Chapter One: Tartarus

I awoke to the taste of dust in my mouth. Not dirt with it's warm earthy taste, not sand which sparks a memory of beaches, but dust. Ashen, lifeless, bland, and overall red dust. Opening my eyes was my first mistake. No. Waking up at all was my first mistake.

When my vision cleared, I would behold a desolate red plain, dotted with dead trees and clumps of decrepit grass so dry it should have already caught flame. Overhead would be a sky wracked with silent storms, lightning flashes and the dull glow of refracted light giving the whole place a feeling of being a nightmare. A red dust bowl of a nightmare.

I was laying in the dust. I got up. Checked myself over. Feet, check. Hands, check. Face, still ugly, probably. Hair, still...dull red? That's new. Important parts, check. Belongings, non-existent. Pants, though. No shirt. No shoes.

The whole place gave off a feel of strange familiarity, like I'd been here before. Naught to do but look around. I turned around, and immediately the feeling was justified. A rather famous landmark stood out at me like a lighthouse in a storm-tossed sea. Something I knew, not that it would help me.

Ayres Rock. The red heart of Australia.

Well. I always wanted to visit the stone heart of my birth-land.

I went for a walk. Might as well die somewhere nice.

As I stepped up to the monolithic stone, I paused. Not sure to which prayer to say to this ancient edifice, I simply said a bit of every prayer I could remember. I reached out my fingers to graze them against the dark red stone and discovered something fascinating. The rock was warm to the touch. Everything else was almost cold, but the rock was warm.

For some reason that made me smile. As I did, the rock began to...thrum? Yes. It thrummed like the skin of a drum after being struck. The deep bass heartbeat to the song of a culture most likely long since dead. For the first time, I wondered how alone I was.

The echoing silence answered me.

Alright, let's pause our tale here to let past-me wallow in self pity and loneliness so we can tell you about me. I am a twenty something human male who has far too much time on his hands. Or at least, I did. I had it all, really. A bright future, great friends, two loves: my elskede and my sword, and a strong and loving father.

Now let me tell you about Tartarus. It's Australia, reshaped after thousands of years of being a prison country for, you guessed it, ponies. Celestia needed some humane(hah) way of dealing with cultists of the Nightmare, seriously re-offending criminals with no family, and the unredeemable. So she sends them here. There. For them it's perfectly habitable. For me, well, you likely won't like how I survived. Especially those of you who are listening to this and are of said equine origin. So most of you.

Now let's get back to the story.

An hour had passed. Maybe. I had no way to tell time. It could be the middle of the night for all I know. I had slumped down against the rock, my back leaning on it's warmth, and my hands playing with a sprig of bone-dry grass. I leaned my head back against the stone, the thrumming becoming a steady drum beat in my head. By this point, I didn't care. I was just trying to lie down and die.

Screw it, I thought. I'm going to die on TOP of this rock. It'll at least be warmer. The first attempt was horrible. The second attempt was miserable. The third attempt...was me walking around to find the old tourist track to walk up it. Shoot me, I cheated.

It was like standing on the living heart of a titan. Unmoving and ancient, but alive and wondrous. The top was bare uneven ground, but by the gods was it marvelous. In a place where all I could think of was death this old rock was alive and would be for eons after my bones had turned to so much red dust.

That life flowed up my legs and into my heart. I could feel it pulsing with the one beneath my feet. The wind picked up, swirling the dust around my feet like so much cheesy anime. I wasn't going to die here. I was going to live. If a dusty over sized pebble in the middle of nothing but wastes could live, so could I. And you know what, so could the damn wastes!

This was my train of thought before the world shook like I'd taken two too many shots of whiskey in the space of a half second. Or maybe it was just me who shook. I dropped to one knee, vision blurring. I thought I saw a haze of green before I collapsed, maybe heard a voice call to me. I kept myself awake just long enough to see something like lightning strike the ground in front of me. And stay there, suspended in midair. And have a face that wore no expression. It moved, and I couldn't hold myself any longer.

All my strength left me. My willpower was drained. My life faded away on top of an ancient heart of stone as my heart began to mirror its stillness. My skin tingled, and I was gone.

You see, that lightning was what loosely translated to a creature known as a Lightning Brother. You probably have a different name for them, something silly and horse-pun related. But they're old. Creators all. They bring life-giving fire and forge the sands into glass at a touch. Living lightning that lives to create. Lovely creatures. and although I didn't know it then...

Lightning Brothers always come in pairs. There's never just one.

I dreamed of bushlands. Trees with bark like steel. Bushes with thorns sharper than knives and almost as long.
Ferns that could eat skin at a touch. Grass that would drink blood from anything that passed by too close. It was savage and it was beautiful. Diamond-clear streams and rushing waters tore through the scrub like lines of wet lightning, carving deep gouges which later formed into steady rivers. It was like watching nature sled up a thousand times.

The source of all of this was a large red mountain in the distance. I flew to it. This was a dream, flight is a constant. It's like swimming with your soul. The mountain eroded away as it spewed out water and fire in equal measure, feeding the living before burning it to cinders to make way for the new. After a while, the fire and the water stopped. The mountain was nothing but a red heart, thrumming with life that it had yet to give.

It spoke in a tongue that was not in words. It spoke of life and water. It spoke of rebirth and fire. It told me things I can't remember. Old things. Ancient things.

I awoke with a start. The sound of the storm above me was no longer mute. It rolled and it thundered. In a haze, I got to me feet and looked up. A single drop of water fell on me. Then another. Then another. Then there was a pause, as the universe and I held our bated breath as the storm made up its mind.

Thunder roared. Lightning flashed. Uluru thrummed.

"Come on." I breathed. "Break."

The rain felt like the joyous tears of a God. Perhaps they were.

Meanwhile, only two miles away and an hour before, an earth pony by the name of Sturdy Gaffer was just trying to get by. He was only a young buck, with his whole life and sheriff -related life ahead of him, being a sheriff to sheriff a small western town where he wasn't really needed. You can guess his mark. Badge and star, gold and blue against his dark green hide and stark white, sorely in need of a trim mane and tail.

He was another one who had wandered out in the dust to die. He'd heard it was a popular way to go. No-one left Tartarus. Not alive, anyhow. Sturdy longed for the Elysian fields. He dreamed of home every night and prayed that Luna would just let him stay in his dream until he starved and passed away, still smiling.

But she wouldn't have it. He had to keep going, subsisting on dry grasses and tasteless water dug up from the ground near the largest of the dead trees. He was running on empty, nary a fume left to drive him forward.

But the red plateau on the horizon? That was somewhere he could die. So on he walked.

And walked

And walked.

The wind was dry. The dust was red and dry. The sky was rolling and grey and above all dry. Nopony had seen rain in Tartarus. Ever. As he walked he thought about his months here. Dust consumed most of his thoughts. How it had stained the tips of his mane and tail a dull red. How it caught in his nose every time he bent down to take a bite. How it was everywhere. How after one humid night it had caught in his fur everywhere, just enough to completely cover both of his cutie marks.

He thought of the other residents. The inmates. The people he swore to help, to reform so they never had to be thrown in a place like Tartarus. Where he, and they, all were. To him, the dust was a symbol of his failure. The red was the blood of all who he had failed. The dust, their ashes.

Shortly after that, he just let himself walk on. Thinking only got him down.

He reached the plateau. It was tall, many times his height. He reached out to it and placed a hoof to it's red ochre surface. It felt of sunshine. Of warm summer days and of green grass. It pulsed gently, like a rushing river just on the other side of a paper sheet, washing with the tide. Somehow, it brought a smile to his face.

He had no way of knowing another was smiling the same. That same smile of hope in the face of almost inevitable death. His heart quickened. His spirits rose. Dying? Who dies? The euphoria overtook him and soon he was beaming like to rival the sun herself. If I can live, he thought, so can they. Everypony in Tartarus can live and by the sun and moon they're going to!

A heavy heartbeat wracked his body. He stumbled, the world going hazy. He slumped against the red plateau, breathing slowing to a painful crawl. As everything faded, he saw a silent flash of light strike the ground before him. And stay there. And turn it's muzzle towards him, flicking it's tail. It moved, and Sturdy saw no more.

That's the thing about Lightning Brothers. There's always two.

Sturdy awoke to the feeling of rain. Faint droplets. One, then two.

He stared at the now thundering sky.

He whispered. "Come on. Break"

The rain felt like the joyous tears of the goddesses. Perhaps they were.

He laughed like a maniac. So did I. And that is how Sturdy Gaffer and I realised we weren't alone.

That just made us laugh even harder.

Author's Note

So, yeah. New story, first story, HiE, criticism well welcome. And I know I can't spell. Or write. But I needed to get my creative on, so...yeah. Slightly classic story. I had honestly no idea what to tag, so I just tagged things. Later on, there will be characters we know and love, but first...we have to get out of hell.

Let's see where this goes.