//------------------------------// // 54- Tabula Rasa // Story: Changing Expectations // by KKSlider //------------------------------// Act 5: Saṃsāra The first sensation that returned to me was pain. I think I was better off unconscious. Then came sight and smell all at once. My eyes opened as I gasped for air, and I was welcomed by the sight of tree branches swaying in a breeze above me. The air smelled clean and not clogged with ash. However, my mind was focused on other things; namely, how every part of my body except my right foreleg was wracked with excruciating pain. Naturally, I started screaming. Strangely, the sound was half-muted. One of my eardrums was still burst. I realized after choking out all the air in my lungs that I was on my back looking up at the sky. I must have been laying on grass, but I could not feel anything through my chitin. I could be in a Canterlot park or some forest, it was impossible to tell. I shifted my head around on the ground to get a better look at my immediate surroundings, as well as take stock of why I was in so much pain. I was laying on top of a bush with pieces of wood scattered around me, as well as a few impaled in me. The massive splinters had scored the chitin on my right side for the most part, but a hooffull had been stabbed into my front right shoulder socket. There was blood all over me and the bush, but no obvious source. That’s when I noticed why my right foreleg was not in pain; It was missing. My shoulder ended only inches down from the joint, stopping in a mess of chitin, blood, and what I assumed to be a broken bone. ‘Bones are supposed to stay inside the body,’ I thought as I stared at the bloody internal structure. It was thin compared to a human’s, the changeling body almost entirely relying on chitin for structure. The bone was merely present to act as a starting point for changing bone structure when transforming. I gasped out not entirely due to the ever-constant pain and lifted my left hoof to reach over and wave it around where my right foreleg should have been. The scorched fetlock burned in protest as I did so. I felt cold and clumsy as I moved around. ‘Gone? Where is it?’ I started to look around for the missing limb. All I could see was chitin shards, blood, and wood splinters. I hissed and clenched my eyes shut as I rolled over onto my stomach. The branches of the bush beneath me swayed and snapped under my weight and movement, sending me slowly falling to the side of the plant. I watched as a stream of blood poured from my stump. I dry heaved and looked away from the horrible sight. The adhesive gel that came natural to changeling anatomy made itself known once more in my mouth as I vomited onto the ground next to me. Then, I tried to remember what I was doing. ‘First aid. First, stop the bleeding.’ I looked around for a first aid kit but only saw ferns, dirt, grass, and bug-vomit. ‘Perfect!’ I pushed around in the grass to position my wound so that I could cover it up in the completely-unsanitary ad hoc bandaging. The sticky substance wrapped around my leg, stopping the bleeding instantly. ‘Second, treat for shock. How do I do that again? Raise the legs? No, that’s hypothermia. No wait, maybe it is shock.’ I flipped around and back onto my back, keeping my legs above me. ‘.... Now what? Oh, call for help.’ I looked around me for someone that could help me out. Unfortunately, I was still in the middle of a forest. “H… Hello? Can someone help me?” I croaked out. My throat was sore and scratchy from yelling so my wheezing voice was quiet. No one responded to my call, so I tried again, this time louder. “Hello?! Is someone there?!” I started coughing, the pain in my throat flaring up as I yelled. More specs of blood covered the ground as I coughed. I could not hear any response above my coughing, so I tried to think of what to do next. ‘Next… uh… next…’ I flipped around and back onto my stomach, The blood and viscera around me was starting to dry. I noticed some particularly large pieces of chitin and other things that made me realize where my leg went. It was everywhere. ‘Must’ve teleported into a tree. Better pick these up so I can get my leg back.’ I started picking up the pieces with my magic. My horn started stinging as I casted levitation magic but that was just one more pain added onto the pile. The parts of me scattered about proved to be a monotonous task to gather up, so I had some time to think. ‘What was I doing?’ I was… fighting Chrysalis. I lost the fight and then I teleported out. ‘Where am I?’ Somewhere with trees. ‘Now what?’ “Now what?” I echoed my thoughts out loud. The leaking mess of blood and organic matter slipped from my grip and fell onto the bush I had landed on initially. I stared at the mess, trying to wrack my brain. ‘What am I doing…? I was gathering pieces of my leg, I think…’ I blinked as it occurred to me that I was picking up pieces of an exploded part of me. ‘Like that guy in Saving Private Ryan. Heh…. Oh.’ I was still suffering from shock. That was why I felt cold, clumsy, and confused. The fact that I administered first aid through the shock was just pure luck and training. ‘That’s bad. How do I stop being in shock?’ I almost looked around for my phone out of habit before realizing that I was on an alien world with no technology of any electrical kind, with a wound that was now almost certainly going to be infected. ‘I’m out of my depth here. I need help. I need a healing pod, I think.’ “Hello?” I wheezed once again. “Is anyone out there?” No one answered. “Please? I...” I was in pain and possibly going to die again. My chitin was charred and burnt. One of my forelegs was gone. I could hear well only out of my right ear. My horn hurt from constant overuse. I didn’t know where I was. Above all else, I was alone, perhaps truly alone for the first time since I died. “... I’m scared.” I leaned against a tree as I gasped for air. I had been limping along on three hooves for possibly hours now. I decided that staying was the same as dying, and decided that east was the best direction I could go. If I came across a river then I would follow it downstream, but until then, East was the way to go. The East Equestrian Coast was the most heavily settled of any area in the Principality. If I went south or north, then I could easily miss civilization. West was an option too, but east had more ponies. Ponies meant food and survival. Hopefully, I could even link up with the East Army Group of the Swarm. ‘Then I can…. Start the rebellion again? Make sure the demands are fulfilled? I don’t know…’ I had not planned for this outcome, both losing and surviving. I pushed off from the tall oak tree I was leaning against and started hobbling along again. The pain was still there across my entire body. Thankfully, the cracks in my chitin seemed to have at least stopped bleeding at this point, so now all I had to worry about was infection and finding food. The sun was high above me, peeking through the canopy high up above my head. I did not know how long I was unconscious as it could have been anywhere from minutes to hours. Given the fact that I was still alive and had not bled to death, it could not have been that long. I continued on my slow journey to civilization. The forest was quite serene, now that I thought about it. Distant bird calls provided the background while the grass underneath my hooves was the mainstay of the noises I heard. A breeze would occasionally sweep through the forest, giving rise to an orchestra of woodwind instruments. ‘If I’m making puns that bad, then I really am in deep trouble. The sooner I can find others, the better.’ The thick carpet of grass underhoof eventually gave way to a more sparse forest floor. Covered in branches, sticks, and tufts of grass, weeds, and ferns, the sounds of my travel went from being quiet to the loud crunches of the wood breaking underneath me. That made me more conscious of just how loud I was being. For a while, I was worried that I would attract unwanted attention in the form of wolves or other beasties. I was also getting thirsty. Changelings still needed water, albeit a lower amount than our lesser fur-covered counterparts. Part of the formula of diluted love was water that was collected from the caverns beneath the hive. The lowest sections in particular were always flooded. I had wondered if there was an aquifer beneath the hive, as we were located in the middle of an extremely hot and dry biome with little rainfall. That water had to come from somewhere… The wind was picking up now. The rustle of the leaves had gradually increased to a quiet roaring of the forest. With my wings still in tatters, I could not fly up above the trees to look around nor check the weather. In fact, if I still had them, traveling with only three legs would have been a much simpler matter. Instead, I was forced to slowly limp around, usually from tree to tree as I caught my breath and grimaced from the pain of continued existence. From what I could tell, the clear sky was now overcast in grey. A storm was approaching. “Seek shelter, or continue on. What’s more dangerous, hypothermia or an infected wound?” I turned to the side as I asked Oest what he thought. Then I remembered that my shadow was just that: a shadow. Oestridae was gone. He had given his life so I could fail at the one thing I set out to do. “... it’s a terrible day for rain,” I mumbled. Crunch. Crunch Crunch. I had to keep moving. To stay still was to die, and I was not giving up just yet. While I still lived, Oest did not die in vain. ‘Oest. Weevil. Lace. Cicada. Who else died for me? Whose names did I not even know?’ An image flashed before my eyes; I saw myself covered in blood, straddling a changeling corpse. Looking down, I realized that I still had Eucharis’s blood on me. I was filthy now, covered in blood both my own and of others. Dirt and ash caked different parts of my body, sticking to the blood-covered chitin like a new layer of skin. I probably stunk to high hell. Crunch. Crunch Crunch. Smell was something you got used to in the hive, given the lack of showers or baths. Cleaning spells were the staple of changeling utility magics, and eventually you just went nose-blind to the natural odors of the place. Crunch. Crunch SNAP. I froze. That sound of a branch breaking had come from off to my right, deeper into the forest. “Who’s there?” I said in a voice as loud as I dared. “Hello?” No matter how many times I asked, pleaded, and begged, I was always alone. The torrents of rain cascaded around the tree I was resting under. Night probably had fallen hours ago, but the sun had been blocked out by rain clouds long before that. The rain had washed my carapace, shedding the accumulated filth as I continued to lumber across the countryside. I had opened my mouth to drink in the downpour. The cold rain dulled the roaring pain I felt across my body and slaked my thirst. Now, I was collapsed under some low-hanging branches of a tree. It was possibly a maple tree, I didn’t know. It had been quite some time since I learned the shapes of leaves and the trees they belonged to. Somehow, I doubted that the three pointed leaves belonged to a massive poison ivy plant; unless the flora of this world had been changed drastically compared to Earth, poison ivy did not have bark. So it was probably a maple tree. I had been constantly thinking of things to distract myself; water, the lack of showers, what plant I was hiding under, and where civilization was. Nothing ever really took my mind off of today’s events. Or was it yesterday’s? I was quickly losing track of time. Soon, I would grow hungry. There would be no food in this forest for me to eat. I could hunt or forage, but those material foodstuffs would only dull the hunger pains, staving off the worst effects for a period of time. I laid my head down on my hoof. I would have had my hooves crossed beneath my head as I rested, but one was still missing. My right leg’s absence had been a fact that came to my attention every time I took a step today. Learning how to walk as a quadruped gave me enough learning experience to make walking as a triped only an extremely slow and unpleasant experience, rather than a progress-halting conundrum. Now here I was, far from where I landed but not far enough for my liking, heading in a random direction. “So no shit, there I was; on an alien world, stranded in a forest, after having failed to kill my mother while building a new world order through conquest of the old.” I sighed. Coxa might still be alive. He should be, considering how hard we had to fight to get him and the injured out. Lace was possibly not dead. Thorax was definitely still alive, but I hadn’t seen neither hair nor hide of him. Or would it be neither fin nor chitin of him? I sighed again and tried to go to sleep. “I can fix this. Just give me time, I can fix this…”