//------------------------------// // 2013 project - Shattered - 1. Up, Above; and Out! // Story: RoMS' Extravaganza // by RoMS //------------------------------// Chapter 1, Up, Above, and Out! “When the Pit lights with fire, burnt flesh fills the air, along with the Pegasi, laughing, laughing… Laughing…” Ever wanted to be trapped in a mine after a firedamp flashover? Well, me too. And do you know the irony in this annoying situation? Name’s Coal Dust… A fitting name for an earth pony enrolled at birth to be a miner. A fitting name when your instinct is telling you to dig your way away from a coal dust fire… Ordering you not to give ponies the opportunity to laugh! To tell my father that ‘his son sparked himself’! […] My guts wrenched painfully as I woke up. My muzzle, half-buried between two big chunks of rock, hissed. My heart beat wildly, making my head and temples throb. My chest swelled in fit and starts, tearing at my flesh as the coal in the air burnt my lungs. My ears were ringing from numbness. My belly ached like a bad indigestion. Everything itched so damn much I wished I could skin myself! I was completely wrecked. But worst of all, everything was dark. Shocked, I shivered and tried to roll over my back. I was stuck in a tunnel so tight it caught me in a vice. Sharp rocks chafed my skin as I moved. I coughed and spat saliva, smearing my face and coat. Tears started to drip over my cheeks. Stiffness bathed me. I screamed agony and received no answer. I was alone. No miner was authorized to be left alone underground: safety measure. Stinging bruises covered my body. Each movement was a torture. I breathed and jerked, hacked and whirled. I was a rat in a cage without exit, deep down an unknown number of meters below the surface. As I kicked to free myself, dust crawled over my face, slipping in my eyes… I wanted out! Struggling my way toward I don’t know yet, memories slowly came back, the blur gradually giving space to flashes. A massive panic. An explosion. The heat. The pain. And finally, darkness. Wails had rung, fire, and uncountable clatters… horseshoes grating on the walls, trying vainly to dig a passage far away from death. Ripping the fur off my skin, I finally slipped through the vice catching me in. I fell forward and yelped. I hit down a steep and narrow tunnel. Breaking stalactites along the descent, my belly crashed against a sturdier point which sunk in my skin. My stomach churned with spasms, and rolling butt over head through the passageway, I vomited.I hit ground, biting in my tongue as my jaw collided. I coughed blood that tasted like iron. I saw light dancing in front of me. Febrile, I tensed to stand up. Fighting back the pain from the open wounds and bruises was horrible. Hunger also made itself known: y belly growled loudly. I was definitely starving. Ponds of water flooded the whole dank place, trickling from the ceiling. I rose and freezing cold water dripped over my eyes, running between the blood, bile, and murk. Everything reeked from stagnation but I lapped; thirst was too much to bear with. The taste was so disgusting I emptied myself once again. It tasted like stirred charcoal and sulphur. My throat burnt. My head reeled. My hooves failed me. I closed my eyes, hung my head low, and I fell. My muzzle slowly sunk into the water, reaching a knee-deep level. The tightness around my chest became more pregnant. I still had my miner suit held tight around my body. I prodded the shredded pockets, many missing their content. I discovered one small piece of metal, my last possession here. Flat, slightly curved, strapped on a thong of leather, I fixed clumsily it over my left forehoof. The contraption’s tip was a rusty mechanism I scratched repeatedly with my hoof. Once, twice… A series of sparks jerked off the tip and a small flame came to life. My mine lighter gave me light. Darkness retreated, leaving me in a tight chiaroscuro bubble. The narrow corridor from which I had fallen from remained hidden, though. Being trapped. I couldn’t get over that feeling, like a talon clenching over my heart, messing with my senses. As I stepped away, my hindquarters hit a wall with a muffled thump. I squealed and froze, fearful. I turned and faced a massive wall of stacked rubble resulting from an old underground landslide. Such events often happened in mines. One badly rigged explosion and the retaining structure could collapse, often on the miners unlucky enough to be working at the same moment. It would have just been another standard landslide blocking a potential exit route. If not for a flattened and shattered structure of wood, bricks, and broken slates sandwiched between the fallen rocks. An old, ragged cottage. That was… unexpected to say the least… interesting even if I had not been trapped here in the dark, flying away from a coal fire, simply struggling to live. I didn’t want to die. But my heart was void, a cunning void and pain. A teasing tickle in my chest, never really gone, never really revealed. I didn’t want to die. I refused to, because above my head, back in Murmanesk, my birth city, I was anonymous… And in Murmanesk, every day was funeral day for the anonymous. A kneecap sinking into the water, I pressed my forehead onto the brickwork, which tore apart a little more. I heard my tears drip. The images of fire and explosions haunted me. I had thought about death much before. But as always, I had pushed away that painful truth, like hiding the dirt under the rug. Each time I would step in the elevator that would lead me to the depths of the earth, I had seen death. Each time I would manipulate arcs, a solidified or liquid blue substance meant for fulfilling everything in a pony’s life, from public lighting to high-end mining explosive, I had seen death. In Mumanesk, I could see death everywhere. Every time the blow to the gut was the same: corroding everything. Motivation. Will. Strength. I wanted out… But, believing that above was where I wanted to go, I couldn’t. There, nopony seemed to care, nothing seemed to matter. We were hopeless, potential victims of the caprices of another. I had never wanted to die. Not now. Not here. Especially not here… I curled into a small ball of fur, crying in the hollow of my shoulder, licking my wounds and bruises. An hour passed, maybe more, spent watching wishfully the flickering light of my hoof-lighter. Soon the light died into in tiny puffs of smoke. Darkness claimed its territory and once again, I was swallowed by the cold, damp blackness. I clenched my sore hooves below my chest. I closed my aching eyes, saving me from the shadows. Another hour, who knows in that darkness, flew by. I had procrastinated enough. I couldn’t stay there, alone, anymore. Ponies needed me up there. Family, friends… the few I really had, co-workers, my job… If I was going to keep it… I sighed and opened my eyes. Accustomed to the dark, I focused onto something I’d missed in my hurry: a faint light glowing a pebble throw away from me. Curiosity settled in. Stiff and sore, I crawled my way toward the beacon. Walking through the water sent shivers down my spine. Trembling, breathing mist, I reached an embankment of grinded rubble. Stepping out of the water, I dropped my hoof on something soft, and squishy. I felt fur at the tip of my leg, brushing against my own. Perplex, I wandered my hoof along the shape, rubbed over a set of ups and downs. I hit a flappy, wet shred with my left hoof. What I had thought to be a rock in the dim light was a body. I shuddered, a heavy, cold sweat rolling down my back. My hoof clattered against a set of small uneven dice-shaped solid bits. Any sensation of touch seeped out of my limbs. Teeth… The minuscule stream of light threw a few contours of the carcass into stark relief. My rump hit the sand. I was nauseous, my hooves splattered with a blood that wasn’t mine. A thick black blanket covered the body hiding its original colour. I first thought it was coal. The reality was far grimmer. I had seen death before. This one was among the most banal and normal I had ever seen. Shrivelled, burnt, and petrified, its eyes had closed behind slit eyelids. Its cracked teeth showed beneath hitched up lips. My skin crawled at the sight. I had once witnessed an old buck kill a rabid dog. The creature had squealed, yelped, and battled over the spear slicing in its throat. The old stallion had not even waited for death to do its work to set the animal on fire. With the sizzling of the alcohol-induced flames, the foal I was had just avidly watched the scene. The corpse I was looking at showed the same state as the dog once the fire had consumed everything. Withered and ugly, shining with its lack of any distinguishable item, its desiccated hooves covered with blood had folded beneath him, likely trying to hide from the fire. Only one difference remained, a long slash next to its neck. Something that couldn’t be natural. It reeked pain. Long and atrocious pain. A small dot of light pierced through the body’s hooves, hidden beneath a cover of cracked blood. Pulling it out with a grizzly crack, I found myself holding a simple bit of rock a pony had probably broken off a wall. A kind of curved stalactite. Grating off the cover, it revealed itself to be a translucent crystal glowing with a bright blue light. Contemplating this stream of light pouring out, I found myself filled with a new feeling: An irrepressible warmth that finally sparked a meek smile on my wry face. The pure light blanketed the walls with a blue glow, twinkling in the droplets half-frozen on the rocks. Funnily, an isolated object shone among the rubbles of the derelict house. Curious, I stuck the crystal between my teeth and walked up to the ruin. I was still wondering how a house could have ended there. To my disappointment, nothing was there to save anymore. Leaning over the fallen rocks, I discovered a small piece of brass slipping through two large masses of dirt. Digging it out, I unearthed a strange rectangular-shaped box. Split into one larger part made of brass, it also displayed a relatively large window of glass. The tinker had wanted it to be resistant apparently. The whole was encaged behind a series of brass bars. Gliding the tip of my hoof between the tubes, I wiped two clean marks off the glass surface. A strange black disc mounted on one iron cylinder lay beneath. The whole apparatus looked fragile to say the least. And what did a miner like me do? I simply shook it. Something clicked inside, a broken screw or something. Biting my lower lip, I put the contraption on a rock and sought a way to open it. As I drooled over the glowing crystal stuck in my mouth, the item slipped away. I threw my hoof to catch it. Clumsy as I was, I punched the crystal away. It ricocheted on my discovery, bounced on a rock, and finally dived in the water below. A thousand reflections sparked on the surface of the pond, beautiful. Yet, what caught me was the brass rectangle. Something happened. Something that should have never happened. The contraption sparked with blue light, clicked on the inside and… “Hello, Coal Dust. I…” The crystalline, soothing, and creepily slow female voice died in a shriek. “Hello, Coal Dust. I…” Died again. “Hello, Coal Dust. I…” Eyes shot open, I watched the black disk turn within the thick, smeared glass. The voice repeated its message, over and over again, each time with an ears-splitting sound… The joints of the brass item kept glowing the same blue pulsing out of the crystal lying at the bottom of the pond. My name. The voice had said… My name. “Hello, Coal Dust. I…” “Shaddup!” I yelled. I took the contraption between my hooves and bashed it on a rock until the glow vanished and the voice stopped. “…Coal… Dust… am sorry.” How did this… thing know my name?! How could this be possible? I tried to calm myself. I gagged. Breathing heavily, I glared at the bits splattered over the rock, and others sinking rapidly in the water. Unable to move, the hissing in my lungs died a little. I pondered what to do. This… had said my name. I… The earth roared. The walls shook under a tremor that detached stalactites from their bases. Chunks of rock fell over my head. Heat washed over me. I smelt fire reaching far. I saw fire… reaching far. Crawling from a hole in the ceiling, the fire spread like a devil’s tongue displaying many forks. it weaved around the stalactites like water around the relief, tainting the whole cavern in shades of blood. Running away! I shoved the bits of the item in my tackle and bit in the crystal, pulling it out of the water. I started running. In seconds, I reached the farthest folds of the cavern. There were no exits for me. No fateful tunnel. Nothing. Everywhere, a wall of rock was waiting for me, blocking the way, sentencing me to death. Breathing burnt. Opening my eyes burnt. Everything burnt!!! Like hot embers in my throat and acid in my eye. “Let me out!” My lungs gasped for breathable air. The walls shook. The tongues of fire emptied the room of oxygen. The quake cracked open the walls. The fire-flooded ceiling started falling apart, the fire itself looming dangerously in my direction. The water flood started bubbling. The cadaver across the place burst again in flames. Trying to cover myself in water and mud, I dived in the overheated pond, hit my muzzle on the bottom. Panicked. I don’t know. I was just trying to live, maybe. A flame sparked over me and licked my left side, melting my fur over my flank. I saw one wall crumble. And with it, an escape appeared, a thin corridor. Trickling with water, I thrust myself through the open gate. The fire in my back… the Fire everywhere! As I leaped through a wall of fire, a violent wave of clean air licked my face. Deliverance. The stream of black dust wandering before my eyes said otherwise. The stench, acrid, warned me from the danger. Oh, my father, I would tell him that I ran like Tartarus. I hadn’t even crossed fifty meters of the tight tunnel that fire engulfed completely the cavern I had just left. I wasn’t ready for another deadly flash point. Oh, Tartarus indeed, I ran. Scrambling up the dark passageway, the light of the crystal stuck in my mouth lighting the path, I forced myself further and farther. I heard the mighty breath of a conflagration at my back. My rump felt like it had caught fire. Head first, I smashed myself into a boulder barring my way. The flames whirled dangerously behind, nearing quicker than I was as they consumed oxygen at a speed I couldn’t match. The boulder cracked and rolled over, myself in its stead. Before me a path I had taken many time. Carts full of coal and crystal rested unattended on a dusty rail set in the middle. On my left, at a hundred meters, a metal lift. On my right, a long cavity going deep down in the darkness. Everywhere… smoke, slowly vacuumed by the hole made for the lift… and everywhere, of course, ponies moving around buckets of water, wounded, and dead comrades. “FIRE DAMP!” I barked. Heads dashed in my direction and panic settled. Screams everywhere, again, as the path in my back suddenly tainted with the grim colours of lava. I threw myself away from the opening, and ran to the lift. Survive, survive! I looked back and saw a pony younger than me try to throw water in the tunnel. With a filled bucket harnessed between his teeth, his fur was the first thing to catch fire, instantly followed by its mane. In the red soaked darkness, I never knew what colours his bore… The fur was already long gone, flowing drop by drop over his skin as the colt scream. His scream changed to a muffled gurgle, then stopped. His skin turned black and cracked before he touched the flames-flooded ground. I looked away toward the life-saving lift. Ponies had already taken place in its compartment, pulling crazily the lever, trying to urge the lift to go faster. I wished to scream at them to wait for me. The air was too hot, forcing my mouth shut. The elevator cracked up and started ascending. Wait, please. I ran and jumped. I had to reach the cockpit of the lift. I missed and fell on the ground, miserable. The fire leaped on me, avid and cruel. Unable to scream, I let myself sink in despair. The flames, a lid of lead that would shush me forever. […] Though the fire lit the place with a cacophony of screams, suffering, and death, I remained untouched. Quivering, I opened my eyes and, febrile, I saw her. A mare with a dirty white coat stood over me, prancing over with a hoof stretched toward the fire. Her mane flowed with the colours of fire, crawling over her large brown and seared hood. A glow inhabited her eyes, an eerie light that was for sure not natural… Flames crawled slowly above our heads, an invisible dome between us and that yearning and deadly furnace. "Please be quick,” she murmured. Believing in such situation was hard. The fire was there, at a hoof-reach from gobbling both of us, and yet we had just been saved by some unknown mechanism. I kept my eyes riveted on the girl, kinda young as far as I could tell. She wore dark rings around her eyes. Her hooves were splashed with murk and blood… her blood. “Don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die,” I whimpered. She smiled at me. I slowly gave way to the blackness of unconsciousness, I saw the space in front of me twist. Dots of light danced around my head. Dizziness everywhere. Pain. “Bear with me!” the mare told me with her enchanting voice. She coughed, the soot in the air burning our lungs. Despite the pain, she hauled me between her hooves. Soft. The air cracked. From behind the mare appeared another hooded figure, blackness hiding its features. The mare, oh she was beautiful, her lock of fire dangling in front of white glowing eyes… The mare looked back, a wicked smile on her face. “Finally you’re there,” the mare sighed in relief. “What should I do?” The hooded figure hung his head next to the mare’s ears and whispered a few sentences. And the hooded figure vanished. The mare’s smile was gone too. She looked at me with sorry eyes.“It might hurt a bit, but it will be quick.” I hear another loud crack. The fire roared. In the couple of seconds that followed, burning pain blitzed through my bruised and burnt body. I yelled. Pain. Burn. Fire. I cried, holding me head between my hooves. I caught a glimpse of light and the whole world went fuzzy and weird. My mane crawled. I felt like I was dragged on the ground, through a black tunnel with no light at the end. The sensation of movement stopped. I was stuck in a corridor again. Where was I? Somepony hurriedly grabbed my limbs, lifted me up, and pulled me somewhere. We reached a noisy area, orders were shouted at ponies. “Close the way!” the marish voice ordered. “FLASHOVER INCOMING!” Screams and grunts filled my ears. I heard rocks being pushed in an entrance. Water being splashed. The sounds of an explosion. The earth shook. A gust of reeking wind and coal. I opened my eyes and saw my reflection in those of the magnificent mare. The glow in her eyes was gone, replaced with tears. The colours of her mane remained. Fire. A light in the darkness. “You’re safe now,” she comforted me, embracing with her hooves the contours of my burnt shoulders. “You’re safe.” I never thanked her. I just sobbed and cried in her shoulders. Pains and sorrow filled me with sleepiness. Sobs and tears took hold of me as I knew that the horror… the Pit… would begin tomorrow again. As always.