouldn't. Even without eyes, her captor could still fight. Even without his claw, but that was the claw that had taken her joy. Curious, she rembered joy now. It gave her joy to watch that claw gone, even if that was the only thing the odd stallion managed to take because now her captor was actually getting up and it just went to show her what a foal she'd be to hope when her captor is so powerful that just by getting up he can manage to kill even this leaping stallion. His face might not show emotion, but he bled just as much as the rest. Maybe a bit less, but that could be armor protecting him for all she knew. Still, there he lay... and now he was getting back up. Impossible.

Truly Tartarus was cruel to her tonight, letting her see so many impossible things, just to trick her into hoping. She wouldn't, this was her cage and- that's my old stallion's weapon lodged in captor's skull. It couldn't be...

It just couldn't. Now what? Suddenly her world exploded with sensesation. Things she had not felt and done for so long. She heaved a huge breath, tasting the foul stench of rot, but even that was euphoria to her. She felt her clumsy legs stumple as she fell off her stage, but even that was glorious. To move! To breathe! To hear and see...

To see her latest stallion, dying... Just like the rest... Such a strange face, cracked like a mirror. So it really was armor, and she saw his eye just then, looking at her...

On unwieldy legs unused to walking, she shuffled towards her new stallion. He killed her captor at long last, he deserved to watch the broken wreck he fought for. Even his death was beautiful, now that she could move and see and taste and touch and smell. Smell all that decay of her previous stallions...

She crawled to his chest, so unlike the barrels of stallions, but she knew most creatures worked the same. His heart, yes, he was dying. She laid her ear against his chest, hearing the rapid palpatations of his last, stuttering heartbeats as he died gasping, watching her through the crack in his helmet until the very end.

Nothing she could do now but to explore a new world, that might not be Tartarus after all. She enjoyed using her senses, even if it was the most ghastly landscape to behold, great mounds of rot of fallen enemies and champions to the dragon who now lay dead as the crowning touch to his hoard of decay. Still, she could drag herself from here. She could maybe even drag away her latest stallion, the Dragon Slayer. She'd bring his weapon, too, giving her captor's mangled corpse one spiteful smile as she worked with her teeth to pull the weapon from his brains.

Turning and dragging the weapon in her mouth, unused to the Earth Pony way of doing things, but what was she other than a broken semblance of an Earth Pony, only able to use her mouth to toil now, no strength to speak of. She dropped the halberd as she beheld her stallion. Suddenly, there was a flickering light and a voice, his voice? No, different, a ghostly voice, as if speaking from beyond the grave, and even if that wasn't baffling enough, he had to speak in a language she did not understand.

SIMULATED ARTIFICIAL MIND

VITALS FAILING. INITIATE OVERRIDE PROTOCOL.

CLEAR.

She was used to horror shows, but this was grim just the same. Speaking nonsense in a spectral voice, the new stallion's corpse lurged as a jolt surged through it. Then it lay still.

SIMULATED ARTIFICIAL MIND

INCREASED VOLTAGE. RELEASING ADRENAL RESERVES.

CLEAR.

The corpse continued to speak nonsense with ever greater urgency and again, it lurged with a powerful jolt and something on its foreleg close to the joint hissed and then suddenly, its back arched and he drew a great, heaving, agonized breath.

SIMULATED ARTIFICIAL MIND

VITALS STABILIZING. WELCOME BACK, SAMUEL.

POWER RESERVES DEPLETED. PLEASE RECHARGE.

Her eyes widened as she stared in mute terror, gradually giving way to wonderment and then elation as she saw that the spectral voice had not been her stallion, but it had roused her stallion from the dead. Tears of joy, so long unshed, streamed from her big, bright blue eyes as she rushed clumsily to him, wrapping her forelegs around the back of his neck, supporting his head as he continued to breathe weakly. She pressed her ear to his chest, hearing the strong, steady throb of his heart. A powerful heart. Again she saw that one, brown eye staring at her through the crack in the helmet. He looked weak, yes, but alive.

She held him until that one eye fell shut and his labored breathing became regular. Unconscious. Well, she would not leave her stallion here. She would dare to hope now and she would prove that she wasn't completely broken. Even without a horn, she could still toil away like the Earth Pony. She dragged the halberd and laid it on the Dragon Slayer's chest, moving to and fro, picking up bits and pieces of his armor. They were curiously light, but then they needed to be, to allow him to jump like that. She had thought him a pegasus of some kind, but his wings were not feathered and the wing bones broke like twigs. Still, she gathered them all together. After all, even she would have wanted to keep the pieces of her horn.

She paused and had to let the sorrow have its way with her, making her fragile frame quiver with silent sobs. Even now, she could not fully embrace hope and sorrow was too familiar to her to just let go like that. For a time, the only noise in the cave was her unsteady breathing that kept hitching in her throat, but without a voice, even her sobbing was muted. After a few minutes, she managed to crawl over to his wing pieces. These were supposed to be light and she wasn't surprised to find them so. But they were not feathered and even the bones had no flesh. Still, she gathered each piece, painstaking with her mouth, moving only one or two at a time until she had them piled on top of her new stallion. She spent a long while scouring the festering caves, making sure she left no piece behind, and then finally she set about the exhaustive task of dragging him. He was not light. He weighed as much as any stallion she could remember, if not more.

Her jaw and teeth ached, but even to feel hurt after so long was a welcome change and she embraced the feeling fully, working until her gums bled and her pristine, white coat was soiled by sweat and dirt, dragging him slowly behind her, inching her way backwards, out of the lairs of decay. She managed to drag him far, through labyrinthian corridors and winding paths, through impenetrable darkness, working herself to the bone, drenched in sweat, covered in dirt, tasting blood from her aching teeth. Yet all of it was euphoria to her, for she had not felt anything for so long. Finally there was a great chasm that her stallion would surely be able to traverse with his great, bounding leaps, assuming he would recover.

No, she could not hope, not now. But then what was all of this, if not hope? She had once thought hope a beautiful thing, but even now it did not allow her stallion to live. She could only watch in terrible silence as his labored breathing continued, threatening to stop at any moment. But even such terrible hope was worth having.

Now the sweat cooled and she felt clammy and cold, but even this was a joy. She would sit there and feel cold as she watched her new stallion, hoping against hope that his breathing did not falter. Once or twice, she thought it might, but then he settled again. She couldn't see his mouth under the helmet. She wanted to look upon him. She fumbled uselessly with the visor, unable to find purchase or release the latch that lay hidden somewhere. All she managed to do was to embaress herself, but at least her stallion was not awake to see this.

She settled, lying on her belly in the cave, watching him. Again, his breathing faltered and she had not heard anything of the spectral replica of his voice that saved him the first time. She suspected his spectral alter ego had exhausted itself saving his life the first time. Fresh tears streamed from her bright blue eyes as she could only watch him dying all over again.

No, she had dared to hope and if this wasn't Tartarus, then she was not guaranteed failure. After all, she had managed to drag him this far and even felt pride. That, Tartarus would not have allowed her, so she acted on instinct. Rearing up on her hind legs, she brought her forelegs down on the visor, fearing that she was only aiding in his swift departure from this world that might not be Tartarus after all. But the visor held fast. Again, she tried, heaving all of her desperation into the act and with a bone-chilling snap, she did destroy the visor, revealing his face beneath. She had no time to stare, rushing to press her soft lips to his, breathing life into him, teaching his lungs what they had forgotten for one fatal moment. She knew she could do this. She breathed into his mouth again, and again. Then she braced her forehooves on his chest and pressed down, feeling too little resistance from his ribcage, but this didn't matter. She pressed as hard as she dared and then went back to breathing into his mouth. She gasped when she felt him heave a ragged breath, coming back to life for the second time that night.

She felt the sorrow overwhelming her again, or maybe it was the aches of her body so long neglected. She shivered and sobbed quietly over her stallion. She felt cold and clumsily, she crawled on top of him and laid her head down on the part of his ribcage that wasn't broken, listening to his breath come and go and his heart throbbing steadily in his broken body. She slept like this for a little while. When she came to, she labored over her stallion, scraping together enough debris and not-yet-decomposed scraps of fabric to create a small bed for him, carefully dragging him by the scruff of his neck and laying over top of him. His left foreleg, (some non-ponies called it an arm?), it looked broken. She didn't know anything about this breed of creature, but she refused to give in and she sat and studied his other arm, learning how the bone was meant to sit. With exaggerated care, using her muzzle, she shifted his broken arm into position and gathered little pieces of his broken wings to be fashioned into a splint. It took an agonizing number of attempts and at times, she felt so feeble that she had to lay down and sob quietly for a time before she felt spirited enough to keep trying.

Eventually however, she did have his broken bones properly aligned and held together with a splint and some makeshift bandages from the scraps of cloth she'd found. She could not bring herself to rip up the soft wing membrane. He looked more peaceful in his sleep now, but she could just be imagining that. Still, in this world that turned out not to be Tartarus after all, she could be allowed a bit of optimism. If his previous feats were any indication, this stallion would recover. Meanwhile, she would watch over him, horn or no horn.

She watched him for a long time, learning to tell his armor from his real body. He was so lean and muscled, and when she carefully peeled away the black, skin-tight cloth and broken chest plate, she saw that his skin was very pale, like hers, but he had very little fur. She had also shed his broken helmet and marveled at the color and texture of his mane. He had nipples, which was curious. She knew stallions didn't have those, but even his strange appearance held a certain beauty. She was convinced that others of his species would find his muscled chest and small nipples very handsome to behold, and with the way he covered his body like that, she was probably lucky to have seen him like this at all. He must have felt too cold naked without fur.

A blush crept onto her cheeks as she settled on top of him again to keep him warm. She had wondered about his strange forelimbs, especially the dark cloth that covered the right side digits while he had no such thing on the left side, at least not once she'd removed the armor. There was scar tissue around the edge of the cloth and she assumed he wanted the injury concealed, so she did not remove it. She stayed there, resting her head on the healthy part of his chest, idly wondering what could be done for the other side. He was still very deeply asleep and likely would be for a while.

A soft glow alerted her senses and she raised her head, ear flicking as she searched for the disturbance. His helmet, the one piece of it anyway, it was glowing. There was a small glass pane inside which she had disregarded earlier, but now it glowed with a soft, red luminescence. Cautiously, she approached, and to her amazement, the screen flickered, scrolling strange letters, but the spectral voice was absent, perhaps still too depleted to do much more than this. The letters flickered and then suddenly translated themselves to Equestrian.

SIMULATED ARTIFICIAL MIND

DIAGNOSTICS:

LEFT RIB #1 AND #3 BROKEN. #4 DISLOCATED. RELEASING ONBOARD SURGERY KIT.

As promised, the device somehow triggered a soft, audible hiss of air from the stallion's strange leg barding and an aray of tools were revealed. Precision tools. She swallowed and cautiously approached the medkit. There were scalpels and prongs as well as gauze and little vials of unknown origins. She knew other unicorns whose talents had been for this sort of thing, but she was a broken thing whose only talent was deprived of her long ago. Who was she to speculate on Special Talents? To Tartarus with that, she would help her stallion. Working the tools with her teeth and lips, she recalled what the strange screen had informed her. Two ribs broken and one badly bent. She fussed over his unconscious form, wishing anypony could be there to help her, but eventually she worked up the courage and brought the scalpel and a pair of prongs to his side. Making three small incisions over the ribs, she wrinkled her nose in distaste at the blood and with her mouth she dug around carefully, realigning the broken ribs, ensuring they wouldn't harm any organs, and with a firm tug, she righted the bent rib. Either her stallion was very deeply asleep, or pain simply did not reach him. She marveled at his unconscious form as he seemed to be at peace with her haphazzard, inexperienced attempts at surgery, but even she had to admit, his chest looked healthier and less malformed like this. She nosed around his medkit and found some bandaids that stuck to his skin with some adhesive substance. It was no trick to cover the incissions and she prayed that his body was as strong as he had been.

Again, she settled on his chest, listening to his heart. Hours passed and she felt comforted by his warmth, and it could be her imagination playing up again, but when she lifted her head to check on his injured chest, already it looked much better. Nosing around his soft skin, feeling for any irregularities in his ribcage, she became certain that already his body had recovered. It was as if he'd spent a week in a hospital, and her heart swelled with pride as she remembered her feeble attempts to help him. Apparantly they had borne fruit and this really, truly wasn't Tartarus after all. She continued to nose around his chest, blushing but unable to cease her study of this stallion, breathing in his scent, which felt somehow enticing to her. When she felt a soft pressure against her mane, she froze, caught in the act of nuzzling his nipple, blushing furiously, but to her intense delight, his soft digits were caressing her, encouraging her. His gloved hand was unfamiliar to her, but she enjoyed the way he stroked her blonde mane and caressed her ears. His eyes were open now and he managed a crooked smile that made her heart hammer in her chest.

For a moment, they just lay there maintaining eye contact. He seemed too weak to speak, but she sensed growing gratitude in this strange stallion's features as he hazily pieced events together, noting how far he had been moved. He looked vulnerable without the armor covering his chest and face, but at least he was no longer dying before her eyes. His eyelids grew heavy as sleep took him once more and she stayed curled up on top of him, keeping them both warm in the chilly cave.

Author's Note

I hope you've enjoyed the read and it's not finished, I just thought I would at least introduce the silent mare, as she is going to become one of the main characters. Also, I hope you weren't too confused when the perspective shifted in The Dragon and The Mare respectively.