Fallout: Equestria - Murky Number Seven

by FuzzyVeeVee

Killing the Slave

    “If you don't mind, what was it like?”

    Y-you mean?

    “To die.”

    I did not fall.

    That caught me by surprise. I simply...was.  Hanging, drifting without moving anywhere. What had happened?  I remembered pain, blood, lying on a hard floor amongst bodies of ponies and trying to move my hooves.  I...I'd wanted to catch the blood, try to put it back in!

    What had happened since then?  I couldn't see anything! It felt like there were two unexplainable forces in my head, tugging me one way or the other.  But I didn't move. Was there anything to move? I couldn't see or hear myself. No weight.

    Something tugged one way, then the other.  I saw patterns without eyes, inconceivable and impossible shapes that bore my journey to everywhere.  But still those forces. Was it my soul? Every inch of my non-existent body was shivering. How did that make sense?  My mind reeled, my perceptions experiencing claustrophobia, vertigo, and loss of balance all at once while I was hurled and thrown by forces I would never understand or truly be able to describe in words that did any justice.

    A painful light. The one thing I could see.  Burning hard and bright like metal being welded, radiating waves of aching reality above an encompassing dark void of calm.  Both sucked at me, tearing me across distances until I was nothing but a thinly-spread and ruined shell, unable to truly grasp the events affecting him.

    Slowly, the pain grew all too much.  It hurt me. It hurt so bad.

    I hadn't even realised I'd been hanging onto any sort of ledge when I let go and whirled my way into the void below.

    I fell.  No, I didn't fall.  I travelled. No up or down or point of reference.  I simply moved. Something taking me somewhere, a force I couldn't fight.

    Time passed.  Minutes, hours...days.  I had nothing to think about, simply so long within this place that would occasionally shift me into another plane of the same darkness.  I learned the colours of nothing and I saw the unthinkable distances of shadows. Where had I come from? A city. A painful city of chains.  I was not chained any longer, that I knew. But why was I here?

    A whipping sense of turbulent nature grasped me.  A leering face and a thick blood-stained blade. He'd killed me!  That was right! Was this what happened?

    Was I to meet with the Goddesses?  I could not comprehend the form of their afterlife!

    Time passed.  Nothing changed.  Nothing other than the one sense I had left of a distance so unimaginably large from the world I'd known only growing bigger and bigger, until I could no longer even remember how far I had travelled away from the harsh light.

    A solidity was approaching.  Something else.  My mind focussed on it, having spent the last vast stretches of eternity simply praying and hoping it was over.  It grew bigger, more forceful. A thicker harshness in the void.

    Even while I was sped toward it.  I looked back to see the harsh light.

    It was impossible to see, the eons of life so distant to me.

    Washing over me, I realised I no longer remembered why I was here all over again.

    My ears pricked and twitched.  I heard a light whisper of wind and the hiss of drifting ash.  Almost to my own shock, I heard myself groan. A smell entered my nostrils, dry and sandy.  An aching glare began to show through the cracks of...my eyes?

    Slowly, gasping and twisting, I found myself lying on my side and rolled onto my back.  A sensation of movement! Of presence! I was somewhere!

    Through my ears, I heard a whispering.  On the wind, a voice carried.

    “...ttle ponies...”

    Was somepony there?  I sat up and groaned when my eyes shot open to meet the sun's radiance.  Down from above, even sheltered by the clouded sky, it hurt and stung so much that I squinted and brought a hoof up to cover them while sitting up.  Below me my hooves staggered and reacted sluggishly like a drunkard. I expected to be in pain, but there was nothing.

    Just a numbness.

    Then even before I was able to see where I was, I realised the truth.

    I couldn't feel anything.

    No, that wasn't right.  I felt pain in my eyes from the light and a dull sensation of touch, but my nerves were numbed and without proper textile feel.  When I rubbed my own face I couldn't feel it! Staggering, yelping out loud, I fell even while trying to stand up quickly in shock.  I didn't even fully feel anything but the light pain of falling upon my chest. I tried to gasp, but no air entered my lungs. I wasn't breathing!  I could breathe by habit, yet there was no air to take in...but I was still alive!

    Twisting, shivering, and scared, I finally got my eyes open to look around me.  Please, somepony tell me where I was! Why was I even here? What brought me here?

    The sight would have stolen any breath I had away.  Around me, expanding and disappearing to the horizon, I saw freedom itself.

    The Equestrian Wasteland.

    Rolling dusty hills of drifting sand and dead vegetation, over rotten expanses of fields and plains.  High cliffs far in the distance rose high and bore the scars of balefire. Down from above, a brighter sun than I ever remembered cast jagged shadows from every outcrop, ditch, and dry riverbed in a world with all colours stolen from it, left with but an earthy dry tone from ground to cloud.

    Wisps of wind carried little cyclones of dust across the wastes, raking dead leaves or setting dry twigs rocking in the breeze.  Around me it was the only true motion other than the lethargic clouds above. No matter where I looked, I saw nothing but everlasting wastes from the hillside I had woken up on.

    Hesitantly and shakily, I began to stand up.  Having to visually watch my hooves and ensure they were as they should be, I got to my hooves and cast my head around.  I could see for at least a few miles in every direction, to each cliff, hill, field, and forest. There were no settlements or indications of life.  Not even a brahmin.

    “...fallen, no news, wastelan...”

    Was that my imagination?  The wind? What I'd thought were words disappeared on the light wind, barely audible.

    “Hello?”

    The words were spoken loudly, having to push my nerves to shout against the quiet expanse.  But the world ate them, allowing only an almost silent echo.

    “Hello?  Is anypony there?”

    Louder.  I shouted, turning this way and that.

    Absolutely nothing.  My words were lost to the wind.

    A strange sense filled me.  This was freedom.  I wasn't in Fillydelphia anymore!  I was in the wastes! I was free!  Free to go anywhere!  Do anything! There were no chains, my body felt fine, and nopony nearby to take me in!  My chest no longer felt tight, the swelling in my breast having subsided in this cleaner air while every injury seemed to have gone.  My nose felt straight again! My radsores were gone!

    A quick glance over showed me my wildest dreams.  My fleece was repaired! The whip marks and scars were all gone!  My wings still didn't move, but the pain had stopped. I just felt normal.  Free of pain.

    Free!

    Wasn't this what I had always wanted?

    If so, why did I just feel lonely?

    Staggering to start with, I began to trot.  I didn't choose a direction. I just went forward.  Maybe once I got over the next hill and stood atop those far off cliffs, I might be able to see some sort of settlement.

    My hooves sunk slightly in the dust as I moved downhill.  My ears remained perked up and listening for anything in the distance.  But nothing other than the thin blows of wind and my own light trotting met them.  Moving from dust to rock, I stopped only briefly to check the position of the sun. I needed shelter before dark!

    Thankfully, it was just before midday.  I had plenty of time yet.

    I climbed another hill, descending it quickly before tackling the next one.  Every so often I trotted over to some rock formations or a lonely dead tree. Trotting around them, seeing the crispy blackened tree bark or hunting for any signs of somepony's old camp, I always found nothing.  I climbed a rock once, struggling against my numbed sense of touch until I stood atop it. Even looking around, I saw little other than distant peaks of some huge mountain range, bereft of the snow I had always imagined.  This land was sick, but in the absence of anything else living it simply seemed dead. Like I was wandering over a grave of nature itself. There weren't even any signs of ruined houses or farms.

    My journey continued.  I didn't feel tired, just scared.  Nothing happened, but the lack of event was chilling.  A fifth hill passed, then a tenth. Before long, I had counted twenty long ascents and stumbling trips downhill.  I kept trotting for hours to reach the higher cliffs and only then began the steep ascent. I thought as I travelled, thought of this new life and what I would make of it.  I needed to find somepony and figure out my way to someplace safe! Or the way to Shattered Hoof and see if my mother was still there! Was Shattered Hoof even nearby? What if I was on the other side of the planet?

    How had I even got here?  The last thing I remembered was pain. So much pain.  A desire for peace and then a terror so great as to make me shiver.  I had died. Oh Goddesses, he'd killed me!

    I froze, fighting between the lack of air assaulting every instinctive habit I had and the subconscious need to hyperventilate!  He'd killed me! I died! I'd been sent to the afterlife, hadn't I? It was an eternity!

    Tears welled up in my eyes while I stood upon the sharp cliff-side.  Pacing in place, I looked back across the ten miles or so I'd trotted and shivered badly.  Was this a punishment? But I was free? I didn't understand!

    Turning, I galloped up the cliff.  I needed to know! It would get dark soon!  The sun was just nearing the edge before it would get dark!  I had maybe an hour at most! I had to find something from here!  Skidding and slipping, I rushed to the edge of the cliff, high up enough that my mane blew and my ears had to drop down to protect themselves from the whipping gales.

    Panicking, I turned my head in every direction.

    Nothing.

    I saw a massive cluster of boulders in to one side, about twenty miles away and so thick they looked like a rock forest.  A dry seabed lay just beside it before meeting more rolling hills with sharp rocky outlets if I kept my head turning. They gave way to a dead forest of sharp branches and a drop below sea level beyond that.  To the other side lay nothing but plains expanding until the hazy heat of the wasteland warped my vision. The same mountains I'd seen before covered the rest of this massive vista across the wastes. I was surrounded by a varied and incredible terrain scaled in ways I never had dreamed of or noticed during my time as a slave in the wastes, and yet I saw nothing.

    Not a single smokestack or empty house.  No wildlife, horrid beasts, or any ponies of any sort.

    “Hello!  Please, if anypony's there, help me!” I screamed from the cliff until I choked and gasped, drawing air that wasn't there.  The feeling was becoming increasingly unsettling the longer it went on. I could feel wind but there was no air.  Why wasn't I choking?

    My worries, however, lay with the prospect of being left alone in a pitch dark wasteland all night.  Who knew what came out of its lurking holes then? Thoughts of being chased by feral zombie ghouls when I couldn't see were mixed with lurking eyes watching from the distance in my imagination.  The sun was descending!

    I had to make a choice.  I chose the forest. Coral and Glimmer's village had been hidden in one, maybe I'd find one too!

    Turning, I cantered downhill.  I wanted to gallop, but I couldn't exhaust myself.  I'd cover more ground at a canter.

    I just couldn't stop shivering!  A desperation was overtaking me. A lonely ache in my heart filled with the paranoia that I was simply all alone forever!  I didn't even know this place! Why was I even here? What happened? The last thing I remembered was just a lot of pain and fear!  Sweating, I thought hard. I'd tried to kill myself, but Brimstone had saved me! What had happened after that? I felt like I’d known a few minutes ago, but it had drifted from my memory almost immediately.

    I just didn't know.  It all turned blurry and then I was here.  I just couldn't remember. Had I died in my sleep?  Just passed away like many slaves did?

    The thought terrified me in its sheer simple logic.

    Reaching the bottom of the slope, I set out across the bumpy fields, weaving between wild clumps of hedge and bracken.  My mind twisted, hurting inside. Wait, there was terror! Had somepony kill-
       
    He'd killed me!

    How could I forget that?  He'd killed me and now I was gone!

    Sweating, I kept my head looking around.  Passing across a dry riverbed, I clawed and struggled at the crumbling sides until the harder rock let me pull myself out and continue my journey toward that silent forest.  I wasn't going to make it, the sun was-

    Looking up and blinking, I saw the sun was resting just before midday.

    Hadn't it just been about to set?  What was going on? I turned my head, looked to the place I had just seen it.  But every time I blinked it seemed unmoving, as though it were resetting forever.  An eternal daytime.

    Staggering, trotting away from it like I could somehow escape the sun itself, I just shook my head.  I had to look back at the ground and try to ignore it. Stumbling over every rock I couldn't feel with my dead nerves, it took me guiding every hoof by sight to keep going over this rockier field.

    Up ahead, the forest loomed, high trees arching over one another with empty branches rustling lightly.  Splintering cracks at the wind bending their decaying trunks gave off unearthly sounds that broke the wind drawn silence of before.

    It took me many hours to reach the forest.  The distance was deceptive and the way was slow.  But I didn't feel tired, just scared. Scared of being alone in a world with nopony else to see.

    What was going on?

    I couldn't remember why I was even here.  What had happened again? I remembered being in Fillydelphia, but then nothing.

    What had happened that brought me here, again?

    The twig snapped under my hoof.  Freezing on the spot out of sheer habit, I glanced around to see if anypony had heard or spotted me.

    Nothing.  Just empty shells of trees clustering around me thickly over a dark brown earth.  The light from above sent spidery webs of light through the thick branches. Even through the clouds it seemed to light up clearings and pathways for me, with the dust spiralling into the dull beams.

    I'd wandered the forest for so long now.  Three times I'd sworn I saw the sun about to set and pulled myself into the bracken to try and hide before sleep.  I hadn't gotten any. Every time my eyes had closed, I'd opened them simply to see the angle of the sun was constant, waiting for me to get back up.  No tiredness or drowsy feelings fell across my mind no matter how many cycles I saw.

    So I simply trotted onward, my quest to find something to make sense of all this.  Many times I had stopped to press my eyes shut and try to remember everything or simply to cry.  It was pathetic, but it had been so long without anypony around me. I'd never been truly alone in my life!  Never been without order or direction.  I didn't like this!

    Sometimes I would gallop for hours until I fell over my own dulled hooves.  Pain penetrated the numbness, I had discovered.

    Typical.

    My ears perked up. A breeze of wind carrying through the trees.  I'd heard words now and again, unnerving me with a single hint of presence in this dead world.  I was truly alone, yet something was out there.

    The thought scared me as much as it reassured me.

    “...ssacre...rbu...rry...”

    Looking around at this ongoing forest, I tried to make any sense of it or locate some sort of pony-made path.  But there were no tracks. Not even any animal routes. Even the trees seemed to lack nests or old holes for birds!  Not a single piece of living wildlife had appeared. Not even a skeleton! Just trees. Ever thickening trees. Trees that shifted and brushed, growing closer and closer until I was having to squeeze between them over rotten and muddy swampland to proceed.  Soon, I was having to pull myself up and over, or clamber under, huge roots that arced up taller than a pony. They spread from trees thicker than the giant stone pillars in Fillydelphia.

    Was this all freedom was?

    I wasn't sure that I enjoyed it as much as I'd dreamed.  I just felt beyond the reach of anypony. Was I supposed to be enjoying this feeling?

    What if it really was like this?

    Panicking, pacing on the spot, I made a gallop forward.  There had to be something! The forest would end soon! Somepony would be up ahead in a settlement or cave or something!  Pulling through twigs and bucking dead wood to the ground, I clawed and tugged my way through.  All the way my mind fretted. Slavery was so much pain but this was beyond sanity! There had to be somepony!  My friends! Glimmer! Brimstone! Anypony!

    Up ahead, I saw some light through the closing squeeze of trees and swampland.  Yes! Light! That meant something causing it!

    My back legs kicked, I threw mud up, and tugged long dry vines out of my way.  I felt my body crushed between trunks as I slipped and fell between them. Crying out and flipping over, I let my frail body roll out to the dry ground.  Gallop, Murky! Gallop! Light! Somepony was out there!

    I broke the edge of the woods, landing with a dull thump on the dusty plains of the Wasteland once again.  Pushing through the ache, I looked up with a smile!

    Before me, the endless plains of the wasteland greeted me, the horizon ringed with high mountains and forested hills.  The sun shone just enough through a crack in the cloud cover that it had sent the light I had seen.

    “No.  No! Please, come on!”

    Cantering forward, looking desperately from left to right, I saw the forest I had just left arcing down to the edge of the sea.  All the water was gone, replaced by a horribly endless dry flat land.

    There was nothing.

    I fell to the ground, hopeless as every muscle in my body sank.

    “...dead...ope los...”

    The words sent shivers across my body.  The world itself was taunting me! The Wasteland in its horrid glory torturing the only pony left in it with the sounds of a hopeless dream to meet somepony out here!

    My memory reeled, how long had I been here?  How far had I trotted? Oh Goddesses, had it been a week?

    “Somepony!” I cried it, galloping forward.  I fell, got back up with great effort through the numbness.  “Anypony!  HELP!”

    The wind carried nothing, no voices.  I galloped forward into the plains, cresting small hills, a desperate charge in any direction!  I travelled still, counting down miles as I screamed and begged somepony to just be there!

    “PLEASE!” I looked behind rocks, climbed trees as best I could, hunted in a cave, and even moved into the mountains before the heights forced me to turn back with a storm of wind.  I found myself amid the plains, alone and not tired in the slightest. Set to wander eternally through this featureless land of no memories.

    “Somepony please help me!” Atop a hill, I spun, shouting in all directions.  “Is anypony out there!?  I don't know what's going on!”

    “...pony who...ir drea...fell to wastes...”

    My head shot up, screaming after the wind as it whirled away with a voice.

    “I don't know!  I don't know what happened!  Why am I here!? I don't want to be alone!”

    Frantic, trying to reach out and grab the wind, as stupid as it was, I fell.  Falling, rolling down the low embankment in a spray of dust, I coughed and curled up to wait.  To wait for eternity as I saw the sun once again reset and refuse to allow me the sleep that would remove the waiting.

    “Lost?”

    My eyes shot open.  Lifting my head, I looked around rapidly.  I couldn't see anypony.

    “Wh-who's there?” I felt my words stammer and tumble badly.  Every feeling I'd gotten of meeting somepony for the first time and being shy heightened to an unimaginable degree after this isolation.  How long had it been? A full day? No, longer. I couldn't remember! It felt so short.

    That voice though, wasn't it...

    Only when I stopped looking did I hear them again.

    “Behind you, Murky Number Seven.”

    The voice didn't sound strong, but even its presence frightened me.  Spinning around, I saw him and almost screamed, falling backward into the wastes and numbly scrambling away!  A small pony standing before me, having sneaked up!

    He was a wretched shell of a pony.  Tiny, frail, and with legs so thin I could see the edges of bone even while they shivered at the effort of simply keeping his body up.  A ruined black fleece was draped across him, stained and doing nothing to hide severe injuries. Whip marks adorned his back. I could see dripping blood from them.  His face held huge radsores that seemed to swell out of the skin with soaked up radiation and weeping pus. Behind them I saw sunken bloodshot eyes that had known no sleep.

    A horrid ruin of a pony, mistreated and hurt, yet it advanced on me!  Rolling over, I tried to run and fell on my own face. Why had I lost feeling?  I simply crawled low, scurrying to roll over the lip of the hill.

    “Come back!” That rasping voice from a bloody and thickened throat!

    “S-stay away!”

    Bandaged wings fell limply by his torso, leading to burns and parts of his filthy dark green coat falling out to reveal bruised skin.

    Then it hit me, where I knew that voice.

    It was me.

    It was me right before I'd come here.  Broken, battered, and edging so close to death.  I could even see a trickle of red from the edge of his mouth.

    “Stay away!” I simply cried out and backed off, this broken form of me advancing with hazy eyes.  Was I really that bad? Had they hurt me so much? It looked like a moving corpse that dripped blood from its very neck and stumbled on stick-like legs.

    “I'm you, it's all right.”

    “What's going on?” I shouted back, holding out a hoof, moving backward every time it came closer.  What was this place? Why was I here? I didn't understand anything! Goddesses save me from this nightmare!

    “You came.” This ruin of a pony limped forward, trotting unevenly as he circled my own numbed but otherwise cleaner and uninjured body.  I felt unable to move, just following 'him' with my head as best I could, realising I could not escape him. Despite that limping, every time I blinked he was closer, always moving just enough to keep up.

    “I thought I'd never find you, thought you hadn't come at all.  I was getting worried.”

    My own voice from that mouth sounded raspy and thick with gurgling bile. A hoof went to my chest. That disease had hurt so much. I was finally seeing it in myself here. Yet 'he' sounded uncaring and settled, as though speaking from experience or sudden relief.

    “Welcome, though.  I'm so glad you followed 'us' here, albeit accidentally.  I don't understand that.”

    “A-accidentally?  I don't know what you mean!” I shook and took a step back as I saw those lifeless eyes with pinprick pupils.

    “By choosing to come here into the peaceful reward for slaves, of course.  You act like you're lost and scared, but isn't this what you wanted these last days? Nopony will ever hurt you again.  Never hurt us.  There's no orders, no slavery.  No cold nights or great hunger. Nopony will ever tell us what to do ever again.  I...we...you...it's finally over.”

    My eyes went wide, falling to my haunches.
   
    “Y-you mean?” I bit my lip.  “No, no this has to be some sort of...fever dream!  Like this is what I'm seeing while fighting to survive a horrible injury!  I can't be-”

    The slave before me shook his head before nodding at the last words.  My hooves went to my face. This couldn't be true. Not just like that!

    “Yes, you are.” He moved a hoof to his chest, sitting down.  “You died. Wildcard killed you and now it's all over at last.  It has ended. It hurt, but nopony can hurt you ever again! You have peace at last.”

    I could only feel my eyes tear up again.  This wasn't what I imagined.

    “But it's what you want.” The form before me smiled, knowing what I was thinking.  “Look me in the eyes. Isn't this what we always wanted? Who better than yourself to remind you?  I'm a part of you. I know it's what you wanted, seeking an end to the pain. They won't take our dignity.”

    Nodding my head, I sniffed.  “Y-yes. W-will there be any more?”

    “No!” The ruined pony shook his...my...head and smiled.  “It might not be your fantasy, but this is freedom.”

    “It's not how I wanted it.  My fri-”

    The Ruin (I couldn't help but give it some title) interrupted me sharply, standing up.

    “You don't know what freedom is, Murk!  You wanted to taste it. That's what your Master told us long ago, remember?  After his griffon stopped you? He told you that you needed to taste freedom!  Well here it is!”

    He swung a hoof around.  I could see that passion even without pupils. The same I'd once shown and the delight to have anything for myself.  I didn't recognise myself, but I saw it in him.

    “This waste, it's one of the ways you can face where we go now.  But this is dying a slave, eternally wandering without orders. What kind of pony needs to be shown the truth by himself?  You're just confused, a lost part of me and us that doesn't quite know how to properly die. Listen. Right now, this is not on the cusp between life and death.  There is no life to go back to. This is simply between peace and pain.”

    His tone had taken a dark turn, moving closer across the dusty hill to stand before me.

    “Have you really locked all those wishes away so much in your terror that you cannot even remember them when they are shown to you?  We can take our freedom right now, Murk!  He can't catch us this time!  Be lost to the open eternity away from pain and torment.  I'm so sorry it wasn't how you wanted, but it's finally here in some way.  Peace or pain, Murk. This is it. The time to make the choice.”

    “T-to live or die?” I stammered back, sweating.

    “To die a slave or die peacefully, Murk.  It's the only choice left. We can't go back to the light of life any more.  It became too much. Our body simply passed on.” The Ruin lost its smile, sidling up beside me.  “Now, to simply lie down and take the horror of this barren emptiness of purpose...or follow me, the part of you that knows the pain like no other, and that knows you can find peace from this wasteland with a simple jump.”

    Soundlessly, the dust before me yawned out and parted.  Yelping, I fell back as ledges formed and dust swirled into the void opening up.  So deep that the edges of stone simply disappeared into a misty nothing below! It wasn't solid black, instead a hazy tone of the horizon reflected closer than the eye should ever be able to comprehend.  True eternity below me.

    Then I noticed the Ruin hadn't moved.  He simply seemed to rest in the air above the hole as though walking on solid ground.  That battered head of mine turned back at me.

    “Do you want to die a slave?  This is the way to escape. Give yourself to the peace and allow yourself to fall as far from the painful light as you can.  Take the chance and make that one choice to throw yourself into that place where you want to feel no more pain. Somewhere their chains will never find you and you can finally know rest.”

    Every joint ached as I shivered and sweated under stress.  This was all too much for me to take in or to understand. What kind of decision was this?  For peace? I wanted peace. If I was dead, I didn't want to die in pain and remembering all the hurt...

    “You can forget all that.” Its eyes narrows, knowing me.  “If you remain here, you will spend eternity a slave. You noticed that in the forest.  That panic without anypony around to give you an order? You're still a slave here, Murk.  But fall, leap to the void, and we will escape those bonds at last.  To a place our cutie mark can no longer even tell us our destiny. No matter what it tells us at all.”

    I moved closer, looking down to the contrasting warp of colour and form that betrayed a fall long beyond measure.

    “It's not empty. It is a place of peace.  You need only make the journey to the place we truly want, further down.  Further away. You tried before, remember?”

    The colours shifted, becoming that of gravel under fresh rain.  My face twisted, tears dripping free into the pit.

    “Just lean forward and it all ends forever.  The story of the born slave who escaped to a peaceful afterlife, Murk.  Tragedy turned to albeit only bittersweet freedom, but it is the best we can have.”

    I stepped back, trotting away from it to lie on the ground and face away from the gaping hole.  Pulling my hooves above my head, I shook it again and again.

    “I don't know!  I just don't know!  I'm sorry, I'm so scared and I- this is all...”

    The Ruin of my own body at the will of My Masters trotted over.  I felt his wasted hooves beside me before one settled across my back.

    “It's alright.  It's okay to be scared.  I'm scared too, but I'm the part of us that felt so much of it.  Please...”

    The hoof lifted my head up, trying to smile through cracked and dry lips.

    “...an end to a life of abuse and pain.  All with but one fall.”

    I glanced back, before turning to him.  This was all so much. I needed to know.

    “What will I find down there?”

    The Ruin paused, then patted my shoulder.

    “The beauty of this being our own spirit and soul around here?  I can show you. You can show yourself.”

    The entire world shifted.  Like somepony unravelling paper from a foal's model, the surface of what I saw around me peeled and faded.  Staring in wide eyed wonder, I saw mountains lift and silently breeze into the sky while rocks folded and surged.  The ground slid from beneath my feet and left me standing over nothing without falling.  A sense of weightlessness overcame me while reality as I knew it hid and reshaped, sliding silently into a new form in the moments that I blinked.  By the time I'd rubbed my eyes to even check if I were seeing this right, I was no longer in the Wastes.

    Around me, lush green grass slid against my unfeeling legs.  The sky above shone bright through patchy white clouds cleaner than I had ever known!  I slid, almost falling before I realised we were on a sharp incline.

    This was the world in my dreams. Equestria of old.

    From tall mountains, marble white structures hung.  Colossal and distant, they gave way to spiralling towers topped with purple and gold.  The glint of clean unbroken glass shimmered like the sea's surface across the cities upon mountains like the one I'd seen in the pictures in Stable Ninety Three!  Ponds and rivers flowed gently around open forests. Near us, small homes sent thin streaks of smoke into the sky through cream brick chimneys, each with space of its own upon the high hills that made up the mid ground between wondrous snowy peaks and deep valleys of a colourful world.  Rainbows shimmered above waterfalls while I saw natural built fences leading the way along gravel paths to every incredible corner or home below the mountain cities!

    A world of unparalleled artistic beauty and peace.  The sound of wind, water, and brushing vegetation crafting a deliciously calming melody into the air.

    The Ruin stood beside me just behind a rock, smiling thinly through that battered face.  A broken nose reacted oddly to the movement, before casting a hoof outward.

    “The peace we can take, Murk.  That you can live in forever. Safe and secure to do as you will.”

    “This is incredible...”

    “This is the reward, for when a slave has finished his or her toil, their death is but their contract finally breaking and permitting them their freedom.  Most find it naturally and happily. You...I...we're not like that. Born slaves who sometimes need a little push more. That feeling holding you from falling, that is the slave in your mind, Murk.  But from what we saw, dreams can show us the way to here.”

    I almost didn't listen.  My eyes simply travelled around at this world of colour and beauty.

    “All this?”

    “All this.  That could be your home there if you wanted.  Go! Take a look, see for yourself what awaits.”

    That was an offer I couldn't turn down.  My numb body shifted and staggered but I found my way to the indicated living area.  Just a little cottage surrounded by a low river built of light-coloured wood. Nervous, I passed through the open door to find my dream home.

    One whole room, a thick bed near a small fireplace right next to soft cushions upon the floor to relax upon.  Woodwork furniture surrounding the carpeted floor in patterns that astounded every artistic part of my mind! Frames set upon the walls bore my most treasured drawings, and a cabinet housed all of my belongings to tell my tale.  Warm food sat ready on a table by the window, while large windows let light stream upon my home. What took my attention more than anything was the back that opened onto a fantastic view of the valleys. An open balcony sat waiting for me to spend my days sitting in peace, drawing this beauty for eternity!  There was even my journal waiting.

    “All it takes is one word, one agreement, and it's all yours for real, Murk.”

    The Ruin trotted in behind me, every step breaking the illusion to a dark rot beneath his hooves.  The hideous brutality done to my body that he now displayed clearly overruled even this illusionary visit to paradise.

    “Forever,” I muttered to myself, moving onto the balcony.  Pausing, I closed my eyes and simply took in the serenity and relief.  My body felt at peace. There was nothing to worry about in this world. Absolutely nothing.  I could just sit here and draw my thoughts and feelings forever, with nopony ever wanting to hurt me ever again.

    The thought was so tempting.

    Allowing myself to smile toward my ruined body staring back at me, I leaned down to pick up my journal.  Maybe just one drawing...

    I squeaked out loud, almost crying out in terror as it simply broke apart in my hooves.

    Hopping back, I put a hoof to the wall to steady myself, finding it tearing apart and bending like a fragile and damp piece of paper!

    “What's going on!?” Staggering back again, I placed my hooves to the chair, the fence. All were broken under the lightest of touches!

    “Nothing is wrong, Murk!” The Ruin trotted up quickly, his deathly cold touch pushing me back from the walls.  “You don't need to notice this. This is peaceful, right?  Fragile or not, this is peace for you where you might do as you will!”

    “B-but I c-can't. This isn't right!  It's just pretend, like a model!”

    “Peace or pain!  What is an illusion to an eternity of enslavement in your own death, Murk?  It's better than nothing!”

    I crossed my hooves, biting my lip and looking around.  A tightness in my chest born of stress grew and grew. How could I trust him?  But he was me! Was this right? I didn't know! I just didn't understand any of this!

    “You cannot be free and live with your mind seeing all, Murk!” The Ruin insisted, his hooves on my shoulders and that stinking mangy blood-coated body of mine closer than I found comfortable.  “This is all we have! The peace of eternity in our own make-believe dreams or the pain of always feeling alone and without direction without your master to guide you! We have to choose how our soul dies. Surely you can see this is the better option!  Please! For our sake! Make it end!”

    He was pleading me!  I was pleading me!  Was this really all I had?  I...I...

    Something was missing. Something huge.

    Sniffling, wiping an eye I sat back and covered my face.  An ebbing feeling in the back of my head, like I was on the cusp of remembering something important kept slipping just away from my tongue.  I could be here! Safe! Blissful peace to draw and rest forever without anypony around.

    Without anypony...

    That was it.

    “I can't.” I saw the Ruin's eyes widen as I looked up.  “I want my friends.”

    Something caught my eye.  Without even waiting for a reply, I glanced around him to see a trickle of liquid on the wall from behind one picture.  Accelerating as it descended, more followed with drips and slick oil coating the wall, like paint thinner drooling and sapping the colour into a hazed light grey.

    Only now did I see truly how this world lacked true colour.  Spread outward, the liquid bubbled and dropped the picture from the wall. One that held me standing alone in the bottom left with my wings outstretched, looking blank.  Behind it I saw a shining surface, like a mirror forming from liquid metal that was spreading the colour, sapping wetness all over the wall onto the ceiling and floor.

    The Ruin grabbed my head, turning it away from the sight that transfixed and confused me in equal measure.

    “Don't look!  Don't look at it!”

    A scream echoed across the valleys.  The oozing liquid that consumed the entire wall and sought to sap all vibrancy from an already distorted world pulsed and shook with a low aching groan.  But I knew the scream. That long drawn out howl of a whole life's agony! Trying to force my head past, I almost fought with the Ruin. Let me see!

    “Don't look, Murk!” He screamed to me.  “It will only hurt you!  You don't need to see it!  That is your memory trying to infect and hurt you by showing you the pain surrounding them in Fillydelphia!  You can escape it! Please, come with me! Don't give it the chance to enslave you!”

    “I want my friends!”

    “They're lost to you, Murk!  Let go!Life is over!”

    There was a wet crunch.  I heard blood dribble. Unable to pull my eyes away, I forced past the skeletal form of the Ruin to look into the strange shimmering apparition that had spread from where an entire home wall once was.

    Now there was but a framework, a dripping wasteland style ruin, coated in writhing, colourless liquid filled with a malign life!  Within it though, I saw something. Me.

    Lying cast upon gravel under a storm of rain, I saw the picture of myself, broken and lifeless.  My limbs hung like a castaway rag doll. Yes, I had known that scream! The one that had burst from my lungs against all the pain and abuse of my life when I had fallen!  Now I looked upon the result. I saw my death. My self inflicted escape from the pain. If I could feel my own body, I might have felt sick at the very sight of terrified eyes wide open even in death, showing the very last frightened stare that had led me to jump.  Wildcard had been the one to kill me in the end, but that didn't hide that I had chosen to fall by my own admission.

    “See, Murk?  It is only the painful memories!  Even if that wasn't how it happened, it was in your mind still!  Such thoughts don't disappear just because you failed once and everypony was sad!  They linger. They hurt you forever. It's what has brought us to this choice. I beg you, Murk, turn and come with me now before it hurts you with what is to come!  Do what you wanted. Run away and we can rest as one forever unto eternity alone and safe.”

    “I- I can't. This is me and...”

    “We are you, Murk!” The Ruin pulled at me.  “We can still stop this. Leave before the pain comes, your memory trying to reach you and find you no matter how deep I take you!  Only by jumping once more can it truly be escaped! This world could be beautiful and yours again, for all its fragility, but you have to go now!  Just one word, Murk. One agreement and it's all over.”

    I saw large bubbles surge across the surface of the liquid images. It began to spread, seeking me.  My hooves remained still. I couldn't take my eyes from my own crushed body.

    “Come on!  Before-”

    Another scream burst from the images.  Somepony else. Who was that? I knew it!  It was female! Locking my eyes on as I saw motion come across my own corpse in the rain, I found myself ignoring the frantic pleas of the Ruin even while the void emanating from the wall sucked around us.  The air chilled, the harmonic hums deadened.

    The scream came again as somepony galloped and almost fell when she skidded to a halt beside me.  A mournful howl of loss bursting from her mouth. Gentle white and two tone pink, who was she?

    A sharp pain burst in my mind.  Something tore free as I felt my peripheral vision go black.  All I could see was this mare. No, not just some mare! Glimmerlight!

    She picked me up, holding my small body that limply drooped by its neck and limbs in her own front hooves.  Her mouth seemed to simply stay open in shock and motion to cry and scream over and over as though in denial and horror.  An outpouring of emotion the likes I'd never seen from her as though everything had just fallen and destroyed something she held so dear.  Pressing her muzzle to my neck, she rocked my broken body as though by some miracle of wishful thinking I might return to life.

    “There's nothing but pain in watching this, Murk!  Don't do this to yourself! Your memories are trying to make you feel guilt and keep you where you were, remembering what you were in Fillydelphia!”

    I heard the Ruin, he was right beside me, but his voice was far off.  Nothing made sense! I couldn't feel anything amidst the horror overtaking me and showing the result of my mindset as it brought me to this choice.  Beside Glimmerlight, others emerged.

    A huge figure, rippling until he was visible.  Brimstone! He simply stood watching Glimmer's anguish, unknowing of how to react to this.  His head bowed low, his shoulders slumped. I saw Coral Eve knelt beside Glimmerlight. She reached over to draw my eyes closed even as her other hoof wiped the tears from her own eyes.  Three ghouls, two little fillies who stared in confused worry nearby to a shivering bearded figure of Weathervane, gritting his teeth and shaking horribly as though some inner rage was ready to snap.

    Then off to one side, just scarcely visible, I saw the blinking red light of an eyepiece removed and dropped to the floor, before a young black and red unicorn dropped onto his knees in despair at the sight before his eyes.

    Hooves grasped at my neck, pulling and struggling.  My eyes felt locked. I couldn't move at the sight! Was this what I'd done to them?  But why? I was...I wasn't anypony! Just a little slave who didn't do anything! I wasn't important!  Don't mourn over me! Slaves just go, it's how it works!

    A grasping, invasive, and unpleasant feeling washed over me. The growing sickness sinking through my skin out of the visions and images that became more real as though I could reach out and touch them the more I watched.  I tried to lay a hoof on Glimmer's shoulder but no matter how far I stretched my hoof, they always seemed so far away.

    They all bore that same look, like they'd lost something important.  What? It couldn't be me! What had they lost?

    It took seeing them turn and leave one by one in differing directions for me to truly realise.

    They'd lost hope.

    Only then did I see one more figure starting to appear who stood over my body and cried their heart out.  One who had been missing, who was-

    “Murk!”

    My head was turned.  The entire world of Equestria I had seen, this paradise was a chaotic mess of wet glistening madness, enveloping it and crushing the paper mountains from their fragile state.  The Ruin held my face. I wanted to turn! Who was it back there! Who? I knew them, but I'd forgotten!

    “MURK!” The Ruin screamed in my face.  “You have to make a choice now!  The pain is pulling you back into a personal hell of slavery! It will hurt forever! Don’t you want us to have peace?  We wanted away from the pain! That's why you jumped! If you keep trying to remember, even the empty wasteland before will give way to something much, much worse and there won’t be any turning it back!”

    My mouth hung open, looking everywhere.  Reality was bending, chains forming around the world, and a searing pain on my cutie mark beginning to tell.  Wincing, I tried to turn back but everypony was gone from the window into unreality.

    “I don't know!  M-my friends! Where are my friends!?” I screamed out, begging him to tell me!

    “They're gone, Murk.  I'm so sorry! I know you wanted to be free with them, but it's impossible now!”

    He paused, coughing harshly.  I realised this horror was catching up to him as well.  Of course, he was me.
   
    “It's impossible.  There's only one choice left to us, Murk.  Fall into peace! Make the choice! For your own sake please do it, Murk!  Just tell me you will and this will all stop. You are the only thing keeping us here, the only part of your mind that sticks and stays when it should move on!  One word...”

    Everything tore at me. Even while every thought made me want to cry, I strove to just understand.  All of this was sanity crushing, impossible choices that determined my afterlife and what it would be!  Choosing to forget everypony forever to make the pain stop and just say goodbye or to face being a slave forever with an incomplete memory of tragedy and heartbreak?  I felt too small to decide! I wanted somepony to decide for me! A friend to talk to and get advice! Just run away and-

    “No!” I screamed it to be heard, stomping a hoof.  “I don't want to forget them! They made me who I was for the first time, taught me how to laugh!”

    Somehow, without turning I knew.  Their faces fading on by around me.  Those smiles, those harsh times when we had saved one another or been there when another needed us. I hadn’t realised how much my death would hurt them.

    I’d undervalued myself.

    Slowly, I closed my eyes and shook my head.

    “I'm...I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can...if I can just figure all this out then...”

    He shoved me away.  The Ruin snarled and knocked me clean onto my back, his wiry form showing a brief surge of strength before staggering and coughing badly.  If this were not the warped world it was, he looked like he should be dead. Did I really look like that?

    “If you won't choose because I'm showing you what you can have, Murk...”

    The world began peeling again, a sensation of falling further!  Screaming, I dropped over the edge of a hole in the ground into pitch darkness.  A burning sensation tore at my body even as I reached out to grab the ledge before I fell, like a fire was sucking me in!  My hind section was tugged, pulled, and yanked at harshly like some supernatural force had grabbed me! Crying out in shock, I gripped as hard as I could!

    “...then I'll show you what you'll get if you don't!”

    The Ruin's face distorted into a mix of rage and terror, rearing up to stamp both hooves upon one of mine.  Crying out, I let go with one, my mind struggling to comprehend all this! Pain soared through me, a void below and a twisting darkness over an idyllic world all around me!  Sensory overload made me wince and close my eyes, pleading with him.

    “I just need time!  Don't let me fall! Don't!”

    “Your whole life is down there, Murk!  Every painful memory and horror inflicted upon you!  If you fall to there, you will never get back out again unless you choose to let everything go for the one refuge a slave ever gets!  It's our reward for service, don't throw it away! If I must force you, the one part of us, of me, that doesn't want to rest and let it end, then I will! Maybe then, you'll finally see why it's our time to let go!”

    I shook my head, trying not to look down.

    “DON'T!”

    “Every one of those ponies you called friends were going to die!  That's what slaves do! Holding onto them now is just hurting you more!  It's pointless and painful! Don't you remember how every one of them was falling?  To rage? To regret? To a feral state? They were all falling the same as you! You can forget them and clear it all from your mind!  You'll be happy!”

    His face pleaded, begging me as he leaned over.  Holding onto the one hoof that was keeping me from above this new pit, I felt his hoof begin to let go!  I saw no eternity below, only raging fire and the sound of clanking chains. My face screwed up. He was asking me to forget my friends!  To go to this eternal peace meant losing everything I'd found from them!

    “No!  I won't!” I screamed up at him.  “I want peace, I really do!  But not now!  Not until I know they're safe!  Not till I somehow help them from how I hurt them!  Please, give me a chance to somehow reach them just long enough to help them!”

    Behind the Ruin, I saw the colossal city on the mountain falling, shaking the very land as it crashed through the thin earth and plummeted into a void.  Everything was coming apart from that shimmering liquid that flowed and closed in on us as much as it did upon every aspect of Equestria. The paradise was falling from the painful memories tearing at this pretend world.

    “You can't!  You're dead!  Please, decide so I can pull you back up and we can go together into one peaceful state at last!  It doesn't have to hurt any more! Why let the tragic tale of Murky Number Seven go on? Why more pain?  Why more slavery and illness after beating and loss? Fighting it will only show you horrors that will torment you forever onward!  Let them go!”

    “I can do something! Somehow  I believed once, I want to believe again!  Let me try!”

    Thrusting my own hoof to him, asking him to take it, I saw the Ruin glance at it.  Yes! See the little bravery in my eyes!  I'm thinking the same! I can face a bit more pain, just till I see that my friends were safe and got out!  Maybe not with me, but I couldn't go not knowing! I could endure until I saw them escape!

    He saw my thoughts.  I saw that hesitation, that moment that another part of what clearly was my unconscious mind think about it.  In the whirling decimation of reality, he closed his eyes.

    “They were good friends...” He muttered quietly.

    “The first we had. We can't let them go.”

    His eyes squinted, before hardening.  I saw fear in his eyes, a terror that I felt all too often that had scared me into running away.  That had scared me into trying to take my own life. He wasn’t malicious, he was just simply afraid. My fear.

    “No.”

    What?  What?  No, please!

    “No?  Why! I just...but I just told you!  We can do this! Why!?”

    My brutalised self took hold of my one hoof.  The pain increased, tugging me. I felt chains creeping over my back legs.  My throat tightened from the feeling of a collar.

    “Why!?”

    He shook his head.

    "Because I have to prove to you why we can’t ever win against them! Why we need to fall away now!  I know you Murk. I know more about you than you yourself know. I am you. I am the you that forever remembers, that cannot forget.  Unlike you, I know the full truth. The things you have forgotten in your efforts to make it easier.”

    I jerked, falling backward. He made no effort to hang on very hard at all.  He was going to let me go!

    “You've done this before, forgotten all just to relieve you of the hardship. I will remind you if I have to, why you have always chosen to forget and let memories blur to nothing. I’ll show you why need to let go and fade away."

    He let go.

    Falling.  Truly falling at last.  I reached for him, but I saw only his sad face watching me go.  Witnessing my fall into the chains of my mind that coiled and bound around my life and memories.  Screaming, howling for it not to happen I was pulled and dragged into the very darkest recesses of my life and the agony filled oblivion that awaited me.

    "Remember the life that you hate, the life that you led, and the place in life you were given.  It even started this way! You've forgotten those who mattered before!"

    The wagon bumped and rattled, jolting us all inside it about hard.  We might have been hurt from it all, had we not been as tightly packed as we were within the damp passenger hold.

    Scared and whimpering at the flares of lightning through the small holes that dropped freezing rain through them, I felt her hold me tighter.  I didn't like this. It scared me. It scared me a lot! So she just held me close.

    My mother.

    “Ssh, dear.  It's all right. The storm can't get you in here.”

    Her voice, rhythmic and calm, was all that stopped me from crying aloud.  Hugging close to her chest, I buried my head in her shoulder. I didn't like travelling.  It took ages and was scary when it wasn't boring or smelly. But her hooves wrapped around me and hummed gently in my ears to calm me.  I liked it when she made music like that, just for me when nopony else could hear it.

    “Where are we going, mom?”

    The wagon lurched again.  It was a flying wagon, pulled by huge griffons that looked really nasty.  All the slaves had been pushed into it for us to be taken somewhere.  I didn't know where. The masters never told us.

    “They're taking us to another place for work.  There were too many of us back at Shattered Hoof.”

    “Will it be a nicer place?”

    She was silent, instead just smiling down to me and stroking my mane carefully around a big bump on my head.  I felt her pull my little jerkin down, hiding my wings.

    “Why do I have to hide them?”

    “Because other ponies get jealous of your wonderful little gift, my dear.” I felt a kiss on my nose.  “Someday you're going to fly away from all of this to somewhere better, my dear Murky.”

    “I don't understand.”

    A squeeze.  I liked squeezes!  They were soft and warm!  Nuzzling in, I forgot all about what she'd even been saying just to rest here snuggled up to my mom.  Life wasn't good and sometimes she cried for reasons I didn't know. My mom confused me though sometimes. She'd look really really hungry even though she always had food to give to me.

    “Just remember that you're different and special.  You're not like them and they will hate you for it, because you've got something they all want.”

    I nodded a little, before yelping and grasping around her tightly when the wagon slammed and almost rolled.  Ponies swore and the rumbling of us back on solid ground rattled beneath us. Slowly, the wagon rolled to a halt and hoofsteps above us dropped wood splinters atop our cramped heads.

    “Everypony out!  Come on, move it!  Time's wasting, we're paying for the wagon by the day!”

    A door on the side of the wagon was torn open after the unlocking of a thick set of bars.  Dull brown light drafted in alongside a surge of icy wind and rain. Slaves around my mother and I groaned and shifted, pushing against one another to stand.  Why did they put so many ponies in one wagon? It wasn't nice.
   
    We were told to go outside.  Trotting beside my mom, I obeyed quickly and quietly even when the really, really cold outside evening met me.  Slaves were being told to stand in a line across a muddy field in the lashing rain, the little foals like me hiding beside the ponies that took care of them.  Our master had an umbrella magically held above his head while the slavers wore thick leather covers or goggles. I wanted a pair of them. They looked cool!

    I didn't know this place, so I just pulled myself against my mom's leg and shivered.  I could see dark shapes of big steep hills surrounding this place, a wall surrounded it made of black wood and there were rocks.  Lots and lots of rocks! If I squinted real hard against all the water dripping in my eyes, I could see a large barn and a small wooden house; the glow of a fire within it.

    Looking that way let me see the pony striding toward us, the one whom my master was meeting.

    “Got the lineup all as you wanted, my good sir!”

    “Good nuthin', you're late!” The new pony, an older stallion with a long grey beard spat and didn't seem to care about the rain.  “Expected you here three days ago.”

    “Now now, sir.  You know the wastes and what they're like.  Bloodwings en-route!”

    No there hadn't been.

    “Whatever. They're here so what you chargin'?”

    Our master strode back, leading this new pony toward us and trying to avoid the muddy puddles from his white suit.  The scruffy looking stallion just snorted and almost seemed to purposefully stomp in them as he went, he cast his eyes over us with distaste.

    I pulled myself closer to my mom, feeling her hoof wrap around me.

    “I'm scared, mom.”
   
    “It'll be alright, dear.  Just stay quiet.”

    Now closer, our master swung his hoof over the line.

    “Well, five hundred for the stallions and mares. Three hundred if they're older than forty.  Pretty good prices, I hear that Appleloosa's selling them for over seven-”

    “How much for the kids?  Rock farmin' don't take much strength bar the few and I gots them already covered.”

    Blinking and casting an eye back to us, the suited stallion cleared his throat and motioned hastily to his slaver crew to back off a little.

    “Well, a parent and foal discount I could surely-”

    “Don’t want the parents, don't need 'em.  Just the little ones for the little rocks.”

    My mother's hoof pulled me right under her, clutching tightly as I saw most of the foals look a little unsure to their unsettled parents or guardians.  Some tried to protest, before the sharp crack of a whip sounded out.

    “Havin' trouble keepin' em in line?  Thought you was 'fessional.”

    “You mean professional?”

    “Yup, 'fessional.  How much?”

    “Well...” This wasn't how deals had gone before, I could see him look unsure.  Please don't pick me, please don't pick me! “I'd say perhaps two hundred seventy-five.  You're investing after all, right?”

    “Two hundred.”

    “They've been kept with their parents, grown better cos of it, so there has to be a premium, I can go to two sixty?”

    “Two hundred.”

    “Well, how many do you intend to buy?”

    “All of em.”

    A ripple of panic spread across the entire line.  Slavers moved in, whips flying, and mouths cursing when hooves beat us into submission.  I felt my mother jerk, even though she'd been silent.

    “Don't worry, Murky...don't worry, it'll be okay.  I'll sort this.”

    “I don't wanna go. He's nasty!”

    “Well, sir...” Our master coughed into a hoof, before noting just how mucky it was and grimacing.  “Given you are purchasing so many, I can afford to lower my prices. Two twenty-five, no lower.”

    “Done.”

    The suited stallion held out a hoof to the farmer, receiving only a little harsh look before retracting it.  Money began to change hooves. Then it started.

    Slavers moved forward, prying foals from parents' grasps and throwing guardians aside.  The sound of children wailing mixed with grown ponies begging and screaming that it would be okay filled the air.  Even the rampant shouts could not silence it. A shadow fell over us. I heard my mother plea before magic grasped me and whisked me from under her.  Immediately, my mother grabbed me, holding onto me even as they struck her and tried to pull her away. Crying, wailing, and keeping a hold of her, I tried not to go!  I didn't want to go! Why wouldn't they let me stay? I didn't understand!

    Two others joined the slaver, my hooves slipping and lashing out with my little strength.  One hit a mare's eye and sent her staggering back cursing words I had never heard before! Galloping forward, I leapt into my mother's hooves once more.

    “What's all the fuss?” The farmer wandered toward us all slipping in the mud and trying to stay together.  “This what you call a foal?”

    “Well, Murk has yet to have his growth spurt and-”

    “Not payin' two twenty-five for him.  Hundred, max.”

    “NO!”

    Even when the slavers closed in to push us apart, my mother surged past them, holding me to her side and falling before the farmer.

    “Please, sir!  He's too young for this!  You can clearly see how weak he is!  Buy me too!”

    “Don't need a mare. Get off him, belongs to me now.”

    “I beg of you!  He's my son!  I- I'll be whatever you want!  You can have me for any kind of slave that you require, no matter how bad the job!  Y-you don't need to feed me! If there's anything-”

    “ENOUGH!”

    A magical telekinetic slap threw my mother down.  Screaming, I tried to run to her side until a rough-coated leg caught me around the waist.  The farmer lifted me up even while our master strode to my mother after striking her.

    “You don't get to make demands here!  You're nothing but a slave! Just like he is!  You're merchandise.  You don't get a say. If I say he goes without you, he goes!  You don't get to offer yourself, not your services and not your body.  If we wanted that from you, we'd take it.  A slave has no bargaining chips in this world.  Take her into the wagon. The good sir has made his purchases. One hundred shall do to just be rid of that runt.”

    Even while the slavers grabbed her, dragging my thrashing mother away, I fought myself against the heavy weathered muscles holding me off the ground.  I begged him, hit his face with my little hooves and tried to squeeze free. They were taking her away! I wanted her! I wanted my mom! Let go!

    “MOM!” I simply screamed, pushing out my hooves toward her.

    “You're different, my little Murky!  You're different!  Mommy loves you!  It'll be alright!”

    I couldn't do anything but cry and repeatedly shout for her, even as she was carried inside the wagon.  The sight was replaced by that of our master, bringing the change for me to the farmer. Finally shaking hooves, he leaned down to me.

    “Don't you worry, little foal.  It's just business, nothing personal.  She's right though. A born slave? I'm sure you'll get along just fine here.  Juuust fine. Let's go lads!”

    Sweeping up and away, he climbed atop the wagon.  Surging their huge wings out, the griffons began to trot.  I couldn't see inside the wagon, but I could feel her in there.  Whining, struggling, I kept screaming to the sky even as the wagon lifted up into the low clouds of the thunderstorm and carried her away from me.  Further and further away.

    “Pipe down, you.  Now let's get you to work.”

    “I want my mom!”

    “You'll get your job!  You're a slave, nothing else!”

    He simply threw me, threw me toward the ground.  Curling up in fear I simply saw the rocks I'd spend my childhood days pushing from now on.

    I tried to stand, I really did!  Tried to stand and will my wings to flap!  I'd chase after her! Find her! Getting up, I tried to climb up a rock to get a better start!

    His hoof simply threw me down.  I landed...

    ...on a wooden floor.

    Scorching heat flowed over me, like the furnaces of Slit's factory.  I had to blink and choke on toxic fumes before opening my stinging eyes to see the dark red wood rotted below me.  Something was tight around my chest. What was?

    I looked up, finding myself amidst a thick hewn cave of dull metal seams and dark timber blocks holding it all up.  The walls were filthy with blood and sticky moisture. Warped torches flicked in unreal ways at the edges around a huge opening that looked out into an immense quarry.  What was that around my chest?

    A harness.  I was harnessed to something!

    A sudden weight began to pull, a massive draw on my harness that tugged me downhill.  Scrambling, I felt my entire torso stretch from this impossible weight tugging me inch by inch.  I looked behind me, panting hard as I saw a colossal iron cast cart filled to the brim with gem-encrusted rocks.  It must have weighed ten tons!

    What scared me more was what was behind it.  This shallow incline it was pulling me down led to a sharp drop into the quarry!  I could hear echoing sounds of mining and slavery all the way down! I'd fall!

    “Scary, isn't it?”

    He stood before me, the Ruin.  Trotting slowly alongside me as I was slowly pulled downward and gasping in pain when the harness bit into my flesh and torso.

    “Get me out of this!  Please! It's going to pull me over!”

    “Down there's eternal slavery, Murk.  It won't kill you, but it'll ruin you forever!  That word is literal, now! Remember what even your mother told you, you're different.  Other slaves might escape to a peaceful afterlife but you won't, you don't know any different!”

    Straining, clenching my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut, I grabbed a rock and pulled.  The cart slowed, the strain on my frail body pulling like a torture rack if I left it any longer!

    “I...want...out!”

    “What you want isn't right!  How can you die in your own mind and let your soul go to the Goddesses to create your paradise without knowing what freedom is, Murk!?  Look at what you were just shown! All the times you've forgotten all but the vague details of! You are different, even our mother told you that!”

    “ARGH!” I simply screamed as I slipped, the cart dragging me metres at a time until I dug my hooves in and fought back.  I could smell the fire from the quarry, like My Master's metro hell below ground made into an unreal unending nightmare! “But my friends-”

    “Your friends matter nothing!  They didn't save you, just like she didn't!  Has that not taught you anything?  What if Brimstone got so angry he hurt one of you?  What if Weathervane turned feral and killed Coral? What if Glimmerlight chose to forget you?  Littlepip only showed you the truth!  Nothing changes! You were only different in that you saw it all happen from a false hope by a grieving mother!”

    “Just let me try. I want to remember them!  Live with my dreams!”

    He leaned down, that broken nose leaking blood before me.  My hooves slipped and ground across the floor as the weight only seemed to increase.  It was going to pull me in!

    “Dreams?  Dreams of what?  Some freedom from a destiny to escape?  You know what your destiny is!”

    He turned.  I saw my own flank and the shackles set there.

    “Don't you even remember why you got it?  The same pattern you've been repeating day after day your whole life?  The first time you first had your hope broken to remind you that these things seal the deal.  Slave for life. Remember?”

    “Hey, get out of the way, squirt!”

    I staggered from the sudden shove upon my flank, squeaking and yelping when I clattered and fell.  The bowl I carried dropped and clattered loudly on the ceramic tiled floor of the farmhouse, rolling away on its side beneath the tables.

    Rubbing my tiny hind sections and wincing in pain, I stood up quickly from the damp floor and swung back at the queue.  I'd been first here! I felt my tiny wings flare out in anger and frustration quite without my decision.

    Looking back at me and lowering their eyebrows, the bigger slave foals just grinned.  Threatening me to dare making a scene out of this. Seeing them backing one another up, I let them win.  The bigger slaves always won. They'd been bigger when we were brought here, and in the years since they had grown much faster than I did.  But they had taken my spot and skipped ahead to get food first! I'd finished my work earlier to get here on time!

    “You gonna try something, Murk?  Gonna cry or fight? We all saw we were here first!” Rock Hard, the colt who'd found his cutie mark actually doing rock farming here as a slave, sneered at me.

    “You weren't,” I pleaded while picking up the bowl and shaking the dog hairs from it.  The master's hounds had more freedom than we did and left their hairs everywhere! Sometimes they stole the small bed of hay I had in the barn.

    “Master doesn't believe you.  He says pegasi lie! So pegasi get to go last all the time.  That's the rules now!”

    “He never said that!”

    “Nuh uh. He said it once before!”

    “When?”

    “When you weren't there!”

    They were making it up, I knew.  But they were right that he disliked pegasi.  Everypony seemed to. Dejected and under their triumphant laughter, I wandered to the back of the queue to wait.

    By the time it was my turn, I got some thin watery soup with a couple of bits (I had never dared ask what those bits exactly were) in it left over with no heat in it at all.  Sighing as I found a corner to hunch down on, I saw the two seats taken by Rock Hard and his friend, the other slaves milling around on the floor like me.

    Not that I really got a chance to eat.

    “Where is 'e?”

    Every slave jumped up when our master, ageing and grim from his mane turning grey, surged into the room from the back door, letting the cold wind in as he came.  His twisted face glared around at us all.

    “Where's that useless little runt?”

    They would have pointed me out anyway.  Setting my bowl down with a sigh, I trotted out with my head lowered.  I could hear the other slaves 'Ooooooh'ing under their breath. They knew I'd hear the humiliation.

    “Here Mas-yargh!”

    Barely able to finish my sentence, a hoof struck me across my big ear.  Stinging pain sent me to the ground; whimpering and holding myself away from him.

    “What kind of pegasus doesn't even know his damned compass points?  I told you t'move them there rocks to the south field!  You've moved 'em to the ruddy west.”

    “B-but Master, no-one's ever taught me what's south or west and y-you p-pointed and-”

    “Just shut up!  Get out there an' fix it!  I don' care if it takes you till mornin'!”

    I saw Rock Hard taking my meagre meal right before my master dropped me upon the hard earth outside and slammed the door shut.

    Bemoaning the loss of my daily meal, I let my head droop.  Now I wouldn't get anything till tomorrow unless I tried to steal anything again.  Maybe I could get some of the dog's when it was sleeping. That hadn't been so bad last time.

    With a sigh, I took a breath and turned.  I'd done wrong and my master wanted it corrected. Nothing for it but to simply obey.  Making off at the trot toward the west field, I simply tried to ignore my protesting stomach.

    Evening was setting down, an orange glow coming over the big wall that surrounded the rock farm that cast long shadows behind each of the bigger boulders.  Up high in the hills near Whitetail Woods, the wind came all the time, over the wall and right over all of us. Sometimes so strong it blew me over. Really it had nowhere to go. The farm was set back against tall hills with sheer edges with only one pathway really leading away from it down the valley, so it just got trapped and sucked everypony all around.  It made rock farming hard, as it would tonight. Strong winds hardly helped when you had to push a rock into the wind after all.

    Aside from the farmhouse and the barn, there were only a few huts for tools or the dogs.  An old collapsed windmill lay nearby as a source of firewood or repairs to the master's wall.  That defence was too tall for us. Glancing at it while weaving around the rocks and deciding where to start, it was nothing but a perpetual reminder of how I couldn't leave.

    Looking down, I came to the first rock I'd moved earlier.  Best get started.

    My hooves already hurt from doing it earlier.  My back ached and really I knew this was going to take even longer.  The south field was uphill (Was it south? He hadn't told me again.) from here, so rolling was going to take forever.  But I put my head down and got going.

    Slowly, I began to stop thinking.  Just head down and get by the shift, that's what mom had told me.  Let it blur or you'll go mad waiting for every shift to end. But I couldn't exactly not worry.  It was getting dark now as the sun went down!  Darkness in the wasteland was scary! Last time I'd been out here a really scary bat thing had chased me all across the fields until the master had shot it!  Then he'd made me stay out to finish the job even longer!

    This just wasn't fair!  I wanted to be inside! I wanted food!  I wanted my mom...

    But slaves didn't get to have anything.

    The rock shifted, rolled, and began its journey before my pushing hooves.  Slipping on the cracked ground occasionally, I made the slow way across the farm to the south field.  It took a good ten minutes to get it there, ten minutes of sweat and grunting behind the smaller rock, even with trying to buzz my wings for extra push behind me!  Finally setting it down, I fell back and sat for a few seconds to get my breath back.

    Ahead of me lay another eighty or so rocks to do.

    Simply groaning, I let my head fall into my hooves.  This was so unfair! Why did it have to be me?

    For the next half hour I shifted rocks, managing two larger ones in the time period to get them out of the way first before I was too tired.  The smaller ones would come later; I could fetch a saddlebag from a hut and simply carry those. Nosing myself in behind probably the largest of the ones I'd have to move, I strained.  Every muscle pushed, my rumbling tummy protesting the extra work on no food. Feeling it move, I let it fall before pushing back in again, seeking to flip it once again. Turn by turn, I began to get it up the slope.  I could hear the slaves chattering in the barn while the master spoke with his wife inside, surrounded by those mad dogs he kept. I was just all alone out here with this huge boulder.
   
    It fell again, I moved to shift it again.

    It fell again, I moved to shift it...and felt something else shift the other way.

    The entire rock had hit another one I couldn't see!  The entire weight fell back toward me, almost crushing my hooves before I jerked away and flung myself to the side!  The rock cracked down on the pebbles below, sending them shooting off to ping from other rocks. Then it began to tumble.

    Panicked, I rushed to catch it!  It'd take forever to get it back up if it fell all the way down!  I mentally pleaded with it, ‘Please don't, rock! Please! Pretty please! I'll stroke you nice as I push you please don't-’

    It did.

    Rocking over, it fell downhill.  Bouncing and spinning wildly, it struck other rocks and flew into the air before landing hard to kick up the dirt.  I chased it, galloping downhill as though I could actually do anything. To my relief I saw it strike one of the biggest rocks in the entire farm with a sound almost akin to a gunshot, stopping on the spot as it fell, breaking in half.

    Breathing out slowly, trying to get my heart to stop beating madly, I almost smiled.  Halves were easier to push.

    Then the bigger rock started to shift, dislodged from it's odd position, and I felt my heart instead sink entirely.

    “No!  Don't!”

    As though it would actually listen.  The rock fell, rocking and finally beginning its thunderous journey downhill!  I felt the ground actually shake as it clattered and picked up speed with unstoppable force!  Outpacing my attempts to chase it, the boulder rumbled, bounced, and finally slammed against the master's wall, tearing the wooden construction apart and sending splinters flying high into the air. Undeterred, the boulder made good on its quick getaway over the ledge of the valley, disappearing into the huge depths below.  I heard it crash again and again on the cliff-side, echoing all over the hills.

    A warmth washed over me, stunning me on the spot to forget about the rock.  Standing still in the rock farm's field, I simply gazed forward.

    Before me, through the gap in the wall meant to keep me in, was a way out.

    Through that hole I saw the setting sun, escaping itself across the horizon while casting that heat across the land.  It may have been dulled by clouds to a vague shape, but I could see it clearly enough! It lit the path, the remnants of light in the dull daytime of the wasteland, caught in the long valley that led away into the distance.

    I was alone, with one way out before me.

    My mom was out there somewhere.  Freedom was out there!  No more rocks. No more beatings and nasty dogs.  Food of all types! The kinds I dreamed about eating someday!  It couldn't be that simple could it? Didn't I need to ask permission first?  Could I really just trot forward and that would be it?

    The setting sun hung there, slowly sending its light to disappear, as though Goddess Celestia herself was calling to me, drawing me forward.  I could go unseen, slip away before they came to check! I could hide in the valley and then keep galloping!

    I could...

    I could.

    One leg began to step forward.  Then another. Then a trot began.  It grew to a canter. Drawn toward this new feeling, toward something I could feel I wanted more than anything else in the world.  The warmth of the remaining sunlight spreading over my tired body seeming to ease my muscles into a gallop for the way out!

    Behind me, I heard the farmhouse door burst open. I had to scream inside my mind to not look back! To tell myself, ‘You can go for the sunset!’ Jumping rocks, I sprinted for the hole in the wall even while cursing and shouting followed me.  I heard somepony chase me, but I had to keep going! This new feeling drew me in irresistibly! Even past the tiredness mixed with panic and hope, I felt a strange tingling, like a sparkling somewhere somewhere behind me.

    There was a huge world out there!  Crossing to the wall, I clambered and pulled myself through the wreckage before setting hoof outside it for the first time in years!  Behind me the thumping of a galloping pony grew nearer, I had to get away! How?

    The thought of the boulder going over the edge came to me.  The winds were strong, maybe if...if I could...

    I galloped with my head down, letting my wings spread.  Then with all the might I could gather I started to flap them, swishing up and down as fast as I could make them go!  The feeling was all too natural, I knew what I was doing with them! I could leap off and nopony would catch me! I just had to fly!  FLY!

    I hopped, bounced, and tried to launch myself a few times.  Lifting a foot from the ground, I dropped again and stumbled.  The chasing pony, my master, got nearer! I could hear him shout, but I kept going, rising a little higher each time before falling back.  Just one good gust of wind, please! I could-

    Every hoof seemed to jam together, something catching them and tying them up on the spot.  The crash of thick spheres into my forelegs made me squeal while I fell and slammed into the hard gravel road.  Looking down, I saw a set of bolas my master had thrown wrapped around my legs. Please! Please, Goddesses help me lift up!  I tried to rise again, my wings fluttering with all the strength I could, gritting my teeth as I began to move up...up...

    Down.  He caught me, dragging me to the floor harshly and knocking me on my back.

    “Get off!  I want to be free!  I want out of-”

    “SHUT UP!  JUS' SHUT UP!  Get back inside you lil' useless runt!  Never 'oughta bought you! Nothin' but useless!”

    Dragged by the bolas around my legs, I squirmed and fought, but a few clips around the ear calmed me.  Looking back, I saw the sunset disappear over the horizon, feeling every inch of disappointment while I was dragged away from it.  Dragged back inside. My wings kept trying to fly, buzzing and flapping to struggle against being pulled back.  I couldn't help them!

    Growing tired of the resistance, my master turned back, using the bolas cord to throw me to the ground again.

    “You ain't never getting out!  Think I'm gonna let you just leave now?  You're stayin' here whether you like it or not till I either sell you to somepony else or let you just die!  You're a slave! Get it now? Slaves don't escape! Slaves stay here!”

    “I...I want to be free.”

    He slapped me across the mouth.  Other slaves were gathering around me, his wife with the hounds made herself known too.  They all watched as he struck again and again.

    “You are not free!  Say it! You are not free!”

    “I-I'm not...” I faltered

    “And the last word!”

    “...free.”

    He leaned back, shoving my head to the ground and casting his head down my body to my wings with disdain.

    “Fuggin' things. Ought to-hm?”

    His eyes shifted with surprise, further down my body.  Shaking and allowing my eyes to come out from behind my sheltering hooves, I looked back myself as everyone else wandered to look too.

    Upon my flank, still shining a little, my cutie mark had appeared at last.

    The disappointment that surged through me was unbearable.

    A set of shackles, gnashing and laughing at my pitiful attempt.

    “Hah!  Now there, don' you see?  A set of manacles for you.  You get caught, you get brought 'ere and reminded. Now yer own body's tellin' you that too! Cos' you were caught, see?  Because you're realisin' it! You're a slave forever.”

    I felt tears draw down, I rubbed at it, pleaded in my mind with it.  Please go away! I didn't want it!

    Was I really meant to be one forever?

    I'd been caught and gained my cutie mark the moment I'd realised I was going to be in chains till I died.  Oh no...oh no, it wasn't fair...

    Snorting above me, my master turned to the slaves.

    “Right, enough bandin' about.  Them wing things are gonna be a problem someday or 'nuther.  Rock Hard, you an' yer frien' drag the runt to the barn. I'm going to go get my tools.  Not having a hundred caps just fly away, useless or not. Rest of you fix that damn fence, watch em with the dogs while they work, love.”

    The last words were clipped off to his wife.  Ponies moved into action, but only when the two slaves grabbed me did I really wake and realise what was happening.  What did he mean my wings were a problem! What was he doing? I fought back, but they handled me roughly and dragged me up the hill toward the barn.  My master was waiting in there with a bag of tools, no emotion on his face, just a blank look of doing the job.

    I pleaded, struggled as I saw an anvil waiting there and heard the command to grab a wing.  I saw a hammer! Screaming and wildly thrashing, it took them some time to push me down. High-pitched and terrified, I simply kept begging.  Rock Hard hit my head but I didn't stop. I tried to pull my wing away as I felt it rest on cold metal from one pony holding it over with his weight.  Exposed and vulnerable, I saw my master come closer. Every prayer I knew screamed from my mouth, but Rock Hard dropped his weight and held me there. Alone in a dark barn with three ponies seeking to break my wings!  Tears fell and my head writhed, but my body was held still.

    I felt a hoof press down on my wing, holding one portion of the thin hollow bones still.  “Get off! GET OFF! DON'T DO THIS!”

    The hammer raised.  I realised that I couldn't escape.  This was happening.

    “DON'T!  PLEASE DON'T!”

    “Shut up, slave.”

    He grunted and swung, I-

    -launched to the side with a scream so shrill and pained that I hurt my own ears.  Rolling and yelling again, I threw my hooves to my sides to find my larger body and its ruined wings already there, albeit unfeeling all over again.

    Then the weight of the cart caught me and sent me scraping further down the mineshaft.  The cave was widening as I neared the quarry edge, the rock taking on the shape of chains and manacles carved into the very walls and roof around me.  The sound of clanking manacles and surging fires of industrial slavery met my ears louder than ever.

    Fighting for purchase, numb after the memory and crying out as the weighty cart tore at my back muscles from the unmanageable weight, I managed to stop it for just a few seconds at a time, straining with all my worth.  My flanks felt heavy, until I realised it was my cutie marks seeming to pull with a weight of their own!

    “You've always simply been a slave, Murk!”

    The Ruin trotted back and forth in front of me, grabbing my numbed and aching head to look at my own cutie mark upon his devastated and bleeding body.

    “This told you so long ago!  Think about it! You've only repeated this pattern every time!”

    Images flared along the walls of the cave, forming in fire and washing into the next ones like moving rock.  I saw myself pausing as Brimstone ran off under gunfire. Ragini taking aim at a fleeing slave. Protégé tearfully having to pull a trigger.  Myself and Unity surrounded by slavers in an alicorn shield. Wildcard pouncing Sunny and I. Me running right into My Master's embrace.

    “So many times, Murk.  So! Many! Times! Hope has risen and fallen time and again all the way from the beginning!”

    “I...wanted out!” I strained and tugged, feeling the minecart lean out over the edge of the hellish quarry.

    “You can't have freedom!  The moment you went through those gates you entered the climax of your life!  Your choice, Murk! Your choice!  Now you won't make the one choice to save yourself!  Master Protégé had to make one for you to try and give you freedom!  Every time he asked, you jumped! Succeeding in surviving the parasprites to get back to him because he asked you to.  Infiltrating a full Ministry slave house to get a sanitiser because he asked you to.  Taking on a full gang of raiders and fighting at his side because he expected it of you!  You've always followed your master, no matter what you think!”

    “B-but that's not true...no!  H-he was a way to maybe get out!  To learn from!”

    “You're deluding yourself!  You are the only part of the being that is Murky Number Seven that doesn't want to simply rest into the peace we seek!  The only bit that hangs on!  Say the one word, agree, and we can die peacefully and end this!  You were always the little voice inside me, Murk. The one little hope that refused to be snuffed out.  But look at me. Look at the wounds and the sickness! I'm the pony that saw Fillydelphia!  I'm the one who threw himself from that roof!  I'm the one who is glad we're finally dying into peace!  Let hope die.”

    The Ruin staggered forward.

    “Those gates marked the end. There never was any hope after them.”

    Tall, ringed with razor wire, and guarded by magically charged fences, I saw the gates unto the last place of my life.

    Amongst a lacklustre haul inside the caged wagon, I curled up behind the rotten hay and tried to keep the jerkin I'd acquired pulled over my wings.  They did not have to know here!

    “Shipment incoming!”

    “Pass on by!  Shit lot.”

    “Shut your face and just get out the way.”

    The wagon began to move again, pulling itself into the heat of Fillydelphia.  So Master Red Eye had bought me, finally brought me to the huge slave city I had heard about it many times in hushed whispers between slaves.  Some said it was a paradise where you could earn your freedom and got to participate in sports and see events while drinking alcohol!

    Others said it was a living hell come to Equestria.

    Now that I saw what lay before me past those gates and the gigantic wall, I truly realised which was true.

    Columns of slaves with numbers greater than that of the largest slave camps I'd been to moved around as small teams amongst the industrial nightmare.  Massive factories or wire pits in the ground spilled heavy smoke that clogged the streets.  Masked ponies with long rifles stalked overhead gantries between the ruined shells of homes while the noise of machines and forges rung or roared in the thick, hot air.  Streets fell away into long hills within the wall that went to lower concourses or rose up to old parks. A full city of rises and falls on varied levels of urban building inside one almighty prison of slavery!

    Pressing myself as far into the hay as I could, I fearfully witnessed the boils and welts of long-term slaves here.  They coughed and staggered on wasted limbs, looking all ready to collapse and spasm until death. I realised this was bad. Very bad.

    “Come on! Get them out! Stern will be here soon to give them the talk!”

    Doors clanged open.  Stun rods threatened those who were slow and I had no wish for them to uncover my wings by accident, so I rushed out first to stand where we were told.  Upon a long, bloodstained clearing of concrete we were lined up, sweating and nervous. Everypony among our group looked around with worry.

    “Stand upright, big ears!”

    A baton smacked into my rump, sending me bolt upright in an instant.  I withheld my words. They hadn't asked me to speak! A good slave didn't talk.

    Then we waited.  Minutes passed. I could see the slavers getting impatient.

    “Where the fuck's the griffon?”

    A sudden trotting perked my ears, leading me to cast my eyes to the side where a frantically galloping pony moved up to the slavers.  Unable to avoid it, I may have eavesdropped.

    “Stern won't be here for awhile. Them bloody Rangers are at it again.  Old Grizzly just says put them to work someplace for now and bring them back out later.”

    “Son of a...right, fine.  Master Grindstone's lot are shifting stuff in that factory over there. Send them in and I'll come pick them up when the big bird's back.”

    They agreed, before turning to us.  Hastily we were coerced, pushed, and struck until we got properly moving.  My first experience of true slavery. Of being made to break your body to the limit under a hateful glare of Master Grindstone.  Of feeling the burns as forges spewed molten metal out. Within ten minutes, I was crying and hurt, unused to the conditions and unable to have acquired any protective gear yet.

    We were taken back and forth around the factory to jobs as needed.  Pushing massive molten crucibles or sorting the cast nuts and bolts for manufacturing.  Slaves shoved me around, nothing unusual at all but altogether unhelpful in this. A true trial by fire into life in Fillydelphia when I felt my head spin at the fumes.

    I fell back, overwhelmed.  They could whip me. I just couldn't take it.  This was too much!

    Hooves wrapped around me.  I expected pain, but instead I felt somepony lifting me back up gently, albeit urgently.  Eyes closed, I sought to open them, but everything seemed to warp and slow down. I still felt somepony shifting me, but it all began to blur into itself until I was standing back outside in a line.  The feeling of somepony lifting me lingered, but quickly faded.

    I must have fallen unconscious and been dragged out.  My body certainly hurt enough for it.

    “My name is Stern!” Before us, a tall griffon strode.  She carried a massive rifle that swung on a strap every time she spun to us.  “And this is my town.  You are workers. You work toward the building of a brighter tomorrow for all ponies in Equestria.  A New Equestria to be populated by Unity.  Your gift to the world shall be the sacrifice that gives it that chance.  You can choose to, or Red Eye can give it for you.”

    This sounded rehearsed, at least partially.  But I kept my eyes low, avoiding Stern's, well, stern eyes.

    “But most of you don't really care about the future, do you?  I see it in your eyes. You don't give a crap. You just want your 'freedom' don't you?”

    I remembered a sunset, but nothing else.  Maybe once I had.

    “Listen closely, then, because I'm going to tell you how to free yourself.  You earn it! It's your choice. You can toil in our mills and factories or remain in the workhouses until you die a slave's death!  Or...you can volunteer for more dangerous jobs. There are rewards for such things. Red Eye is nothing but generous! As such, you have three options!”

    Three talons were raised, one dropped.  “Stable Recovery. Many Stables remain around here and we require ponies to seek their resources and riches.  They have security teams or dangers of their own, often unique and unpredictable. Not to mention those Steel Rangers who seek them too.  Don't get ideas of asking them for help. They would slaughter you just as easily as they would a Stable Dweller.”

    She looked along our line, seeking to meet eyes.  A few granted it, but I whined and hid away.

    “Two years.  Two years of work with that and Red Eye promises your freedom along with a tag to know you will never be brought back in.” The second claw dipped.  “Or you can work in our crater! Radioactive metals and materials are always in demand. Six months of full days and we shall provide radiation treatment before allowing you, once again, your freedom.”

    The third claw dropped.  “The last option, fight in our Pit.  The arena of combat where if you survive six events, usually about six weeks in total, you shall be granted a place of honour within our growing army!  Such choices I am honour-bound to give. These are your only choices! They are lethal, dangerous, and often painful, but such is sacrifice for Equestria!  You may of course join Unity at any time, to lay your hooves at the feet of the Goddess upon Equestria, not to a false deity I know some might believe in.”

    Celestia and Luna strike her feathers down for such heresy!  But every one of those choices sounded nothing but terrifying.  I'd never manage it, they all needed strong ponies! What to do...

    “Aside from that, there is no way out.  Get used to it. Aside from death, of course.  But there are few methods of death in here that do not involve a horrible end.  Don't try to rebel. Don't try to run. Workers remain here to pay their due to Equestria.  That is all you have now.”

    She snapped around, as though to attention.  I noticed her armour was covered in muck and blood, fresh from battle.  Stern must have come here right from the fight earlier. Standing in the line, I shivered, but I knew this was all I could expect.  Ponies like me were never granted anything easily.

    Slavers began to move along the line.  Stern meanwhile watched them progressing with distaste.  Some ponies were taking forever to choose.  Most chose Stable Recovery.  A few cringed and tearfully agreed to the shorter crater work.  One stamped and demanded they show him to the Pit.

    “What about you, little one?”

    Squeaking, I looked up.  Stern herself had advanced forward to speed the process.  She glared down at me, easily many times my size.

    “What is your choice?”

    “I-I...” Stammering, tears coming to my eyes at her intimidating presence and the stink of blood from her body.  “I'm t-too weak for all of them! I'll-I'll just work in the city, mills, or factories o-or workhouses. I'm used to it.”

    Stern angled her head, as though not expecting me to answer as such. Griffons had such a strange method of looking at you sideways.  Struggling to get breath, I found I was the last to pick. Even other slaves seemed a little surprised. They all looked like weathered wastelanders though. I wasn't like that.

    “I was b-born a slave, Ma'am!  My cutie mark tells me I'm to d-die one too as my destiny.  But I don't want to die in pain! I want my freedom, but I'm too scared. Too weak.  I just want to stay safe. I-I'll take the normal work, p-please...”

    “You choose to be a slave forever in Fillydelphia?  To give your life to Red Eye's work for a New Equestria and Unity?” Stern's voice was curt and simple.

    “I will work with Unity, yes.” I said.  I didn't need to lie to her. It was just the truth.  I was Red Eye's now. “For now, I am nothing but a slave to Fillydelphia.”

    There was a brief silence of speech as the ambience of the city hammered on around us.  Eventually, the big griffon nodded.

    “Send him back to Grindstone.  They need the extra workers anyway.”

    “Yes, Ma'am.”

    That was that.  A simple tug on my neck to lead the way back to that factory.

    That one pull to begin the end of my slave life in Fillydelphia forever.

    There was a flicker, as though the entire world had just blinked.  Even while the slaver pulled me, the feeling vanished and all the aches and pains faded away to numbness.  I was still in Fillydelphia, but everything had just...stopped. Ahead of me, the masked slaver hung on two legs, mid pull.  I saw Stern with her arm cast in an order, the slaves moping toward their destinations and still clouds of smoke in the air.

    An eerie silence came over it all.  The world had frozen, all but for me.

    “This is it.”

    The Ruin's voice echoed around me, before I saw him trot over the concrete ground.  Moving between slavers, he came to me and kept trotting around me.

    “You made the choice.  'For now I am nothing but a slave to Fillydelphia.' You accepted it, Murk.”

    I had...

    I had.

    I couldn't stand. I simply fell down as the numbness crept more and more over me.  To every side, the world shifted and tore. Factories became taller, the slavers turned to darkness and glowing eyes of malice.  The great Wall of Fillydelphia shot up into the clouds, higher than any perception could imagine. Fires grew and expanded to spill across the streets and turn Fillydelphia to an inferno.

    “This is the hell you chose, Murk.  That I, in my terror, chose for myself!”

    Everything began moving again, but abstract and demonic.  Screams warped and curved like the wind around buildings while factories moved in circles, creating materials only to melt them down and create them all over again.

    “You left your mother, you gained your cutie mark of slavery, and then you found your destiny here.  What kind of life is this? Now it's over! I am sorry I had to show you these, but now you have the one choice Murk.  It must be now! You teeter on the edge of eternity to a soul that believes only in Master and Slave! Say it...please...”

    Shivering, hearing slavery become an undying cycle around me that would continue for eternity, I fought between two terrors.  My friends or my own life for slavery. How could I choose?  

“I can't just forget them all!”

    “But you can!”

    “It’s all my life...”

    “Yes, all your life.  Just a slave. All you've ever been and all it seems you ever will be!  Why will you not choose, Murk?  Why can't you see!  You're nothing but a servant to everypony else!”

    To my eyes, I saw every slave shift and change.  They were me! All of them me! A host of Murky Number Sevens being whipped, pulled, and abused by these brutal taskmasters.  All my life summed up into one hell.

    “Now given the one last choice and you still don't know how to choose for yourself.  You've condemned us all, Murk. You've condemned yourself!  There is no life to go back to, I've told you this!  Now you are going to fall!”

    A sudden weight clasped around me.  I sought to move, but with my body numb I couldn't do anything!  The ground yawning open below me, I fell farther below the surface of the hellish Fillydelphia!  Down into the pits, past caves, and huge machines carving into the earth! I saw thousands of ponies, all looking like me in some state or horror that I had once endured every day!  They toiled endlessly at walls that regenerated when not being hewn at! I fell away from the Ruin who had given me the last choice I could never make. I never had made choices!  Not about my cutie mark, not about my road to freedom in Fillydelphia...

    ...not to let it end and drift away from it all with him.

    Faster and faster I tumbled, drawn by the weight of the mine cart.  I hadn't even seen myself reattached! Farther down than Fillydelphia had ever gone, it dragged me into the black.

    The impact splintered my senses beyond reality.  To the bottom of the quarry as that immense mine cart bearing the weight of my own world crashed to the floor and left me alone at the bottom of eternity.  Lying there, looking up I could see nothing. No light, no life and no hope. This was my reward.

    Alone and scared, I lay there.

    Curling up, I heard the slavery continue...and continue...and continue.  I shouted, I cried, and I wished I could find the choice to dream. This was the end, the true end for m, and I could do nothing to change it.

    I did not know how long I stayed still before I realised it wasn't going to change or end.  The fear truly began to see in. This was the end of the line.

    No power to change.  Nothing alone anyway.  I had nothing!  If only I'd had something, anything to help me like I had when in the end portions of my life!

    I j-just needed s-something, anything. Couldn't there be one thing?  Had I really found nothing in my life to hold onto?  If only there'd been just...one...thing...

    Please...one thing, hasn't there been anything?

    Without a warning, the first thing to remove me from my nightmares, I felt my eyes begin to squint, as though a bright light were trying to break through their tightly closed eyelids.  Gasping, choking on having no air, I opened them to see myself still in the pit of slavery, but ahead of me there was something amiss.

    One pillar of bright whiteness, beaming across the floor to me as something shifted in it that tore through the darkness around it.  A form, slowly trotting toward me filled with a radiance I hadn't seen since coming here.

    Then a voice, familiar and daring.

    “How about a glimmer of hope?”

    She was there.  Stepping forward slowly, drowning out the chains and pickaxes to a dull noise behind the angelic calm injected into my afterlife.  Slender legs to a figured body bearing a long two-tone pink mane. Perfectly white and clean with bright azure eyes and a comforting smile upon her face.

    My mouth gaped, shivering in disbelief, I watched as my friend came toward me.  Seeming to almost glow where she was, looking like she had before Fillydelphia had hurt her too, Glimmerlight offered a smile and extended a hoof.  This was how she saw herself from the form she had once had.

    As though in awe of one of the Goddesses themselves, I lay and stared upward without a word while she came closer.  Was it taunting me? Teasing me with what I had lost forever? Shivering and scared, I curled up even when I felt her kneel down beside me.  Her horn glowed before the absolute proof of her existence beside me was given.

    Her hoof reached out and ruffled my mane.

    “You've held on, Murky.  You did it.”

    “I...I fell!  Everything! I couldn't choose. So I'm d-damned and-”

    “Sssh...” She leaned forward, kissing my forehead and gently leaning against me.  The shock of feeling somepony else touch me penetrated the numbness around me.  A warmth spread, vanquishing some of the ruin from my body.

    “You're the one part of yourself that refused to give in and accept that you couldn't be free, Murky. I know your memory. I've read it. You amongst all these forms of yourself, you are the one part of your soul that always came back to the surface time and again to try and make a bid for true freedom.”

    “But I'm not!”

    I writhed away, almost startling her.  Hopping up and staggering to my hooves, I waved one around me.

    “Every time!  Every single time I thought I had something I was only deluding myself!  My own mother being taken! Choosing to slave forever in Filly! My cutie mark!  I've seen the truth, Glimmer!  This was a contract to my life the moment it appeared on my flank!  This is just the end of it! I always hated it!  Hated what it represented. I almost hated you when you said it looked beautiful...”

    I slumped down, facing away from her.  To my surprise, I heard a short laugh and a sound of her mane whipping back and forth as she trotted forward.  Glimmerlight was shaking her head.

    “You've never seen?”

    “Seen what?”

    She lay a hoof on my shoulder, pushing me to my hooves.

    Then she pushed my own head to look at my flank, pointing with a hoof.

    “This is a beautiful cutie mark.”

    “It's shackles of my life!” I turned back to her.  Please, Glimmer, stop making me look at it!

    Glimmerlight only pressed my head right back and pointed again.

    “Have you never noticed the one detail that matters?  The one thing that changes everything about your life?  That those shackles...are open?”

    Simply staring toward my own mark, that hated symbol of slavery, there were a few moments of silence.  Everything dulled. Nothing but me and that icon before me.

    The shackles...were open.

    Open.

    Twinkling, like the light of a small star, something stirred within me.  Sparks flew, a light that had long gone out relit, and a pushing realisation grew and grew as I looked at it properly for the very first time.  Like a foal the moment they get one and feeling everything just click into place with wondrous joy and a purpose fulfilled.

    The revelation hit me like a tidal wave, sucking me up and hurling me into my own life and every single moment.  Glimmerlight's voice rung in my ears, her horn searing its light to throw me into my own memories.

    “Remember everything, Murky.  See your life the way you've never seen it before!”

    A thunderstorm!  A muddy farm and being torn from the grasp of my mother.  Every other foal had gone along with it but for one that needed to be grabbed and pulled away many times.  He had defied the instruction his masters had given to seek the pony he wanted to be with!

    “You've been resisting ever since you were a foal.”

    A little hoof struck an eye, the foal galloping away from what was wished for him back into her embrace.  Even with failing, his mother's words made so much more sense. That he was different!

    “She told you that you were different, special!  That you were going to do something they were all jealous of! She knew that someday you would grow to fly away from all this!  To fly after that wagon taking her away!”

    A rock crashed down the valley, striking a wall and smashing it to tinder.  Behind it, a young slave stood and stared toward the world suddenly open before him.  Lit from the sunset, the warmth and hazy orange carried him forward without permission to seek that which he wanted.

    “You didn't get your cutie mark because you were caught, Murky...”

    The sight of a young foal galloping with a smile I never even knew I'd been wearing that day!  Galloping and hopping, little wings buzzing and trying to lift him higher!  Every effort thrown toward an escape that he was throwing everything into!

    “You got it because it was the very first time you had tried to escape!  Your mark is not for slavery, Murky. It's for freedom! To break the chains!”

    Fillydelphia loomed, the sunset's orange become a thick red.  Slaves were lined up before a bloodstained griffon. Each slave, in fear, sought the methods of freedom through service and slavery to a grim contract.  But as that griffon approached the smallest, he looked up and he spoke to her.

    “Stern was surprised at you, remember?  Thousands had chosen that out of fear, but despite the shaky voice, she saw the look in your eyes!”

    He spoke up, scared and whimpering.  But in his eyes I could see a glint, something unknown to me from inside!  His mouth moved, but it spoke a different tone than what the Ruin had repeated back to me.

    “Just listen, Murky...”

    My own voice.

    “For now, I am nothing but a slave to Fillydelphia.”

    Then I heard it, what was different.

    'For now.'

    I'd always known.

    “You always had that will to escape, Murky!  You did it before you even had us around!  Before I even set eyes on you, you proved to yourself that you're ready.”

    I saw myself atop a helter-skelter gazing toward the wall, standing before a mirror decked out in my escape gear!  Then I saw that sight it had shown me long ago!

    A little foal pegasus, me as a colt, standing with innocent little wide eyes filled with tears, my two stubby little wings flapping.  It had been that very first escape from the rock farm!

    “Ready?  Ready for what?”

    Glimmerlight was still there, right beside me and guiding me through more recent times, the flow of memory and dreamlike stars carrying those images around me.  Her voice flowed toward my ears, gentle and like music...

    “You've come such a long, long way...”

    A little slave who meekly obeyed everything even a normal slaver ordered him to do, who ran away from mere gang members.  When faced with merely having to steal his own journal back, he simply lay down and cried.

    “And I've watched you from our very first day...”

    That same little slave, battered but standing sat before a sick unicorn upon a couch.  She had heard them, what he intended to do to help her. Then, inside a bunker, he fought off ghouls to rescue a small filly from imprisonment, to free her!  A daring escape into the crater to carry home the items he needed to save the mare's life.
   
    “To see how you might grow.  To see what you might do...”

    He sat between a giant stallion and the rescued mare.  They teased him as he drew, making him blush and yet laugh.  Then the dark of a Stable. Even under the waves of battle and danger, the moment his eyes saw the light pouring in the doorway from up ahead he zoned out, trotting forward toward it with dreams and aspirations overcoming the terror inside him from that horrid place!

    “To see what you've been through...”

    Atop a rooftop, a black and red unicorn and the little slave faced each other, an aimed gun and a pleading to not move or the gun would fire.  Heedless, he charged forward for that zipline with no hope at all! Galloping directly into a bullet just to try and get there! Crashing into his small body and sending him reeling to the floor, I saw the unicorn rush to catch him and try to save his life.

    “...and all the ways you've made me proud of you!”

    It began to speed up.  Image after image. From the pits of slavery amongst parasprites where he volunteered himself to save a young couple.  From where he took upon a mission to acquire a sanitiser for better aiding those who needed it. Right into trying to help free those trapped by raiders amongst a brutal firefight inside a mall, taking on their leader himself!

    “It's time now for a new change to come.  You've grown up to see a new life has begun.”

    From escaping his Master time and again to freeing that one mysterious mare from incoming danger!  Escape after escape while on the run, constant efforts to get away from his Master even under the darkest days of his life.  A mindset that never gave up and always found some little hope to hold onto!

    “To go where you will go.  To see what you will see...”

    Against whizzing images, so fast I could not see them but every single one of them a whirling mass of escape, chase, and a decision to defy!  Every theft, solution, or evasion he'd made by himself slowly fading to show me that one moment of him looking up at his master and telling him no!  Of my tirade against him after saving Lilac, the words that had rung true to my mind whether I had an icon or not!

    “To know you will be free!”

    One blurring surge of memories, escape attempt after escape attempt.  Every time coming closer and closer from a desperate charge out of a rock farm, to a prepared plan away from the FunFarm, right to a war-torn rush away from a Stable!  Always toward the sunset! Always toward that one symbol of freedom that I saw in every image of running, evading, and smiling as I was surrounded by those I would make my new life with!  More and more flying by of each moment that mattered fading toward that one symbol before my eyes that defined my life!

    “For it's time for you to fulfil your destiny!”

    A pair of shackles, broken open.

    A symbol I'd always carried and never realised, shining with purpose and potential right before my eyes!  I was back in the pit, but standing taller. My body was somewhat numb, but I could feel the ground below me.  My eyes firmly centred on that mark that now meant something entirely different amid the light of Glimmer's magic and fading memory spells.  She stood there, smiling at the shocked look upon my face.

    “I...I never knew...”

    Glimmerlight trotted forward, resting a hoof over my shoulders.  Glancing to myself, I saw the blackened ruin that had spread over my body throughout the bad memories gone. I was just the normal pony as I always was, cleaner and healed in his own stitched woollen fleece.

    “You gave us hope as much as we gave you help, Murky.  Don't ever think that you were just a burden or a tag-along.  A little symbol of innocence and purpose toward freedom like you was just what Brim and I needed to get going.  I'd never have tried to reconcile with Coral without you around to help me. Did you really think we would leave you alone to this?”

    “But I...I'm dead.  All this time I never realised what it meant and only now see but I'm already...g-gone...”

    Glimmerlight shook me a little, leaning closer.

    “Listen, Murky.  It doesn't matter when you realised this.  It always matters, even if it's to go into the great beyond.  Where you've come from doesn't change anything. It's where you want to go that matters.  What you do now is the deciding factor. Will you use what you know to save yourself? To escape these chains on your soul from a mistaken destiny forever?”

    Looking up, past the whirling circles of slavery to the red glow of Fillydelphia far above us, I bit my lip and shivered.

    “I...I d-don't know if I can.  This is all so-oh my. I mean, my cutie mark means freedom!  It's so much to take in, and I don't know if I can do it or-or feel it as I should now and...I'm so weak.”

    “You don't have to do this alone, Murky.” She rocked me with that hoof and squeezed her cheek against mine.  “You've got me with you. Always.  When I said best friend forever, you better bet your skinny little cute rump I meant it.  The others all feel the same.  Nopony wants to see you die.”

    My eyes bolted open, a surge of will to seek freedom anew picking up by that last word.

    “Y-you mean?”

    “Yes, Murky.” She grinned and looked skyward, up the immense trial before us.  “Up there is the light beyond the slavery, beyond the darkness of all your memories and hardships.  Past all that which pulled you down you can find the way to your own choice. A way out of this nightmare.  We're all doing what we can. It won't be easy, but you can bet the others will help.”

    She took my hoof.

    “So let's get you out.  Let's escape the wilful death that so much of you wants and bring the real Murky to life once and for all.  Let's escape the slavery that's bound you so long inside!”

    A resurgence of courage, yes courage, spiked up in me.  There was a way.  A journey to the freedom of my soul, to life or salvation I did not care!  But I had my best friend with me. I would make it!

    “Yes.  Let’s!”
   
    Cast into the pit of despair, farther than ever before from what I craved, I now knew that it was not the end.  Glimmerlight and I. Me and my chosen sister. Two simple ponies with nowhere to go but up.  Around us, every single form of myself that worked the walls turned and squinted through sunken hopeless eyes to the one part of me that hadn't yet given up.  Cast in Glimmerlight's glow, we were one small aura of light in the darkness.

    This was the moment I took back my life and became the pony I was meant to be.  The moment I would throw off the chains for good inside myself.

    “No matter what happens, sis?  Thanks...for everything.”

    “Pfft, you sound like I'm not going to drag you out if I have to.  I haven't finished hooking you up with a buck yet.”

    She winked at me.  Despite a blush, I smiled.

    Then we took off.  A gallop toward one of the cave entrances surrounding us.  All around us, the staring slaves looked shocked. A sight they had never expected to see. Something that scared them, terrified them into dropping all their tools.

    As we ran across the long flat quarry bottom, I saw that fear turn to shock as they realised what we planned to do.  Within seconds, it became an anger, a desperate fury as every other part of me wished to remain in death. A clatter of chains and tiny hooves, they leapt forward and charged for us from all sides!

    Glimmer's horn flared, casting light further out.  The wrecks and failed hopes of me winced and stumbled, crying out as they covered their eyes or shrank back as though burned.

    “This won't hold them too long!  The parts of you that still believe you want to die are strong, Murky!  It's deep rooted, not something that just disappears. You have to make it happen and get out of here!”

    The cave was just up ahead.  I ducked around blindly, flailing limbs that rose from the darkness alongside radsore bearing faces of torment.  They clawed into Glimmer's aura, looking to grab a hoof or a tail.

    “Get out where?  Where do we go?”

    “Towards the light!  Always towards the light, you'll know where!”

    Passing by the entrance, the crowd of slaves poured in after us.  The cave circled around the edges of the quarry, rising with every metre.  It was time to begin the ascent out of this nightmare once and for all. Struggling to keep up with Glimmer's longer strides, I felt one bite at my tail.  Squeaking, I pulled it away just before the jaws snapped shut. Were they me?  A savage and dark part of my mind that sought to pull me into this sort of thing?

    Toward the light. Where was the light?  What was the light?

    From everything I'd seen the answer wasn't long in coming.  Diving through the cave and beginning to climb upwards in a ring, I shouted to Glimmer.

    “The sun!  The source of all light!  The thing I first chased! That's what I need to go to!  To see!”

    “Sounds like-argh!” Glimmer cut her words, diving forward when a tiny crevice unleashed a tide of slaves.  Pouring forth like black liquid, they slipped through the dark shadows of the slick cave and launched at her.  Spinning, casting her horn toward them, they fell back with a growl. I pulled at her, helping my sister up to keep moving!

    They were coming from everywhere.  In some unreal way I recognised them all as each day of slavery I had done, each a unique pain or memory of a thousand tasks.  A tide came from behind us, clawing over one another in their fear to stop me. Every time I looked away, more appeared.

    “They're going to close us in!”

    Glimmer threw one off, pulling me now into a side cave with a rising floor.  We had to keep going up, the only direction that mattered! Around us, the cave darkened until we could no longer see the walls but merely hear the rush of slaves chasing us.

    Then, like running out of a black cloud, we found ourselves in a wide void filled with mesh flooring and cage-like corridors held up by thick clanking chains.  Around us, there was naught but a view to eternity surrounding this metal maze, a view that shifted with blurry images of my life, told through hazy colours shifting and turning in the mists.

    “Your subconscious is one messed up place, Murky!”

    “Tell me about it!”

    The entire construction swung as we entered on it.  This made no sense. We'd been in a cave, but the moment we'd entered this side passage it had disappeared.  We climbed cages like stairs, dove under chains that hung or barred the way, and always kept moving up.  Slaves clung to the outsides, hooves pushing through toward us.  Some battered the metal, trying to break into it. The entire construction swung from the chase across it, arcing back and forward to throw off our balance.  Sometimes I could have sworn we were now on what was once the wall.

    Eventually we came to a blank area, a crossroads with nowhere to go.  Slaves poured through gaps in the corridors surrounding it, trapping us in the junction!  I could hear their cries, somewhere between a scream of agony and fear-driven rage. Every so often, a blood chilling plead or beg would come through the sound.

    “Um, any ideas, sis?  We're trapped!”

    “Look up!”

    Casting my eyes skywards, I saw the light above, like a small trapdoor!

    “I can't fly!”

    “No, but this is your mind, Murky!  Your memories!  Isn't there something that would work here you loved very much?  Something you yearned for years after?”

    Shivering, terrified by the new rush of emotions and the thrill of escape, I looked into her eyes and saw that look that would always reassure me.  She knew I had a way out of this.  I just had to know it.

    Something I knew would work.

    I closed my eyes, remembering every little delight of acquiring it.  Bouncing happily around another room full of cages and locks with a buck so enthusiastic he had seemed to almost sing his delight at making it up for me!  One I'd gotten rather caught up in myself.

    Thank you, Blunderbuck...

    Opening my eyes, I reared up, angling my back, and kicked out my front leg.  With a whirr and snap, the mouthpiece whipped in front of my face, as though it had always been there!  Glimmer grabbed me, holding tightly when I bit down, feeling the satisfying whoosh of the air-powered grapple rocket off my side and snake its way into the light.  I didn't need to hear a click to know it would find its target. Yanking back on the mouthpiece, I sent Glimmer and I soaring upwards even as the slaves clustered below.  I'd have laughed if I could! Now we were moving! Up and into the light faster and faster! Far quicker than my grapple gun had ever moved me! My mane whipped. Glimmer dug her head into my shoulder from the surging wind passing over us while we left the dark quarry behind for good!

    The light grew before us, larger...larger...encompassing us until it gave way to a flickering reality!  We passed through it, moving to somewhere else...

    All upward motion ceased, both of us being dumped down where we were.  Falling on top of Glimmerlight, I still made a grunt of surprise and pain from the short fall.  We'd landed upon a hard concrete floor in darkness.

    “Good job, lil'bro.  Knew you had it in you, but where are we?”

    Helping her up, I had to squint as her horn lit again.  The light didn't go too far, casting only about ten feet either side to no avail.  I saw only a chipped and stained concrete floor before the ambience of darkness took over once more.  Backing against one another, I gulped as I saw what the stain was.

    “I th-think I know where we are, Glimmer.”

    “This will take you past the trials of your life, Murky.  You're trying to escape the memories that hurt you and the things you fear. It’s that fear that’s trying to make you give up. So, where is this?”

    I didn't have to answer. He did for me.

    “Welcome back, Murk!  I didn't expect a rematch so soon!”

    The floodlights blasted into life, blinding me on the spot.  Crying out loud and covering my eyes, I slowly let them refocus to what I had feared.  Around me was a huge concrete arena topped with spiked metal and darkened stands where shadows warped and moved in a mocking form of an audience.  The entire roof was enclosed within the quarry's caves while the stains around me were blood. My blood.

    He stood before us.  My killer. Wildcard stood atop a pile of corpses, all the ponies (and buffalo) I'd seen die in the Pit across both times I had been there.  The huge form of Bonecrusher surrounded by Top Quartz, Shovels, and the rest. I even saw Blood and Daff.

    “I've never got to kill somepony twice before!  You know they say the sequels are always worse, right?  Wonder if the same is true with murder. What do you think, huh?”

    He slid down the corpse pile as though it were a child's slide, skidding at the bottom across the thick blood seeping away from it and rolling to his hooves with a bow.  My body began to freeze. He'd killed me! I couldn't fight him!

    “You can do this, Murky.  It's not about combat! It's about overcoming what scares you!”

    “He killed me, Glimmer!  H-he made me scream and hurt me before-”

    “Listen to me!  You can do this!  You're braver than you-ARGH!”

    My mind reeled as I saw the blood leap up, snaking around her legs as though it were alive and drag Glimmerlight far from me!  Throwing her into the wall, it surged off the ground and formed a sort of blood cage around her.  Slowly, it began to steam, growing boiling hot that scalded her everytime she tried to push by.

    “Hush hush, girl!” Wildcard skipped through the arena, grinning to her.  “Let the little buck talk, it's rude to interrupt! You don't get to play any part in this!  Now c'mere little guy!”

    I stepped backward, my mind was still reeling at the sight of blood coming to life.  Below my hooves I felt its sticky pools squirming like living water.

    “I said come here!” Fury crossed his face the moment my hoof moved backward.  “You’re not doing what I'm telling you? I own your life, cos I killed it!  Get back here!”

    Shaking my head, I turned to run.  I could hear Glimmer screaming for me to just see through how he scared me into wanting to fall again, but he just overwhelmed me.  Anywhere I galloped to, he was there, defying reality to be just outside my peripheral vision every time!

    “Over here!”

    I dove away.

    “I meant here!”

    Rolling away, one machete drove into the concrete.

    “Or here!”

    A hoof flashed out at me.  Scampering away from it, I bit down hard on my grapple gun, trying to smack him in the chest with it, but instead knocking me back onto my rump with the recoil as it only soared past him.  Lightning sparked from his horn, striking the ground beside me. Crying out, I froze at the sight of him waving a hoof happily from nearby. His horn was lit, ready to aim properly this time.

    “P-please, let me go!  I just want to live!”

    “Aww, ain't that cute?” Wildcard trotted forward, shaking out that multi-coloured mane.  “Usually they tell me they don't want to die rather than they want to live. Somethin' different, huh?  Share it with uncle Wildcard, c'mon!”

    “I want to live!  J-just let me go!  I don't want to fight.”

    There was one difference between then and now.  I didn't feel tears in my eyes.

    “You only kill!  Just treat it like a game!  Why can't I just have a life?  Away from ponies like you!”

    Wildcard stopped trying to work something out of his teeth with the machete and blinked at me.  Then he began to advance, his voice low.

    “Like me?  You thinking I'm something bad?  That there's something wrong with me?  Fuck this, I'm gonna stick you right now, little pig.  You saying I'm crazy!?  Ain't no water below the bridge, that isn't gonna be your fucking blood, kid!”

    He charged, raising the machete before sending it crashing down.  I screamed, covering my eyes.

    Red clouded my vision.  The colour of blood and the sound of something hacking through flesh met my ears.  He'd done it again. He'd...

    There was no pain.  Cautiously, I moved my hooves away.

    Before me, having dove in front to take the strike to his own body, Brimstone Blitz stood between Wildcard and I.  The machete had sunk into his shoulder, streaming blood terribly. But his cold eyes met Wildcard's from mere inches away.  The crazed raider seemed, for once, stunned.

    “I was like you once, Wildcard.  Not any more. If I need to sacrifice my own body to prove something or to protect somepony, I'll do it.”

    “You old dog, nothing you do can save him from the place he's in!  Best just accept the crazy, embrace it, and fall!”

    They collided in a sudden and mutual blur of motion.  But so close, with his weapon stuck on Brimstone, Wildcard had no chance.  Hurling the smaller raider away, Brimstone charged and leapt upon him, pinning the raider down.  He seemed stronger than ever, his mane greater in colour, and his body more lean and muscular than I'd ever seen it.  Like he was somehow younger, less ragged.

    “I'm not going to let age take me until I know I've done what I need to, Wildcard!”

    “Get off m-”

    “Shut up!  I let you get to him once before. Never again!  He doesn't ever have to fear you again, know why?  Because he has others willing to stand beside him who won't let him pass into the darkness so easily!  But there's one much bigger reason that matters to you right now.”

    Brimstone turned back to me.

    “It's that he's got me, and even way down here I'm not going to let you get anywhere near him again!”

    One of those colossal hooves rose. Wildcard struggled and squirmed, but beneath the full might of a warlord in his prime he had no chance!  With a roar, the final blow descended, shattering Wildcard to splinters of ebbing black that flew in all directions before melting to the floor.  Along with the blood, it sunk out of the arena.

    The flood lights dimmed, the crowd falling silent and lurking away as the light began to draw down again, only one remaining in the far gate.  The one I'd once watched what I thought was a legend from.

    Slowly, under the sudden silence, I trotted toward Brimstone Blitz.  His wound seemed to have disappeared. Toward the side, Glimmer began to gallop over, the steaming blood cage falling away to the drains like all the rest.

    “Brim...” I held a breathless wonder in my voice, speeding up to stand before him with a smile.  I was so glad he was here.  Our guardian, the huge pony I realised for all his fury I did at my core feel safe around.  I couldn't help it. I ran up and hugged him.

    Or, well, hugged his leg anyway.

    All the same, I felt the other giant hoof curl around me.

    “I promised you long ago that you were one of us, and by my own life I would see you free, Murk.  Be it to a new life or as a release from an untimely death, I won't turn back on that. Back in the clan we took oaths like that seriously.”

    I felt his head look up, to Glimmer.

    “If there's anything I've learned lately, it's that we can't change how we began.  We can only make what we will of it for our future. I almost threw my soul away in years past to the rage, but you two...you've brought it back.  Given me a reason to learn what caring is again. If only by memory here, I will always protect you.”

    “Thank you...” Glimmerlight wiped a little tear from her eye.  I felt Brimstone motion me to get off his leg with a rare smirk.

“We should go. There is far yet to travel, more trials await!  Wildcard was the fear of your death, Murk. They all will mean something to you.  I am with you however, from now on until the end.”

How typical of me. I couldn't help the crying from happening.  Only this time of joy and absolute delight to know they were with me.

    “Then what are we waiting for?” Glimmerlight beamed, pointing toward the gate.  “Let's do this!”

“YEAH!” I leapt up and cried out, punching a hoof in the air.  Then hesitated, blushing at the 'trying not to laugh' look they both gave me.  Glimmer ruffled my mane with at most a snicker.

    “That's the spirit, lil'bro.  Come on!”

All three of us galloped onward toward the gate.  The arena faded around us as we went, the light remaining the only indicator of our path!  The ground began to rise, sending us galloping uphill, every inch a satisfying rise from darkness!  I could do this! I could escape the slave in my mind! Passing through the gate, the momentum built, my friends at my back and the light before me atop the stairs growing into the black void below us!

    We ran into the light.

    Then the light went out.

I stumbled and almost fell.  Had I gone deaf? I couldn't hear the others!  Turning from side to side, I tried to run into them!  To find them! But there was nothing!

    Had it all been a tease?  To think I was succeeding?

    “Glimmer!”

    I ran another way.

    “Brimstone!”

We had just been running up!  I couldn't even see my hoof in front of my face now!  Terror began to build under such enthusiasm, a low worry of things crashing down all over again like they always had.

Then I felt a motion pass right by me.  Squeaking, I leapt after it, trying to catch it!  But the feeling wormed away, floating into the darkness as though it were always a part of it.

    “Scared?”

The voice seemed to come from nowhere.  Turning from side to side, I wished my eyes could see properly, but what night vision I usually had was gone!

    I felt a brush against my flank.  Leaping away from it this time in fear, I almost tripped over something I couldn't see!  

Right. Two could play at this game. I hunched down low, treading lightly.

    “Oh, don't even try.  You never could beat me at this.”

    Wait...

    Oh no.

As though sensing my own realisation, a single eye opened before me, predatory and followed by a mad shining white grin in the darkness.

    “Hello again, filly.”

I fell, back-pedalling frantically away from the sight.  My hoof went to my shoulder, which suddenly ached with the hot pain of a knife blade searing right through it.  There was nothing there, but I still felt it as I had before! Twisting the cold metal against my bone and muscle!

Through the darkness, he advanced, warping and twisting through all the shadows I now saw in his wake.  Long, straight hair that sent wavy distortions around him and seemed to gel with the magic bleeding from that dark horn made it impossible to really see any outline of the raider that still made me fear the dark!

    Barb.

    “You don't know how wonderful it is to see you down here.  You thought you were such a hotshot pulling one trick and quipping off, huh?  Ooh, we don't like that in the Clan. We don't like little pipsqueak fillies thinking that can act bigger than us!  Especially me.”

I felt something under my hoof, like a rock!  I threw it! The object seemed to simply vanish through him.  Barb slid past my vision, appearing right beside me as what I thought was him simply faded into nothing.

“Not got any fancy tricks left?  Fool me once, kid. I hope you know what gutting involves now, because I'll show you how for what you did the moment you truly realised how screwed you really are!  Don't think the whore or the traitor will come for you. They're wandering themselves miles from here, each thinking they're chasing me.”

    He winked.

    “Unicorn shadow magic.  It's a wonderful thing; bless Luna, eh?  Face it. Your friends are dead the moment I decide it down here.  I am the darkness, filly, and in your mind the darkness is everything!  Now gallop. Gallop and scream because I'm going to be coming for you and I want to hear you beg as you flee the inevitable!”

    A knife pressed against my shoulder!  That shoulder!  I had no choice.  I had to go, it was run or be impaled!  Taking breaths with no air entering my body, I stood and sprinted away while trying to avoid tripping over every desk and door frame!  I fell into the corridor, struggling to see, and wishing I could maybe find Brim or Glim in this maze! Was this Stable Ninety Three? I thought it was!

Laughter sounded behind me. The stalking hunt was on!  Trying to control myself from screaming, I crept as best I could down random corridors, trying to always get away from him!  I heard things, buckets being knocked over or doors sliding open and closing! I could track him by the doors, right?

    Ahead of me, a door opened.  He must be up there!

    Turning, I ran right into a sweeping wave of darkness that curled along the wall and ceiling, as though he was running off the ground within the shadows themselves!

    “All the shadows are mine, filly!  You can't trust any of your precious sounds now!”

This time, I screamed. The glint of black metal caught my eye while I turned and galloped away.  He moved slowly, savouring the hunt. It gave me time to rush up some stairs. Up! Always up! I'd have to find the way out of the Stable, right?  Was that the game? I needed to fool him. Get him to move away, use every ounce of hiding I could!

Watching either side of me, I stepped back into the thickest shadow I could and lay down quietly.  Nearby, I could hear his laughter down the hallway. Curling up, I hugged myself and tried to staunch the pain of my shoulder.  It was agonising now!

    Then I felt the shadow hug back.

    “Throwing my voice isn't that hard!  Two tries down.  Next time it's the blade in the back for you!”

He threw me out, surging around me. I never once saw his actual physical form!  Just eyes or a wisp of hair trailing in the shadows themselves! Every corridor I looked at seemed to have something!  The entire Stable was Barb!

    “Oh, now you're getting it!”

    No matter where I went, he could always see me...always catch me...

I started to fall to the floor, holding my shoulder as it began to bleed all on its own.  Some wounds, some fears never died.

    “All you can do is wait until I have my fun.  It's not nice being smaller, is it?”

His voice rang around me, echoing off walls and reverberating from every corridor at different times.  I couldn't locate him! I couldn't escape him! He was my absolute peer!

    I was just too small, too weak at anything to win.

    “No you're not!”

My eyes bolted open. I felt someone else gallop up to me, sliding to catch me before I fell in hopeless loss.  A buck's voice. I felt firm but gentle hooves hold me up and cradle my shoulder.

    “Even those who didn't know you long were those you made an impact on, Murky.”

Through the darkness, I tried to squint until he finally came into view.  I felt a cooling water poured over my shoulder and the tingling magic of a healing potion applied.  Then I finally saw, the light of the magic working upon me making his glasses sparkle before optimistic and calming eyes.

“Doctor Weathervane bid me to take that oath to help others, Murky,” said Caduceus, “I'm not going to go back on it.  Especially not for those in dire need.”

If I had any air in my lungs I would have been breathless.  Sitting right before me was a buck I'd barely known, but had felt such a connection with as a friend before Barb stole him from all of us.

“He hurt you, Murky.  Some wounds go long after the pain has faded from the body, but we can't let them dominate us!  If in life I fixed your body, in memory I shall help fix your fear. The fear of those stronger than you. That's what he represents to you now!”

Behind him, I saw another shadow swish past, laughing while it circled us.  A predator waiting to strike. Caduceus held my shoulder strong, the pain dying off, before laying his other hoof to the side of my face.

“You were a wonderful little buck. Somepony I was happy to die fighting alongside for the rescue of those in need.  You gave me the courage, because I could look at you and see that even the weakest of us was still standing up to do it.  I went for Glimmer, but I stayed because of your inspiration to stick by your friends!  You are a brave pony, Murky!”

We stood together.  Then he simply hugged me.  Falling into the embrace, I couldn't do anything but simply say the words I never got the chance to.

    “Thank you...”

“You're very welcome. I'm sorry I couldn't say goodbye, but there are more important things than that now.  Murky, listen carefully, he-”

    “Is more than he'll ever amount to!”

Barb's voice bounced from the walls.  I could feel him coming closer, sense his strike was nearing.  I began to shiver, but Caduceus shook me gently.

    “He is nothing but your fear of those better than you!  But what have you to fear from him? You beat him!  In the end it was you who ended his reign of terror in that Mall!  You who saved Protégé's life and the lives of many others by throwing yourself against him!”

    “Nothing but luck!  Now both of you, nothing but unlucky bucks!  I hope you're ready!”

The darkness swelled, I saw only briefly a glint of a dozen knives in the darkness, all closing upon us.  We had to move, but Caduceus only held me still!

    “All he has is fear, Murky!”

My eyes closed tightly, but the words reminded me of that horrifying moment as I saw him strike down a pony I sought to protect!  Of how I had run forward without fear to launch onto him!  Of outwitting him in the end!  I had won.

    I had won and he was gone! He was no threat to me anymore!

    I was not afraid!

I opened my eyes even as I felt the knives all land and sink into both of us.  The darkness penetrating and surging inward for the killing blow in a nightmare of gore and pain.

    Nothing landed.

    As my eyes opened again, I was standing with Caduceus, holding one another tightly in support of the fear we'd both had of this ghostly pony.  But now, aching my eyes a little were the panel lights above that had come on.  The entire Stable was bathed in light, revealing to me nothing but a pathetic sight.

A tiny form of Barb, skinnier than even me.  Without gore, but as though he had been blown into fragments and only the barest form of a pony remained.  Unable to move, cast upon the floor, I saw eyes showing fear himself looking up at me, before what shadow remained slipped away beneath the metal plates of the Stable's floor, disappearing forever.

    “Thank you, Caduceus.  I'm-I'm sorry we couldn't-

    He stepped back from me, breathing out with relief.  But he shook his head.

“It's all right, Murky.  I knew the dangers when I went in and I don't regret doing it.  But right now, it's you that we have to help. I'll follow you along with Brimstone and Glimmer to aid you.”

A thick galloping from around the Stable corridor's corner gave way to just those two ponies rushing forward, hearing our voices.  There was a silence, Glimmer simply stopping on the spot as her eyes found Caduceus standing beside me, a hoof on my back protectively.

The joy I felt as I saw her rush over and dive onto him so hard he was blown over to the floor was more than I had known in so long.  Even Brimstone couldn't help but crack his stern face into a little smile at the sight of those two laughing and holding one another tightly.  A miracle to meet just once more.

“Caddy!” Glimmer almost squealed the name, rubbing her cheek against his.  I could see little sparkling tears around her eyes whenever that huge mane of hers was out of the way.  Giggling from her attentions, Caduceus had to properly fight to keep his glasses on and get to his hooves.

    “Oh, Glimmerlight!  Your mane!”

    “Oh I know. Welcome to how I should look, you lucky buck.  Thank you for being here, for helping him! Thank you...”

They shared one more tender embrace, one that I felt Glimmer's magic dragging me into.  The type of moment we never had been able to have in real life.

Brimstone made a small sound of approval, clearly not willing to join a group hug, before casting his eyes down the corridor.  A stream of light began to show.

“The Stable door. Right there with the light.  We should get moving; the shadows and nightmares seeking to stop him won't rest long.  I can sense it. The surface isn't far away now to get back into Fillydelphia and out of this underground world.”

Separating, sticking close, we each nodded and began the journey again.  With my friends by my side, I felt spurred on! I could properly do this!  Rounding the corner we saw the door, casting white light into the dark Stable that the ageing panels above simply could not give.  A natural light, one of life.

Our group galloped forward, me in front of them all as we dove through it like we had once before on the hills outside Fillydelphia.

For once, the light did not go out.  Instead it shifted and became a harsh orange glow.  A wave of heat struck me as we passed through, a familiar one.

Blinking to clear the glare, I almost gagged on a poisonous tang to the...well it wasn't air.  I still couldn't feel myself breathing. But a thick, smoggy cloud rolled across the area, blocking all sight and burning my throat and eyes.

    It was a feeling all too familiar. I knew exactly where I was.

The smog lifted, revealing the industry of Fillydelphia, a massive below-ground chamber of impossible heights and scale between thick pillars and bearing, unending machinery that whirred and ground all around us.  A vast mechanism of unknown purpose and incredible complexity. It rose up the pillars and spread under the metal grating of the floor.

    But the noise.

My ears flattened.  I dropped to cover them, noticing even my three companions wince when the slams, grinds, and screeches of metal washed across us.  Beneath the sights, smells, and sounds of Fillydelphia's industry we were stricken, given only to a slow crawl through this mechanical maze of lethal squirting steam and shifting pistons.

“Keep moving!” I heard Brimstone shout above it.  I could only nod and try! Pushing ahead, filled with a purpose to overcome all these trials, I cantered forward even while I felt my eyes turn wet from the pain in my head.

Through each corridor we turned, the noise only grew.  Small oddities in it perked my interest, however. Every so often there was another tone to it, something else that didn't sound quite mechanical.  Turning my head to the side, I looked at the nearest machine, staring deep into its complex workings.

    Then I screamed.

Within it, growing from a spinning cog, I saw a pony's face twisted in pain upon the very metal.  On each squealing turn, I heard a cry of pain and suffering. Noticing one, I then heard the others, upon so many surfaces they were melded into the very workings of this vast room!  Shifting faces and hooves between tearing metals and white hot welds that bore an unending existence as part of the machine itself!

    Around me, my companions saw it too.  Glimmerlight looked beyond horrified, stepping back against a furious Brimstone.

    “There has to be an end!  Push through! Don't let it distract you!”

    Caduceus rested a hoof on the metal, I could see the carer in him aghast.

    “But we-”

    “Get moving!” Brimstone pulled him away, pushed us all on!  I galloped myself, only now beginning to realise how familiar that voice was. I knew who it was.  Veering around whirring spindles I saw a long straight corridor lined with lathe machines that cracked with a sound of bone while they worked.  Under this chorus of metal agony I ran, knowing they were right behind me. Find a way up! Always up!

The noise peaked, a grinding howled into the air before I felt a huge slam behind me.  The impact threw me from my hooves, dumping me upon the ground before I could look back.  A huge slab of metal had crashed down from a lifting arm above us! The centre of it was filled with mesh wire, separating me from my friends!  I ran back to it, hopping up to try and press through the mesh, but it was far too small! Brimstone began slamming against it, while Caduceus tried helping me, before opening his eyes wide.

    “Behind you!”

    Feeling a cold sweat under the blistering heat, I spun.

Before me, forms of ponies were dredging themselves from the floors and machines.  Dozens of them, all rising and shaking themselves off. Formed of metal and flesh upon their bodies, they were simply part of the great machine themselves.  Necks cracked on spindles and blinking red and yellow eyes turned to look at me before I finally recognised them. Every one of them.

    Every slaver I knew.

Wicked Slit gnashed her serrated mouth to lock the jaw in place as she fell from between two cogs with a tinny clatter.  Whiplash juddered and let his glinting eyes fall upon me, a length of industrial wire in his mouth's flesh that had been wrapped over a rounded pipe.  The rock farmer, one I'd never even known the name of, slid forward on rusting plated legs. Hive, Wormtail, Mosin, Sooty, Grindstone...

    They all were there.

    Then they spoke, as one.  A combined voice echoed and funnelled by the whirling machinery into a voice for the entire room.

    “Welcome home, slave.”

    Glimmerlight pressed her face up against the wire.

    “Don't listen to them!  It's just the next trial, Murky!”

The metal began to move, forcing my friends backwards, further from me!  I tried to chase them, but it only moved faster as I ran between the pillars and leapt molten metal to catch them!

“You're alone!  We're here to bring you back.  Welcome you as what you should be all over again, just another little cog in the machine!”

    Slit shivered forward, her mouth moving in perfect sync with every other slaver.  Spreading out, they began to circle me.

    “We're where you belong, Murk!”

    “With us! The ponies who own you!”

Whiplash began to trot forward faster.  I leapt back. What was I meant to think?  What did I do to win here? I didn't know!  Hooves tried to grab me, rising from the machine!  The slavers from the Mill! I felt myself being dragged!  Weighed down as they closed in, a mass of master after master who had owned my life seeking to drown me into the very spinning wheels behind me!

    “DON'T!  I'm free!  I should be free!”

    “You should be here!”

Wicked Slit grabbed my leg, pulling me!  Then I felt Mosin clamp a wrench-ended hoof over my tail.  They began tugging me toward an opening in the machine that seemed designed just to perfectly fit me!  I struggled, knocking nuts or bolts from their faces, but the pieces flowed and travelled back to where they should.  An unending machine I couldn't change!

    “Yes, here!”

    “We're your real family, Murk.”

I screamed, covering my face as they descended.  But I felt a pressure build, a feeling like my ears had to pop.  Growing and thickening the air with the sound of sparking, a sudden wind blew over me and heralded a fierce shockwave ripping across the machines, tearing parts free and throwing the slavers back. Some shattered into parts or got caught in the cogs and pistons of the machines around us!

Stunned, lying upon the ground, I looked up to see the sparking emerging from a horn glowing brighter than any I'd seen since the Pit.

Coral Eve stood atop one machine, her face bearing a mask of anger and determination.  Her mane braided in intricate wooden clasps I'd never seen her own outside Glimmer's memories.

    “You all know nothing of what the word 'family' truly means!”

A clipped electronic scream belched into the air.  Slit, Hive, and a half dozen others got back up as their bodies reknitted and reformed, charging forward.  With a toss of her head and a cry of exertion, Coral sent them blasting back across the foundry floor to slam into the wall blocking the others!  Suddenly, a crash as Brimstone broke the barrier down and dropped it upon all the slavers! The impact lifted dust from the ground before he, Glimmer, and Caduceus charged toward me as well.  Coral landed beside me, helping me up.

“A family isn't what you're told to accept. It's what you choose for yourself. A bond between ponies, no matter their origin or how they met. It’s what you mean to one another...”

    She looked down to me. Even as the others approached, that fury settling to a smile.

    “...to help fill the gaps in each other's lives.”

I couldn't help it. Even in danger, I leaned forward to hug her tightly, feeling her return it and wrap her hooves around me tightly.

    “I knew you'd be here too, Coral.”

    “I know, my dear.  I know.”

    Surrounded by my friends, my family I'd chosen for myself, the mechanical slavers paused and retreated, even falling apart.  Slowly, the noise began to fade, the machines shutting down. Glimmerlight moved closer to me, exchanging a knowing glance with Coral, before stroking my mane and pointing.  Up ahead, I could see a great set of stairs leading to the surface! There was maybe just one more room to go through! Fillydelphia's top level was almost near! From the bottom of that dark quarry to here. Such a rushed journey.

    We were so close, but we couldn't be stopped!  Every task my friends had helped me overcome, now that they were all here.

    My gaze lifted up the stairs as we neared them.  I placed one hoof upon the steps and felt a chill run right through me.

    “It's all right, Murky.  We're here with you.” Glimmerlight nudged my side.

    “You've stormed past all this!  I dare say, this will be easy.” Caduceus smiled to me.

Only, I was shivering.  I had looked upwards to the great doorway out of the foundry ahead.  Tall and made of concrete, they bore a symbol at the top. The one that mattered most, the hardest one to get around.

    A single loop.  The eternal chain.

“H-he's in there...” My hooves felt frozen to the spot. I'd never truly beaten him!  H-how was I...what if he...oh no…”

    “Murky, hun.” Coral passed a hoof over me, pulling my eyes to hers.  “I saw you stand up to him.  We all did, but I saw you say that one word, just remember it.  Remember the one that matters! If you can say that, then you can win.  You knew you'd have to come to face him eventually.”

    “I-I know!  But he's...he might be my-”

“No!” Coral's voice snapped out, almost reprimanding me on the spot.  I blinked, looking up at her. “Remember what I just said. Family is who you choose.  Whether or not he was responsible to begin with, what matters is who you choose.  We're all here for you now, all your friends.  We won't leave you to yourself. But he might separate us. He may force you to do this alone.  We'll all be rooting for you, even if you can't hear us.”

    “Damn fuckin' right,” Brimstone muttered, earning him a little glance from Coral.

    “Language, big guy.”

    He smirked, holding up a hoof.  “As if Murky would ever be able to repeat it anyway.”

    A little laugh passed around the group. I allowed myself a chuckle.

They had carried me this far. We couldn't stop now.  I had faced the trials of my own fears, of my death, of those stronger than I, of the life that was expected of me, but now I knew it was for the greatest of them all.

    To face My Master.  The true symbol of everything that had held me down.  Master and Slave.

    “Thank you, all of you. L-let's go.”

We ran up the stairs.  They went on for a long time, the huge door only getting bigger as we ascended from the pit of machinery, heading for the surface!  Every step forward I felt the fear grow. I knew I would likely be terrified, cry, and struggle, but I had to try! He would always stand in my way before any escape!

    We never even stopped for the door, high above the ground. We pushed right through it and into his lair within my mind.

    What struck me was the silence.

After the deafening machines, the moment I passed through that door there was nothing but a still silence amongst a dark chamber.  Fans above turned lethargically, beaming dull red light into the room that chopped and cut every time a fan blade shifted past. Almost like the ruins of an ancient castle or cathedral, the pillars continued to rise into a dark abyss above us.

    Out of that darkness hung chains.

Everywhere, like rainfall held still, they hung filled with hooks or collars from the ceiling to become almost like a forest suspended five feet from the floor.  They swayed gently, clinking against one another or upon the ruined marble pillars and (for those that reached further down) floor.

    A strange little sound made my ears prick up.  I'd heard it long ago. What was it?

    “...ews...derly stal...uth...”

    I glanced around, looking down and to my right, it seemed loudest there. What was that?

We stood as one group, waiting.  Shaking my head to clear these odd distractions, I held close to Glimmerlight, casting my eyes to every shadow that might hold something.  Through murky windows I could see the hazed light of Fillydelphia's outside world. We were on the surface! At the far end, I could see a doorway that led out to it. We were so close!

    I knew it would be more than simply running over there though.

    It wasn't.

    “Num...ber...Seven...”

Every few letters were pronounced harshly, mockingly.  The voice emanated from all around, rattling the chains as they surged and quivered in response to the sickly voice creeping through them.

    “Little...Number...Seven...”

Slowly, the dark ambience began to lift as a cloud above cleared and let more of the washing light pour through the windows.  A set of steps to a plinth lit up, shining from polished stone leading all the way to a throne. A shifting mass below it, I gaped in horror as I saw myself.  Many forms of myself all broken and laid low below the throne itself! My Master was sitting atop my own suffering! Made of ringed chain cast into the design, the throne curled round, rising to his own symbol above.

Within it he lounged, adorned in dark armour made of Ranger plate fragments and milled steel, a lordship of slavery at the height of power.  Chains led from many hooks on it to the slaves bearing my face below his throne, ones he would pull or tug to get to them to move!

“Fillydelphia, the city of slavery.  Look to the places you have come from. This is not just your fears, little Number Seven, but the legend that is this place!  Red Eye was not the first to make something of this place.”

    Of course, I knew that from what I'd heard, that meant he knew it.  I heard Brimstone snarl behind me, saw Coral's horn light in sparks.  They were ready for a fight, but he only grinned at them, rotten teeth showing around disgustingly wet and cracked lips.

    “Slavery is my destiny, you worms.  I take what I own, and I own you!”

    I knew the one word I had to say. The one that everyone has trouble saying, even to their friends. That one illogical word that is so simple, but that we all struggle with.

    Here, it meant more than ever.

    “N-no!”

I stepped forward. Coral was right. I had to tell him and show myself that I could overcome him!  His eyes glared to me, uncannily familiar eyes reflected by every version of myself I saw groaning and crying below him.

“Not any more!  I-I'm leaving! Escaping you!” Trotting forward, I stood before his throne, throat tight and shivering, but standing tall!  “Just like I told you, but now I realise that my hope didn't have to come from anypony else but myself and from my friends!”

    I'd told him!  I'd told him no!  We would pass this!

He only smiled and gestured.  A rattle was our only warning, as every chain in the area writhed like a snake, collars gnashed and hooks scythed.  A cry of warning was all I could offer before they hurtled down, surging around my friends! Surging around me! Brimstone fought at them, while I dove over the group, rolling on the ground to escape them!  Coral's magic exploded forth as the battle against his chains began.

Caduceus and Glimmerlight were back to back, tossing them down or grabbing them in Glimmer's magic.  Nearby, Brimstone tore them from the roof, finding them coiling like living creatures even afterwards!  More dropped. Collars grabbed Coral's hooves and she shattered them upon the floor! Ducking, diving, and dodging I felt a hook nearly sink into my leg, deflected painfully from one of my little hooves!  Grabbing one, I swung from it a short distance before running around a pillar, I could trap one!

    My head turned away, hearing something again.

    “...landers!  ...he bloody mass...ealed at...st”

Distracted, a collar snapped shut around my back leg.  I tried to grasp it and pull it off, but even when Glimmerlight ran to aid me I saw her wrapped around the waist by multiple chains and lifted high.  Brimstone was covered in them, tearing and smashing but being slowed and weighed down. One by one we began to get caught and distracted. Caduceus cried out and thrashed ten feet off the ground while Coral's horn made a flare and burned out on the spot!

    Finally, My Master moved.

    “This is the reality of my legacy, Number Seven!  Slavery is not something you choose to leave.  You are here forever!  You do not leave till I tell you, and I never will.”

    “Murky!  This is just him trying to tell you who you are, but he doesn't choose!”

    “Of course I do, little mare!  I am his Master! His bloodline. Slavery is in us, Number Seven!”

    He advanced, the chains dragging me across.  I felt a collar shut around my throat tight enough to hurt!  I didn't need to breathe, but my windpipe was still crushed.

    “You can delude yourself as much as you want, but I am the Lord and Master of Slavery.  Fillydelphia was and is mine. You came here to come home, Number Seven!  To find me!”

    His words seared into my mind, like they were not even simply being heard.  Everything left a burning mark upon my thoughts!  Struggling, I felt every limb clamped down!  We were so close, it was just out there! He climbed out of his throne, stomping over to me down the steps.

    “I-I want out!  I don't accept you!”

    “Too bad.”

    I heard a scream of pain behind me. Coral's horn had flared even brighter, trying to attack him.  But hooks dug in and the magic imploded upon herself. Brimstone roared even as they cut at him and held him immobile.  My friends were going to be torn apart by the chains!

    “Face it, Number Seven.  The only thing you can do to save them is to accept me.  You've never been able to beat me. Every time the circle has simply completed itself and you have been returned worse than ever. Isn't that how it's gone?  The Eternal Chain. You've seen the pattern again and again and again.  It's all one loop and it's gone on since the start.”

    His hoof lifted my head up.  Glimmerlight's cry of pain sent my eyes watering, the chains condensing around her.

    “You can-argh!  You can fight him, Murky! This is what you came here f-fooor!”

    “How can you fight what you cannot take away?  You know I'm telling the truth; that in the beginning, I gave you life.”

    “Lying or not, it doesn't matter!” Coral screamed from behind me.

I stared forward into my own eyes upon his face, that same scar aching and bleeding as I felt it form upon my previously clear forehead.

    “There is nothing better for you out there. Born a slave and meant to be a slave, whether or not you have some little mark that promises you anything more!”

“What you were born as doesn't change what you try to be!” Brimstone roared, striking down a chain even as more grasped hold.  

My neck tightened again, stopping me speaking.  His hoof stroked my chin.

    “You want out, but you don't know how to do it! You haven't a clue what freedom is! Now you will be cast down! Nopony in this world can understand truly understand where you came from but me!”

    I screamed!  Every chain digging into me, unable to speak, feeling him stop me doing so by the command of the chains that my own mind conjured!  I screamed because he was right! I...I didn't know and there was nopony-

    “Wrong, Shackles.”

A red glow erupted out and around us.  The chains in the air recoiled, hissing as they moved and steamed.  Forced back, they let go of me. Around me, I heard the metal shriek and jolt away from the magic surging forth.

With those two words spiking through my brain with enough hope and sudden feeling of safety, the collar snapped right off!  I fell, rolling down the stairs away from him in his angered bewilderment at who distracted him! My friends dropped to the floor, each casting off what chains had been seeking to crush them.

    Pained, shaking, I looked up.  We all did.

Standing before me, I saw one little glint of red in the darkness that trotted forward.  Dark coat emerging from within it to stand before me with his horn glowing a bright red that shielded and protected us.

    “He has me,” said Protégé, “somepony you have no power over!  You might try to cast your chains around him and his friends, but you cannot cast them around me!”

Lying upon the floor, looking up at him, I saw the one eye on his right look down to me with a small comforting smile.  I wanted to throw myself at him, seeing him alive and well here after so much worry!

    “Th-thank you for coming.”

Protégé offered only a gentle nod, before his gaze turned to before us, where the black form of The Master stood in a wide stance, his chains surging and twisting around the entire room, just waiting for a chance.

    “Oh.  You.  The upstart himself. The little colt-cuddling wretch who thinks he can do so much 'more' for Fillydelphia.  Don't think you being here makes any difference. You can protect him, but you cannot make him free, if you even know how.”

    He trailed a hoof over the shield, leaning in close to it, closer to Protégé's face.

    “Don't forget.  There was a time when you called me Master.”

“A time long past, Shackles!” Protégé bit back.  “If I proved anything it's that a pony can escape you!  It took two years, but I won't let another pony be drawn into your nightmare ever again!  I will have you cast from this city if I can, to forever remove your stain of evil from a place that might be better!  A place free of the hell you created before Master Red Eye dethroned you!”

Each of my friends were moving up beside him, I got back to my feet to stand directly beside him, feeling Glimmerlight on my other side.

    “A time yet to come again, upstart!” He slammed upon the shield, a deep thump surging around it with more power than seemed natural.  Protégé winced as The Master leaned in. “You're still within these walls, within Number Seven's slave mind. In here you will be mine again.  Just as he always will be!”

The shield shimmered back, growing and forcing The Master back.  As one, my friends stepped forward, all but me. They sheltered me, standing with Protégé as they fully stood up to him.

“If I need to nurture and protect him until another two years pass, I will, Shackles!  He is strong, stronger than perhaps I was at his time and definitely more than you will ever believe!  In here, in his mind, I believe in his ability to make it happen.”

    Protégé turned to me.

“He's proven everyone wrong about what his limits were, to come from nothing to do the things he's done.  To save my life when he doesn't owe anything to me for what I've put him through. That's the mark of a real pony under all the tears and terror.  Something you would never understand or be able to spot, Shackles!”

Every day I would never truly understand everything that drove the only friendly 'master' I'd ever had, but right now I was simply glad he was here, no matter what the circumstances between us were.

“Damn right!  Now he's not alone either!” Glimmer almost grinned as she said it, seemingly tired of waiting her turn to pipe up!  I could see her magic joining Protégé's, expanding the shield and mixing the red with her own azure gem blue!

“We didn't bring him this far just to cast him back down to your sadistic ways!” Coral's horn lit, a thick ocean blue that seemed to gel all too well with Glimmer's and wrapping across the shield.

It wasn't just them. I could see an unearthly glow around Brimstone and Caduceus as well!  Adding their own power to the growing area around us, forcing the chains back, making The Master have to retreat closer to his throne!

“By their doing or mine, he shall not be yours!” Protégé stepped forward.  “There is nothing you can do that will stop what I believe he will someday do from happening, Shackles!  Such a pony deserves to be free! His own destiny tells that and by all the power I hold in this city I will see it happen!”

I felt a rumbling, a sudden surge of power from each of them in my breast.  They all stood, protecting me from the chains that sought to take me from him!  They all believed in my destiny, one even I had forgotten!

    A destiny that awaited me, but one I had to take for myself!

I ran forward, moving past Glimmerlight and Protégé to be before him!  Facing up to him alone wasn't the way. There was no shame in saying what had to be said under the protection of my friends.  That was what they were for!  Travelling up the steps, always upwards!  Toward him and rising all the time, I brought myself before him, and took a breath.

    “I will be free!  You can say what you want, but I've got enough good ponies, good friends who care and help me to be able to say to you what I need to in order to make it happen!”

My body shuddered. I could feel the slaves on his throne shaking their heads, the Ruin somewhere in the shadows begging me not to.  But everything I had worked for and strived to reach all my life led me to have to say this to the one pony that it truly mattered!

    “I've got my whole life left to live and I won't live it in chains!  I guess what I'm trying to say is...is...”

    I took one glance, to see Glimmer and Protégé both smile and nod, before taking that one momentous breath.

    “You are not my master any more, Chainlink Shackles!”

    Even aside from the sudden look of shock for once upon his face sending a swirling vortex of joy, hope, and relief through my heart, I felt the floor shake and the glow from each of my friends condense and brighten as it all fell into me!  A tingling all over as the shield faded from red to blue to a light green and kept pushing further and further! With a snap, it broke and shattered outwards, severing the chains for all directions and casting Shackles back into his throne as it collapsed and dissolved below him!  The windows of his slavery worshipping cathedral blew out and brought the sunlight into it, a strong orange that drove away shadows and brought life to this place of misery!

Under the twinkling of falling stained glass and the rays of sunshine, I stood encircled by the broken chains along the floor.  I stood while he fell.  Something had broken inside me, some restriction.

Then, even as this moment of wondrous calm came about and we began to come together, I heard it again. That voice on the wind, near my foreleg. What was it?

    “...the trut...real tr...she is sti...tore hope...”

    “Murky, you did it!” Glimmerlight interrupted my thoughts, galloping up to me and tightly hugging me. Breathless and stunned, I grabbed back.

I felt Coral's hoof stroke my mane, felt Protégé rest one hoof on my shoulder proudly, and after letting go of Glimmer was immediately taken in by Caduceus for another tight hug.  Brimstone caught my eye, smirking as though knowing how silly a hug would be. He offered a respectful nod, a lot from the big earth pony.

“Now, Murk,” Protégé moved before me when I let Caduceus go, “we have to get you out of here. Back to the life you have and to strive to make it better.  We have to get you to the sunset, over that wall, so I believe.”

    “Thank you.  Just...just thank you!”

He smiled gently, turning me to face the cathedral doors.  Through them I could see the long road to the wall and the glow of the sunset coming from above it through the shattered windows.

    Then the doors slammed shut.

A fierce rumbling across the ground shook the debris of chains and glass, so much so that we fought to keep our footing!  I even felt myself grab hold of Coral to keep my little hooves standing!

    “You think it's that easy?”

    The voice was everywhere, all around us.  Shackles' fallen form shook, jerked, and began to lift, simply floating up and turning.

    “You think that Fillydelphia is but one pony's vision or dwelling?  That it is simply a place by which they make their own rules? You poor naïve fools.”

    The rumbling turned to a full earthquake.  I heard walls cracking, felt every bone shaking terribly, and felt the crash of a huge pillar collapsing.  We ran. Nopony even had to say to go, but we rushed for a hole in the cracking wall at the top of the stairs that once led to Shackles' throne.

From below us, the chains flew up, surging like flying snakes in the air as they tore through walls and pulled window frames apart.

    “Even before I made it into the greatest it ever had been, Fillydelphia was a city of slaves!  I was not the first and I will not be the last! Generations of Master and Slave time and again throughout history in this one shell of Equestrian life.  Forced into their factories and drafted to war, the ponies here knew slavery before they even understood the word! Nopony ever escapes it.”

    I screamed as a massive pillar slammed between us, separating Coral and I from the rest of my friends!  A full wall began to crumble, revealing the outside of Fillydelphia in all its hellish glory! Wall by wall the entire building came apart, lifting Shackles' body past it, wrapped in writhing chains that flew out and began to tear into nearby factories and buildings!

It carried him up amongst them as I saw the huge industrial cranes turn and take on a life of their own, swinging around upon their weights to bring beams of iron crossing over one another.  Around us, the entire city of Fillydelphia itself was a living, breathing machine casting its metal and winding machines upward around the cranes, extending across their great arms to lock and slot into place. It was building something between them!

    “Beating or escaping a Master is but one thing!  Being able to take that freedom from the city that had always enslaved is another!  You do not face merely Chainlink Shackles! You face slavery itself by coming here. The slave city!  Fillydelphia itself is not somewhere no upstart, no destined pony, and no well-wishing friends can simply leave. There are always the same things. The city. Its Wall...”

    In the distance, I saw the great wall shift and rise, nearly blotting out the sun itself, while the factories roared and swelled as though in anger at anypony daring to escape.

    “The willing masses...”

    From every crevice, I heard them before I saw them.  Even as we regrouped away from the collapsing cathedral I saw thousands of slaves, all bearing my face crawling from the ruins and machines to appear before us.

    “The Master.”

    The monstrous moving nightmare before us did not create a shape so much as an icon.  A great monument before us. A visual pattern of slavery in one condensed mass with a single hole at the top between the crane heads where the sunset showed.  A sunset that turned to blood red through a filter of cracking energy.

Before us, immense and stretching hundreds of feet above our heads, the very personification of slavery around Shackles' body and Fillydelphia's very industry beamed down upon us.  The smog from factories turned in mid-air, flowing down into the streets and igniting upon furnaces to set everything ablaze! On either side of the street there was no other way out now as the fire streaked through the clouds to surround the cathedral, barring all ways out other than directly toward the new structure forming above us.  The smoke whipped up, travelling to the sky and forming around it to allow that baleful red energy to highlight itself.

    A single great eye of crimson, staring down upon us.

    “Red Eye may be different. He may have plans greater than the slavery that has defined this city since the raging balefire, but he is the one that brought forth its potential to entrap.  It is his Fillydelphia that will hold you in behind his wall under his authority!  You cannot leave.”

    The immense eye seemed to turn, a beam of red glaring down upon us and drawing upon our muscles like weights.

Protégé saw us fall, collapsing as though all the weight of industry and authority had fallen on our backs.  He turned to move, but that red glare fell upon him.

    “Not even you, little 'prodigy.'”

I heard even Protégé cry out, falling to the floor as the slaves surrounded us.  Even Protégé couldn't say anything against Red Eye's authority! My mind was reeling, the weight dragging me down for all my will to stand!

I felt a force grab me, lifting me up high.  Even briefly, I heard a scramble of electronic noise near my right foreleg. What was it!?  I couldn't think much for now, as I was lifted high into the air, brought before the eye itself, so bright and crackling with energy of the surrounding machinery in this colossal scrap-built icon that my eyes stung and my skin seemed to burn!

    “You, little slave! You are nothing!  Wishes and crying will get you nowhere from Fillydelphia!”

    “NO!” I screamed back even as I felt my body crushed in its telekinetic-like grip.  I wouldn't be a slave!
   
    “Will or not, you are trapped in this city!”

    That electronic sound screeched again, louder and forming words that I couldn't understand, like they were trying to get my attention!  But opening my eyes to see Shackles' leering face within that red glow, slavers both even if history saw them enemies, drew a chill across me.  How could I compete with an army of slavers and a fortress!?

    “You can want out all you want, but it is nothing but pain that awaits you back in life. I tried to tell you. You will be a slaver's plaything no matter where you go!  Better to die. There is no choice!  Not for you! Not any more!”

    “I...want...out!” I struggled, trying to find some way to free myself before outright howling in pain when my body felt crushed!  I knew what would happen if I were 'killed' here. I would be sent right into the oblivion awaiting below all over again! My ears screamed in pain atop my head, a rush of static refusing to go away.  I heard words, a familiar voice. I just couldn't...make it out...

    “You have lost, slave!  You can't fight the chains in your mind!  There's nopony left to save you now! Your little 'sister' is lying down there screaming!  Your surrogate mother caught beside her! That guardian brute cannot move! The dead one is far from you!  Even your preferred 'master' cannot save you! There isn't anypony left to call, little slave, and your words can do nothing!”

    Suddenly...clarity.  I heard words even as its tirade continued.

    “...landers...truth...ealed about Ar...

    “Nopony to stand against Red Eye's authority!  Nopony can change the wastes, slave! Not one!”

    The static and words reached a peak, drowning out even him as I struggled and cried out, feeling my vision going dark.  But those words I had heard, I knew them! Yes, they mattered!
       
    My eyes shot open, the pain fading for just a moment, as I drew my right foreleg close.

    “No...”

    My hoof fell upon the broadcast button.  The PipBuck had always been with me, but now it meant something to be there to be touched!  The static washed through the air, expanding and growing to an almost deafening volume, my faith pushed all into it!

    Then the voice finally broke through the static and breaking up signals. That one voice I needed to hear!

    “GOOD EVENING, WASTELANDERS!  This is DJ Pon-Threeee, and have I got news for you!  Major update on the situation at Arbu and Bucklyn Cross!  First and foremost, let me say hallelujah!  Sounds like our Wasteland Saviour hasn’t fallen to the darkness after all!”

    Narrowing my eyes, I looked into the red glow and Shackles dead on.  The broadcast continued, on how the truth came out. It washed across me, rekindling a faith that had been lost!  Days of aching and worry over losing her legend coming back to me! But that grip held tight, crushing me tighter and tighter. I heard a voice saying that it didn't matter!  Striving, I finally shouted the rest of what I had tried to say.

    “...there is one who can!”

    Exploding into rage, it simply and ferociously clung to me in my defiance!

The red glow shattered, bleeding light at odd angles as a full crack came across it. A second later, the harsh report of what I knew was a revolver rippled through the air.  A metallic scream from the construct threatened to burst my eardrums. Another shot tire into it.  Then another and another, six in total, smashed into it and broke me free.  All holding sensations gone, I fell. Tumbling, seeing the inferno of Fillydelphia below me, I shut my eyes in vertigo inducing terror.

Something gently caught me, and with expert control I felt my fall slow and then cease. Instead of collapsing, I was lifted to the ground in the middle of a glow, a colour I would never forget.  A colour I had once seen long ago at the very beginning of my waking eyes.

    Then I felt my whole body tense as it laid me to the ground.

    There, before my friends who groggily got to their feet.

    She was there.

Standing amongst an aura of magic, lifting the dust around her from the effort of lowering me, her horn gradually dimmed its glow.  Dirt settled back to the ground in the wake of such magic, before I felt a cold chill of disbelief when her eyes turned to look at me.

She was just how I imagined, how I remembered, and how I'd heard.  That revolver she carried that I'd heard of, so iconic to her as a hero, was floating at her side.  Her shining new PipBuck on her right hoof just like mine.

Perhaps five seconds had passed of me just standing in disbelief, staring as though everything that had just transpired was gone and there was but us alone.  Yet it felt so long, my stomach turning between the relief of the radio message and the betrayal I had been made so clear of. What was I supposed to say? Was this her?  Truly? How?

    “I'm s-s-sorry...”

    It was the only words I could think, as I staggered toward her while afraid that every step would somehow be wrong.

“I heard so many things and-and they said what you did or were working for Red, um, Red Eye and-and...”

    Stopping, my hooves crossed. I lowered my head and averted my gaze. My words fell over themselves.  Blushing, I tapped my own forehead and shook my mane out. She stood patiently, her mane falling and lightly drifting in the winds from fires all around us.

    “You were my hero.” Finally, I found my stride.  “You were my icon. The pony I put faith in to give me purpose!  You sh-showed me what it meant to defy! I just needed somepony to believe in.  That was you. You saved me in the Pit, you inspired me, and you got me by tough times.” 

    I rubbed my eyes, screwing them up and looking away.

“But then all that horrible stuff happened and...I was so reliant on seeing you as perfect that when I lost that belief I just...let go, because I’d staked everything on an idol. An idol that wasn’t even in my life anymore, and I was ignoring the very things right beside me.”

I felt a hoof on my shoulder. Glimmerlight’s. On the other side, I could feel Brimstone move up. Coral Eve stood into view, and smiled. Protégé removed his eyepiece to look at me. Caduceus shifted beside Glimmer.

“You gave me a spark to get going. And I’ll always be thankful for that. But it’s not you, somepony far away, that I need to believe in now.”

I finally looked back at those who had pulled me from the brink.

“It’s time to start believing in my friends...and in myself.”

    Ahead of me, amongst that strong magical glow of her horn, through the smoke and fiery haze, I was certain I saw her smile, and nod.

A surge of light washed over us, bringing me out from that one gentle moment to the gaze past the inferno surrounding us. Behind the machination of industry looming before us, behind the red gaze, I saw the sunset glow with radiance. Dust blew around us seven ponies as I saw even my hero turn her head with a stern look to that which opposed her.

    And as that dust settled, the fires were blasted back by what I now felt as a stronger power within this nightmare. A form of magic beyond that of anything holding us down.

    One I knew came from all of us, because we were together.

    Narrowing, the spotlight of crimson seared toward us, weakening and hissing as it could not rest upon us for long.

    “You really seek to escape to the sunset?  Nothing lies there but another failure, and a life of slavery eternal.”

The words hurt my ears, but as we turned, atop the wreckage of the Cathedral and standing before upturned brick walls, we saw our final challenge ahead.  Fillydelphia in all its living mechanical glory, with sparks flying from raging furnaces that cried with pony voices. A huge street that ran away through the wreckage toward a colossal wall miles high on the horizon, abstract from the reality and blown to its mythical way in which my own mind saw them!

Above us, between scaffold and factory roofing, lay the scrapheap baleful gaze itself that focussed directly upon the seven standing before its defences, and a growing mass of slaves willing to try and stop the one part of them that wasn't quite ready to give up yet!

    “You have no hope to to make it over that wall, Number Seven. That life is gone!”

    I galloped up to the top of a piece of scrap, standing before it all.

    “I will do this...”

Beside me, my hero stood and magically sent six large bullets spinning into her revolver, her eyes clenched ready with all the adventurous spirit that carried her!

Behind her, Brimstone Blitz stomped through the smoke, bearing his armour across his body and the great horned helmet offering but a wink from the barely visible eyes.

To my left, Glimmerlight hooked something onto my battle saddle for me, before picking up her own long rifle and grinning to me.  I turned to see Rarity's Grace sitting ready upon my side.

    Beyond her, Caduceus bore a wealth of potions and the same sub-machine gun he had used to try and save lives in the Mall.

Coral Eve's horn sparked and lit the air with a hiss of ozone and burned air.  A gentle nod gave me all the reassurance I needed that she'd hold it up as long as need be.

    Protégé shifted to beside me, his own design of revolver swinging up ready.  He shared a knowing look with me.

    “...because at last, with them, I believe I can!”

Immediately, I took off, leaping from the scrap to charge directly forward into the cauldron of hell awaiting us that would try to prevent our escape!  Behind me, between a mix of encouragement and war cries, my friends followed! For once I felt no fear!  Only a determination, backed by my friends, those I trusted, and those that inspired me both in dream or reality!  A light went with us, passing around us and throwing back the flames!

Ahead, under the bellowed command of their master in the sky, shadowed slaves rushed forward in their masses.  Driven before their masters and the authority above them that clamoured and sought to stop us!

Brimstone Blitz picked up a pace, his armour rattling madly as he tore in front of me, lowering his horns.  With a sickening crash, he impacted into the slave crowd like a battering ram, sending dark forms flying in all directions to explode into a black mist.  Tossing his head from one side to the other, he broke their charge before the rest of us hit.

I heard the rattle of gunfire and the surge of magic around me. Dark forms rose and were slapped down.  Protégé fought by my side, picking off those who tried to block my path, keeping me moving forward toward the sunset!

“Keep pushing, Murk!  We'll protect you all the way there!” He cried out, slapping a slave from his back and spinning to throw them within his magic into another.  Then he pointed ahead, “Coral, clear them!”

Wind almost blew me off course as her powerful magic crashed upon their line and threw ten or so of them far away!  I ran for the gap, seeing Brimstone amongst the main mass of slaves, taking their attention and crushing them with a cold fury of controlled anger!

We seven ponies held back a tide of my inner dark thoughts, each of them showing the strength that kept me going even now!  I felt Caduceus rush up beside me, bearing a potion to help my ailing pains and bring life to my numb body to keep going! I yelped when a ruined form of myself grasped my leg, diving from the crowd.  Caduceus threw himself at it, wrestling it off me.

“Keep going, Murk!” I saw two others leap upon him until Coral's magic again sent them flying from the studious earth pony!  Taking a potion for herself and her likely splitting headache from all this use, she was being covered by my hero standing there atop a splinter of upturned wreckage!

    She fought...oh wow how she fought!

Horn flaring, her revolver fired and reloaded with blinding speed, punching through two or three into mist even in one shot!  Boulders and scrap whirled about her powerful magic, crushing or slamming them back. Her eyes lit with the confidence of a legend!

    “Come on, Murky!  Stop studying those flanks for your drawings, we gotta move, hun!”

I gaped a little as Glimmerlight pulled me along while Brimstone hurled an overturned wagon and cleared the next portion of street!  Staggering backwards, my eyes on the Dweller herself until I simply had to turn away. I saw her look to me for just a second with a small smile.

Galloping beside Glimmerlight, her rifle knocked a slave from leaping through a window as she took us around a line of carts to hide from the majority of the slaves.  I fired as well. Rarity's Grace sending one dark form back to the abyss I’d crawled out from, before my grapple hook slapped into one slave in the chest, crushing that one horrible day it represented in my mind!

The red eye above us kept its focus upon my path, drawing all the slaves of my mind toward me!  Brimstone fought at the front, backed up and kept going by Caduceus and Coral. Protégé ducked down behind the carts with me and Glimmerlight, looking around.

    “We'll just hit the bottom of the wall if we keep going! There’s no way up it!”

He reached out, snapping off three shots and hitting two slave forms that rushed for us.  Glimmerlight's rifle cracked and struck a third, before she looked up.

    “Up...yes!  Murky, the buildings!”

    Having been watching my hero fight further off, I turned to look to what Glimmerlight now pointed at.

    There was one way. A way born of hope.

The buildings rose toward the wall's brink, towers, and scaffold linked by scrap, like it should have been there all along. The way out I'd dreamed might exist when I first ran for it!

    “Can you make it up there?” Protégé looked warily at it.

    There was no other answer worth saying.

    “Yes.”

Both of them nodded, Glimmer smiling and hugging me to hear such positivity for once.  Behind us, I heard a cry of pain, Coral's magic overloading again. Caduceus ran to her, dragging her into cover with us.  The Dweller herself was nearby, holding off the great mass alongside Brimstone, our two best warriors here.

    If I had to go any time, I had to go now.  Take the chance.

    Dare to dream.

I nodded to Glimmerlight, hooking up my grapple again, I'd need it from now on.  I knew they couldn't come with me, but I knew where they'd be waiting for me...most of them.

My eyes fell to Caduceus, helping Coral to take a potion.  He caught the gaze and after a quick glance up. He saw the reality too.

    Shifting closer, I felt us simply hug closely once more.

    “Thank you, C-Caduceus...”

“I'll always be in here, Murky.  For you and Glimmer and all the others.  We didn't have long, but it was enough. No regrets.  Take care of Weathervane for me, huh?”

    Sniffling, I nodded into his shoulder.

    “I w-will...”

Each of my friends backed up a little.  Brimstone and my hero came closer, backing off to use the thinner area between carts in the street against the overwhelming numbers.  I went around each one of them, to Coral, to Brimstone, and lastly to Glimmer. Each of them I thanked, each of them I hugged tightly.  Turning, I saw that little mare standing just nearby.

    She smiled at me with pride.

    That meant more than any dream of her I'd ever had.

    “Come on, Murky.” Glimmer nudged me and whispered, “Doesn't Protégé get a hug too?”

How could she still be joking that at a time like this!  But yet he was standing there, watching the wary slaves approaching.  Soon they would need to fight again. I had to go now!

“You've come far, Murk.  I hope I've done at least something to help you, that I have been more than but a master to be hated for sending you against your will.”

Long had I looked to him with a kind of trust, feeling safe around him or knowing that he would not harm me like all the other masters had.  I knew what he was. Just like me.

    Hell with it.  Glimmer could laugh if she wants.

    I simply moved forward and wrapped my hooves around him.

    “Thank you...just...just thank you!  Please be okay, I-I tried to stop Barb and-”

“It's all right, Murk.” He surprised me, returning the gesture.  “Let's just get you out of here. You need to go now. Go to the sunset!  Make that last gasp and rise to see the world through different eyes!”

    Letting go, I saw them all there, before flipping my mouthpiece around to fire.

    “Thank you...all of you.”

I turned, hearing the voice of slavery sounding their last charge to reclaim me, and I fired my grapple.  I had no wings to fly, but I would still rise! Rise to the sun ahead of me! I would fly with or without wings!

With a jolt, it shot up, spiralling true to latch upon a building.  Behind me, the cry of battle joined as they guarded my back with all they had!  Zipping upward, feeling the rush of air as I bit the button to pull me in, I soared skyward!

Higher and higher, before I came to the top of the building, clambering over the lip.  A red glare fell upon me, that hideous icon watching me.

    “Pointless!”

    Shadows warped, slaves grew, and chased me!  I tore off across the rooftops, leaping vents and sliding down air ducts to keep moving.  Leaping between the buildings and always going up.  I climbed fire escapes, leapt onto scaffold metres away, and travelled through ramp after ramp!  The ground fell away, higher than any building in reality as I neared that huge wall!

    Above it, just poking over, I could see the lip of the sunset appearing.

    “Your dreams won’t follow you! Fillydelphia will cast you down again, and again.”

    Nothing but empty threats and a life I wouldn't accept!  I wasn't going to listen, no matter what voice it was! Sprinting over a jury-rigged extra floor like at the orphanage, I fired my grapple while on the move, pulling me onto the next tower!  Then the next! After that I leapt to a large hanging girder from a crane, galloping up it! I felt a sensation all over. A warmth as though there was feeling was returning to my body once again! Every metre rejuvenated me, made me feel more alive.

I was above the red eye itself now.  Behind me, the rooftops were crowded with every day of slavery in my life chasing me!  Thousands of pained faces determined to keep me from the life they wanted away from! The wind picked up, throwing into my face, trying to cast me down, but I kept my footing and rushed straight up!  Almost there! I could see one more jump! The wall filled my vision, I just had to get up there! Spinning around, I started to climb across a fallen tower's roof over a narrow stretch of metal. It led right to the edge of the wall!

Something crashed into me upon the thin metal pathway I ran upon!  Falling, a weight landed on my back. Scrambling, pulling me to the edge, I turned to see the Ruin fighting with me.

    “Don't go!  Please Murk!  Don't go! Don't take us back to the pain!  No more!”

Yelping, I fought its wiry strength born of frenzy!  But it clung onto my back, raking at my mane, trying to pull me over!  I saw his eyes, pinpricked and desperate, the last gasp of a fractured mind trying to pull me back in; reduced to pleading and begging in its fear of me succeeding.

    Something I'd always done.

“PLEASE!” The terror in his voice, my voice, was all too apparent.  “It hurts so much, there will be more pain! I don't want it! Not any more!  It can't be escaped!”

    He threw his full strength to simply try and pull me from the precarious area, knocking us nearby to the edge.

    “You can't dream, it won't let you!”

    “Then...”

    I gritted my teeth, trying to knock him off me.

    “I dare to!”

    My back hoof shot back, crunching him between the legs.  With a hideous cry, the Ruin staggered away and fell screaming into the fires below.  Exhausted, I tried to pull myself back up proper.

    Having just bucked my own subconscious in the nethers, I really hoped that it wasn't a metaphor for something.

But the way was clear!  I stood, staggering in the wind and heat that was beginning to harm and sting my body as feeling returned.  Crying out at the pains in my hooves and legs, I staggered forward. Then trotted...then cantered...then galloped!  Up...up! UP! It was so close! The sun filling the sky with its heat and the light of life just above the lip of the wall!  One! Jump! Away!

    Screaming as loud as I could, remembering every single lesson I had learned from my friends and every time I had done something, I rushed forward and leapt.
   
Stretching my hooves out, I saw the lip.  So close, so very close! Aching my joints, I reached for it!  Just grab it and I'd be over! So high...just one desperate shot!

    I saw my hoof pass by it...missing by over a foot.

    Then I felt the gravity of all the pain below begin to pick up.

    Pulling me down.

    No...no...

Then a shape before me, a figure suddenly stretching down toward me from on top of the wall!  A hoof reached out, grabbing around mine as her face became clear amongst the blazing sun that covered the entire sky behind her!

    “Come on, Murky!”

Unity cried out the words as she pulled me over, straining her all and yanking me toward the sun, pushing me onward with no time to say anything more but to smile and give me the last energy I needed to push that last distance!

Over the wall, flying onward, I soared into the sun itself born upon the wind that flowed with me, pushing me toward life.  The feeling in my body seared, pains all across flowing down veins and muscles! I felt the burning of radsores and the thickening within my lungs and throat!  Lash scars and knife wounds upon the bruised and battered body I possessed! A feeling in my gut and neck like hot metal!

Then air, actual air flowed into my breathless body, forcing me to take that first gasp, and then a long scream as the pain flowed over and over, pulling me away from limbo, feeling was life! The light was getting brighter, turning to white and sending me shooting forward, all the way back up the fall into darkness I had taken!  I juddered, squirmed, and burst-

-upright screaming as oxygen poured down my neck and my eyes shot open.  My back arched, lifting me from the firm bed, crying out in shock and pain.  Above me, a spinning silver orb shone and cast sparkles all over my body. It whined and flared before making a snapping noise and dropping out of view.

    I flew upright, my scream ending in a choking cough...

    ...as I fell right into Glimmer's embrace.

    “Murky! Oh! Yes! MURKY!”

I felt the tears running onto my shoulder from her, as I blinked and tried to get my bearings.  My body hurt so much. I could feel bandages wrapped around a lot of me along with tubes poking out of my front legs, but blinking my eyes, I finally saw where I was.

Around me, I could see the familiar wards of Hearts and Hooves Hospital.  Glimmer held tightly onto me, short maned and bruised all over, but her in the flesh.  She cried and stroked my mane over and over. Behind her, I could see a damp-eyed Coral, her horn still glowing.  Come to think of it, so was Glimmer's! To the other side of the bed, I could see the ghastly figure of Doctor Weathervane looking almost stunned and relieved all at once, before hastily reasserting himself with a smile.  His horn too, glowed.

Behind him, Brimstone Blitz stood further from my bed, his body a mess of scar tissue and bearing only one eye.  He had barely healed, but apparently enough that he wasn't going to lie down when I was...here...

    “Murky, you're alive.  Oh gods and goddesses you're alive.  Thank you...thank you, Weathervane!”

Glimmer was lauding, completely lacking any of her spunk or normal wittiness as she kept hugging me and shaking.  She looked a mess, as though she had been brought from a brink of loss and despair.

    “I thought-I thought you were just gone, oh Murky...”

She just kept holding onto me, and I onto her.  My own eyes teared up, wrapping my bound legs around her and swaying gently.

    They'd brought me back.

    I was...alive.

    “Thank you!” I tried to hug them all at once, failing utterly, but I had to say it, had to try.

    They'd helped free me.  Below me, I saw my cutie mark sparkle a little.

    The shackles, as always, were open.

    “See! We told you it would work!”

    “Piss anchors!” Weathervane snapped.  “It shouldn't have worked!  I only agreed to it because even half-dead your big 'guardian' promised to snap me in half if we didn't try!”

I lay back, Glimmerlight sitting on the bed beside me and holding my hoof.  I was exhausted more than any time before, my throat was dry and my head spinning from medicine I'd been given after waking.  But the argument had gone on for a few minutes now ever since Weathervane had retrieved the now dead orb.

They had used the healing megaspell Brim and I had recovered from the ghoul cultists.  Its massive power seeking out the one spark of life left in me to hold onto and give me a chance to save myself.  It alone had not saved me, even if it had healed my body. It had simply held me in there long enough to give me a sliver of a chance.  One I could scarcely believe I'd had the strength to pull off.

Not that the megaspell had been the only thing that saved my life.  Allegedly, the moment my 'corpse' had been tugged from the Pit, Brimstone had rather caused a stir in the Pit's under levels, taking the potions he'd been given and pouring them down my throat.  Whether they helped or not was unknown, but he'd taken my body to Hearts and Hooves afterwards, Coral and Glimmerlight finding him soon after they heard the bodies were taken there.

    I couldn't imagine how they must have felt.

The entire time, they had spent their rest day with me.  Glimmer had gotten my PipBuck and sat it playing the radio near me the entire time, trying to spot any life of memory inside me.  I owed her more than I knew.

    “I fucking told you lot!  The spell requires four unicorns to work!” Weathervane was casting a horn over me even as he argued.  “It's that simple!”

    “Apparently not.” Glimmer smirked.  “Maybe it just took three who genuinely cared?  You did care didn't you?  You know what they say magic is after all.”

    “Fuckbuttering dinglecunts, I've told you a dozen shitting times!  It's not about the power! If it were I coulda' done it on my own!  It's about unique magical signatures! It requires four to work! It...hm?”

There was a pause as he looked over me.  I felt everypony in the room freeze a second.  Glimmer must have felt me grip her hoof a bit tighter.  What was...

    “Well...” Weathervane stroked his ruined beard.  “Murk, would you sit up, please?”

Glancing from Glimmer to the ghoul and back again, I shakily started to move.  Lying here with them, I'd been trying to grasp the new feeling of being awake and...free.  But now I strained my body upright. I felt different all over, more well-adjusted even through the pain.  No longer a tug toward the ground or my hooves from the chains weighing on my soul.

    Sitting up, I felt very strange.  Oddly...balanced.

“Well, would you look at that...” Weathervane peered at me, but everypony else before me just looked to him.  I felt a creeping horror.

    “This might prick a little.”

    What?

His horn zapped. I felt an electric shock run right through me, squeaking out loud and grabbing Glimmerlight. I made a sharp gasp and snapped around to glare at Weathervane, wings flaring out in anger as my face screwed-

    ...wait.

Before me, Glimmer's face lit up and her mouth went wide.  Coral's eyebrows shot up while even Brimstone's remaining eye seemed shocked.  Beside me, Weathervane grinned and lifted the bandages away before offering a mirror held in his magic.

    Spread to either side of me.  My...my wings!  They were out!  Standing on their own!  I simply opened and closed my mouth, making squeaky little noises and trying to turn in my bed until Weathervane had to hold me from hurting myself around my bandages!  My wings! My wings!  I could move them, even if it hurt a little and...and they were slow but...  I could move my wings!

    “Seems the megaspell sort of overdid it. Very sorry.  If you want me to make them go back down I'll-”

“NO!” I screamed, not even getting the joke amongst my excitement.  I grabbed the mirror, holding them to look at the little things as I sat up properly and let them flourish.  Either side of me, they spread their dirtied and uneven feathers.

Jittering when I flexed them slowly, not quite flaring fully or clasping properly yet, but I saw the delight on my face, a look I hadn't imagined I'd ever show again.  My mouth only kept growing and growing into a massive smile that burst out into a laugh. I had wings!

    “They're beautiful,” Glimmer breathed out. “Aww, they suit you like it was always meant to be, Murky!”

    Coral smiled, moving behind to look.

“Because they were.  Our little Murk's a new pony now for sure.  Now isn't the time to fall, my dear.” She smiled.  “It's to soar. This marks a change. You hit the bottom but now you've bounced and you'll come back strong.  I know it.”

    Weathervane tapped the edge of the bed.

“Well, yes, it's pretty fuckin' great, but he needs his rest now.  They won't fly, sorry to break the moment, but he'll be able to work on moving them now.  Now come on you lot, shoo. Patient time is now. He's got a lot of fluids to take in before I'll let him out of here.”

They began to troop out.  Brimstone stopped by the bed, lifting a hoof.  Smirking back, I tapped his with mine. Coral kissed my forehead as she went, before handing me my saddlebag filled with my journal and other things.  Weathervane offered a rare smile to me alone as he went with them to collect some materials.

Glimmerlight was left with me alone as I pulled out my journal.  I had a lot of drawing to do. Somehow I knew I would be able to now.  Watching me, my sis' just smiled and ruffled my mane before turning to leave.

    I felt something near the bottom of the saddlebag.

    A statuette of Littlepip, given to me by Unity, made of scrap metal bent into place and bearing words below it.

    “Wait!  Glimmer!”

    “Yes, Murky?”

    I held it up in my hooves carefully, seeing the image of one who had so fought to save me standing upon it.

    “What does this say?”

Her magic reached out, lifting it from my hooves as she moved back into the ward briefly.  With a little glance to it, she smiled and returned it to me, her magic tossing my mane with a smirk as she told me what they said.

    ‘I believe in you! ~ Unity’

Glimmerlight left me looking at the little bronze item with a mixture of a endearment and wonder upon my face. I heard Weathervane again arguing with Coral outside about the damn megaspell.  'It needs four, not three!' I heard again.

I felt my wings flutter a little behind me. Stiff and sore, barely responsive, but they were there!  Then, I simply hugged the statue close; a tiny, almost unnoticeable sense of that belief reaching my heart.

    “Thank you...”

    Footnote: Perks Upgraded!

    'Lucky Break' becomes 'Signature Item' – While once it may have been a little charm for good fortune, on true realisation it has always been something that matters all along to you.  Something that truly belongs with you. You regain your +1 to Luck and now also acquire +1 DT whilst bearing your item.

    'Confidence Boost' becomes 'Freedom of Will' – You took refuge in your friends before, but now you see yourself for the pony you truly are inside!  While their support will always be with you, you can now stand on your own. You gain +2 Charisma.

    'Path of the Lightbringer' becomes 'Virtue of Hope' – You merely followed before, but you have been helped to see that the true strength isn't in those you are inspired by, but rather how it helped you remember the real virtue lying in your heart.  One that had always been there. You regain the small boost to health when reduced to 10% or lower once per encounter, but now you also receive +1 to all SPECIAL statistics while below 20% maximum health.

Footnote: Perk Attained!

Pegasi Balance – Finally, your life has come full circle to once again bear the wings that made you what you were at birth.  No longer are you as clumsy and off-balance without their natural weight and movement to keep you steady on your hooves. You gain +1 Agility to your statistics.

    Footnote: Perks Reacquired!

    Low Hoof (Rank 1) – Additional unarmed first strike critical damage

    Runt of the Litter – Resistance vs unarmed non-critical attacks

    Shadow Canter (Rank 2) - +20 to Sneak, thefts 2x success rate, and +10% boost to sneak speed

    Luna's Moonlight – Night Vision
   
    Sleight of Hoof (Rank 2) – May steal while detected and bonus to reverse pickpocket

    Galloping with Ghosts – Reduced chance to be correctly detected

    Skittish at the Bit - +2 to Perception when standing still

    Organiser – All items weight 2 or less are halved in weight

    A Very Little Dash - +10% boost to speed with light or no armour on

    Mad Gallop – Less chance to be hit with ranged attacks while galloping