//------------------------------// // III - Heart // Story: Exterminatus // by Imperaxum //------------------------------// It had been a lazy summer afternoon when the letter had come. The mailpony had a big, goofy grin on his face; the sole letter addressed to Barley's family that day had a prominent royal seal on it, bearing the stars of Princess Twilight. It wasn't tax season, so everyone knew what it was for. Barley had been sitting out in a field full of young plants of her namesake, reading over the letter again, the words that accepted her application to the Portal Project. Her most beloved sister was next to her, sharing in her quiet happiness. She had been glad of her presence - her application to the Project had been the source of no small of strife in her family as of late. Even though her father had been as enthusiastic in congratulating her as her mother or any of her five - six? - other siblings, she painfully remembered overhearing the angry words her father had exchanged with her teacher. A disgrace to earth ponies, her father had said. Sending our children off to the whims of the Canterlot unicorns, he had spat. Her teacher was responsible for her entry into the Project, handing out applications in class one day and explaining Princess Twilight's vision of ponies from all backgrounds joining in the greatest journey of discovery in ponykind's history. She struggled to remember the name of the sister keeping her company that afternoon. She was a younger sister, they had loved each other dearly, but their relationship had faded in the year that Barley had been in Canterlot with the Project. Their correspondence by mail had grown less frequent as Barley became more involved with actual Expeditions and the sister became fully burdened with harvest season back home. Barley tried hard to remember that happy afternoon instead of her nameless sister. The contentment flooding her The afternoon had been humid, the rows of barley swaying in a light wind. The light of the sun was casting shadows, dancing across her sister's face, radiant. Her beloved sister was always bursting with life - she would have been a poor fit as a common earth pony in the Project. She never did understand what Barley wrote about, the frigid starkness of the halls of the Project facility, the increasingly sterile procedure that suffocated the common workers as hostility and horrors were encountered in the various portals. Barley still had her slight accent during that afternoon, before a year of the Project washed it away to leave a refined, clipped manner of speaking. A quiet twang as Barley struggled to voice all her doubt and fear for the future, her sister beside her, nuzzling her wordlessly. It was a timeless thing. Earth ponies were herd creatures, from time immemorial - to comfort another was ingrained in their very being. Earth pony conscripts singing songs and crudely joking, about to war for the politics and heartbreak of their unicorn landlords. Earth ponies put out of their traditional jobs by modernization, grimly closing ranks and keeping their families together as they emigrated to the cities of suffocating industry. Little things, bad grades and bad harvests and distraught lovers and simple hard times. Companionship and friendship was rarely optional for earth ponies, but it was hardly forced upon them like the taxes of their historical landlords.. Barley very fondly remembered that afternoon, warm and shared with somepony who could not understand but tried anyway, and listened. Barley would have broken down in that field and cried without the company, and her sister made the bizzare and breathtaking first months of her time in the Project infinitely more bearable. But her sister could never reach her now, no letters could be exchanged, she was damned forever in a situation infinitely worse than leaving her home for the Project. Barley woke up slowly, the crisp summer air yielding to the staleness of the lift, bright fields fading to a sordid darkness lit by a single dim lamp set in the wall. Thess pressed against her body instead of her beloved sister. The human was still asleep, breathing softly, and Barley could not hear the shuddering rasp that usually vented from the human. Barley wondered at the unspoken trust that the two still maintained, that neither would kill the other in their sleep - then again, what would be the point of it? Obscenely purposeless bloodshed. Obscene, like beating a man's face into pulp and stabbing him until his skull cracked. Barley was distantly surprised to realize that her dreams had not included the presence of that armored human, her victim. She wondered if she would could have so quick to kill him, Thess's madness or not, if he had been as quiet and peaceful as Thess was sidled up beside her. It was easier to put down a raging animal than a scared girl. How young was Thess, anyway? Twenty? Surely less. If that were true, Barley might be older than the human strictly by years. That was why she had spared Thess, she had seen the fear in her eyes. Barley shook her head, trying to clear her muddled thoughts. Odd, how scattered she could become in such a dull, featureless space. The madness in Thess was more insidious than a human simply going insane with her circumstances and new-found freedom, Barley decided. If it were simply mindless bloodthirstiness, Thess would have stabbed the armored human herself. Worse, she would have killed Barley too if it were truly mindless. Disturbing, to consider the genuine care that Thess seemed to reserve for Barley. Everything else inspired apathy or hatred; for the most general of concepts, like simply leaving her home, she had a childlike wonder. Yet she was a killer. And she had made Barley a killer. With that unhappy thought, Barley drifted back into sleep. She dreamt again, her whole family seated around the dinner table back home. They were smiling, joking, laughing, and while Barley couldn't understand a word that was said, she felt the joy and companionship at the table. Mother, Father, and six siblings. Barley saw her chair, wonderfully familiar with all the scratches and chipped paint as she remembered. Then she realized that her chair was empty, and that the ninth member of the family was missing. She stayed for a little while longer, soaking up the joy of her family, until she remembered that she had to get back to Thess. The lift was nearing its destination, and the weight of the human pressed against her side had left her. She turned, opened the door to her house, and walked out. Barley woke up. She felt content, but could barely remember why. The weight of the situation weighed down on her again, and her quiet happiness was swiftly extinguished. There were voices near and far, yet they never came near enough to heighten the existing fear and paranoia aching in Barley as she came to her senses. Instead, she got time to mull over her situation again - which was in fact her thinking about everything but her current circumstances. Certainly the mission through the portal had been a bloody disaster. One instrument lost and surely more, at least ten ponies dead, surely more. The survivors would need counselling, ordinary work-ponies and scientists having seen such bloody sights that were usually reserved for the Guards and advance teams. Barley herself would probably be curled up in a corner in her little six by eight room on Level Twelve of the base, visions of ponies being ripped apart leering in her eyes, if she didn't currently have a great deal more to worry about. Surely the head of the Portal Project would be angry. Miss Sparkle was difficult to please in the best of circumstances, and she was one of the few ponies Barley imagined would be more upset with the dead ponies and trauma than the instruments lost. Barley racked her memories for ponies that had been changed, ponies that were different upon return from a Portal Expedition. How much could a pony endure before they were unrecognizable? How far could they be twisted? And most of all, how did they change? Were they forced to by the natives, or did they do it out of their own will, driven by necessity? Barley could not remember. She looked up to Thess, standing and facing away from her. The human was humming a cheery tune, gently swaying her hips back and forth to a wordless rythm, her long skirt swishing. Thess was wearing a skirt - Barley had not really thought about the human's physical appearance, beyond the diseased skin and maddened eyes. A skirt of a coarse material, heavily patched up, and a rough-looking blouse that was torn in many places, bloodstained. Very practical, Barley approved, it reminded her of the dress of ancestors who had gone off to the cities to work in the new factories - far smaller than the ones that currently surrounded her, of course. Yes, she hadn't thought much about Thess's appearance before now. She had more focused on the human as a person, her past and family, and Barley did not want to think about Thess as a person. She remembered the terrible evil that had burned in the human's eyes as she had made Barley a killer. It seemed indecent that the quiet girl in front of her held such darkness. At a glance, this city was evil - its architecture imposing and outrageously exaggerated, the fires and the screams, but Barley would not instantly take Thess to be an insane murderer if she forgot everything and met the human again. Barley knew otherwise, though. She knew very damned well otherwise. She noticed Thess had turned and was looking at her; Barley hoped that Thess would keep to herself. She didn't want to think about what had happened. "Pony. You holdin' up?" Thess asked, looking to the side. No such luck. "I'm fine," Barley said absentmindedly. A minute passed in silence. "Barley," Thess said again, her voice slightly strained, "please talk to me again." "About what?" Barley said, her words slow and lazy. "You know where this lift will take us?" "No. I- I really wish - I really miss it, you prying into my life. I really miss it." Thess spoke quickly, still avoiding Barley's glare. "I wish you'd ask me stupid questions about how I feel and how bad the wound is. And I wish you'd tell me about your life. I never asked." "Mhm," Barley muttered, and Thess winced at the dismissal. The human fidgeted in the heavy silence for a minute. "You're so talkative and earnest and bright," Thess finally said, looking over to Barley. "That's what's missing. I called you a daemon because you didn't look at all like you belonged in this hive, or talking with someone like me. Your skin - your mane, it was so clean and soft, your manners were so soft, everything was just different. Likable's not the right word." "Enthralling," Thess frowned. "That's what that travelling preacher said, he said the Emperor was enthralling. He made a really lovely speech. If that man had been our regular preacher, I might have had more faith. I mean - I always had faith. But it was weak, weak and brittle. You were enthralling." "What am I now?" Barley murmured. "You look like you belong here," Thess said instantly. "Bloody and hopeless." "Thanks for that," Barley said flatly, and it was quiet for a while. Again, Thess was the one to break the silence. "I should be dead now. I can feel stuff leaking out of my stomach, mixing around. I don't know anything that a medicae would, but I've seen plenty of workers pulped by machinery, and when the insides start mixing you're supposed to die. Hurts like the devil, but I'm not dead. I don't even feel much worse. I got stabbed in the stomach, Barley, real deep." "Didn't get a knife to the face," Barley observed. Thess flinched at the words, but the pony's voice was casual. "Was that a joke?" Thess asked earnestly. "I don't know." Barley frowned. "I want to be offended. But it's hard not to follow your example with all this death stuff. You make out alright." "I don't," Thess muttered. "Not when I can think like this. Without the madness." "But it doesn't matter," Barley said. "What you think here, how sane you are in this quiet little lift, it doesn't matter. Not when you jump right back into evil whenever there's blood to be spilled. " Thess did not respond, and when Barley glanced up, the human's face had a haunted, pained look. Barley was very tempted not to say a word, seeing how effective her last condemnation had been. She did not remain silent, however. "What's wrong?" she asked, her voice hard. "Feels like ages ago, you told me you wouldn't forget me. You said you cared. I really liked that. It made me feel valuable." Barley gave her an odd look. "That's not what you said at the time." "I know, I know," Thess winced. "But that's how I felt. I really, really regret making you stop caring. That's all." Barley stared at the human. Thess looked utterly fragile, weak and scared, life gone from her eyes. She did not look mad. She looked like a young creature that was scared to lose her self-worth. Against her recent memories, Barley's face and manner softened. "I... I will not forget you. You still matter," Barley said. "That's all." Thess smiled with a warmth that lightened Barley's heart. They were silent again, the roar of the city growing louder as their lift neared the bottom of its journey. Abruptly, what felt like a physical wall of stench and brightness slammed into them as the lift exited its shaft and descended into open space beneath the factory. Enormous, ornate columns held the factory up, and smaller, spindly networks of metal connected the floor of the factory to the ground with lifts. There was a great noise that hurt Barley's ears, but it took a minute for her to recognize it for what it was. Innumerable voices, a roar that echoed up from the ground. Barley hauled herself up, wincing as she put weight on the hoof that the armored human had bit into - staring over the edge of the lift she saw thousands of little figures below, a horde of humans passing beneath them. "That's bad news," Thess breathed, staring down at the same sight. "Friends of yours, Miss For'twa?" Barley asked dryly. "You remembered," Thess was wide-eyed, her face twisted but smiling, looking up to Barley. "I only said my last name once." Barley nodded, still mostly transfixed by the thousands of humans below. "I said I would remember you. Thess 'li For'twa." "Thank you," Thess said reverently, and the moment passed. "This won't be good, though. Even from up here, you can see some of them are different. They cut open their arms for the altar that the sack of flesh made, they got all twisted. I didn't want any part of it, but a lot of my mates just lost it. Scragging damned, they are." "And we aren't?" Barley shrugged. "Will they kill me?" "Maybe. I'm worried that they might want to share. You should - you will see 'em, Barley. They have arms growing out where they shouldn't be, horns and spikes out of their skin. It's the madness, and they embraced it. The weakest and the cowards who wanted strength, and the strongest who wanted strength. The people with ideals, the ones who got up on the boxes to give the speeches, they got the 'blessings'." "And where do you fit?" Barley asked. "You looked pretty rough yourself, running around with that group." Thess winced. "I loved the freedom of it. The middling ones didn't care much for the blessings, else they weren't middling. But we're all mad here, one way or another. If nothing else, we all know that the Governor will kill us happily enough for being from a rebel Hive. Everyone will fight." "So you're far from the worst this world has to offer." Barley sighed. "Hopefully I'm a little better," Thess grinned, but it faded quickly. "Prove it." Barley challenged, and they fell silent again, watching the horde stream past. Another minute passed, and the lift reached the ground, slowing as it entered a tiny building. The lift still came down hard, machinery screaming as Barley braced against the impact - rather too late, she wondered if the lift was supposed to be manually controlled against its self-destruction. Either way, neither she nor Thess had any plans of going back up and returning to the heavens. Barley looked around at where they had ended up - one wall was a loading ramp and an open space where a large cargo door had been, now lying crumpled to the side - the other three sides were dull and grey, made of the same smooth rock that Barley saw everywhere in the architecture of this world, this city, this 'Hive'. It was dark underneath the factory, and darker inside the building; only the distant light of vast lamps on the underside of the factory and the flickering glow of torches carried by the masses of humans made anything recognizable. The pair had a good view of the humans streaming past, and neither made a move to join crowds. Barley was transfixed; an endless line of Thess clones in dirty skirts and blouses and working pants and ragged shirts, and the odd mutant, horrifically twisted. Leering faces and empty ones, humans who seemed full of terrible confidence and those who looked utterly terrified by their surroundings. There was one with her left arm gone, replaced by a sickly red blade, chitin-like. Another with a mess of spiked chains welded to the stumps of his hands, a man with a lone spike stabbed into his spine, bearing a symbol of an eight pointed star, drenched in blood. Barley stared at the eight-pointed star, realizing it was repeated throughout the whole horde. She shuddered at it, saw an infinity of evil and malice raging inside the star. It was a symbol of hatred and blood, the Hive screamed that to her, it was the cause of all this chaos and death. Barley knew it was the madness given a symbol, and she shrunk from it. "We have to go out there," Thess said eventually, and Barley imagined that the human was partly talking to herself. Barley glanced over, and indeed Thess looked intensely unsettled. There was a baleful look in the human's eyes, but at least it wasn't the madness. "We don't have to," Barley said, frowning. "I know I don't want to." "Well, what choice have we got?" Thess said, looking unconvinced by her words. "Where are they even going?" "Hell knows. Maybe hell. Look, Barley, we can't stay here till we rot. I mean - not a terrible idea, really, but there's something important happening out there. Look at all those people! Look at the scale!" "You sound better," Barley said, "and those sounded like real reasons. I don't agree with them, but if curiosity's sending you out there, you're not going alone." "So we're going?" "Yes," Barley said, then reached over and pressed a hoof into Thess' side. The human winced, and Barley continued, "but promise me to the Stars and to your Gods and your knife that you'll stay like this, right? Not running out there because you don't have a choice, but for something else. Just-" "No madness," Thess interrupted, looking away. "I swear it. Put a knife through my throat, I won't stop you, and no one else will care. Put a knife through my throat if I ever do something to you again." "I didn't ask for that," Barley said, but Thess was already staring at the crowd again. They rose together, wordlessly, and joined the crowd. The stump of an arm sliced down Barley's side as they jostled against the press of twisted humanity, and soon Barley and Thess were unconsciously leaning into each other so as not to be separated.