Human Relations - HR

by LucidTech

Chapter Three

Ledger looked out into the assembled crowd, but didn’t recognize any faces, none of them stuck out as familiar, he wanted one of them to be recognizable, if only so he could remember them, know that someone he knew the name of cared. He struggled helplessly against the wooden bindings that held him, he was stuck tight, and he wouldn’t break free, he knew.

Some stuffed shirt was reading words behind him, but he didn’t know or care who it was. He didn’t care about the words either, he knew what’d he’d done, he didn’t have to be reminded of it. He struggled one last time, for old times sake, before he stopped and gazed out into the crowd, no longer caring about the gathered faces who had come to see his execution, only caring that they would remember it at least.

He felt a brewing tragic feeling deep inside his chest, but it never met his eyes. No point in crying was there? No. There wasn’t. He still felt the feeling rise up through his throat, a threatening approach towards his eyes. He shook it back and looked into the crowd again, he needed to focus or he was going to make a fool of himself in these final moments.

He noticed now two ponies there, on thrones, looking at him. On the left, Nightmare Moon, a dark apathetic gaze staring him down from under her night blue helmet. And on the right, Twilght Sparkle, a look of subtle anger betraying her normally serene face. That was the last he saw, as he heard the sickly sliding of metal on wood, as the blade dropped through the wooden frame and towards his neck. He abandoned all hope that he would be set free immediately. His fate would be swift and permanent.

---

Ledger’s eyes flashed open and he gazed wide eyed at the ceiling of the carriage, his heart pounding in his ears. His feet felt cold and his breaths seemed much more jitterey to him than they actually were. His body was held stiff by his petrified muscles, and he took a moment to try and calm down before he forced his way through the fragile mental barrier that had held him still. He breathed deeply, his mind leaving the nightmare behind, and allowed his body to sink into the cushions.

They tempted him back to sleep, but his mind was far too busy to process the request, leaving him awake in the back of the jostling chariot. Time seemed to leak away through some unseen gap as his mind slowly fell into it’s normal patterns. Barely a moment after he was fully himself, the wheels of the chariot stopped their infuriating bouncing, and he felt a warmth growing in his gloves as the leaders of the chariot got out of their harnesses.

He leaned himself forward and caught his head in his hands. “Okay.” He said to himself. “Just a nightmare, par for the course. Calm down. I can do this.” He breathed deeply again, allowing his breath to slip and fall out in a steady stream. “Okay. Okay.” He reached over to the carriage door and pushed it open.

He looked out, and found himself surprised by what he saw. He shuffled to the edge of his seat and swung his legs out. He glanced around once more, then jumped fully from the seat of his chariot. He landed and stumbled for a minute, almost landing on his face, despite how flat and dry the earth was beneath him. His mind swirled angrily and after he recovered, he made every point to hold still until the sickness spilled away.

“Are you alright sir?” Came the call from Caramel, and Ledger slowly raised his head until he stood straight up again. He looked to Caramel and offered a half hearted smile.

“Just… still recovering from the visit to Ponyville is all…” Ledger turned his gaze to the dusty town that surrounded him, and he couldn’t help but feel like he’d been drafted into a western film while he was asleep. “Caramel.” He paused so he could turn his attention to the apple family stallion again. “Where are we?”

“Appleloosa sir.” Caramel replied calmly. He moved a step closer very casually, but something was wrong, Caramel didn’t look right. Like when someone gets a small haircut and you know something’s wrong, but you can’t quite place it.

“I see that.” Ledger took a few steps away, but Caramel didn’t seem to care. “But why?”

“Urgent business from the queen, sir. She sent a letter while you were asleep.” Caramel reached into a pair of saddlebags and handed him the letter in question, only after he had moved a few steps away did Ledger feel comfortable enough to retrieve the letter opener from his coat to split the wax seal that was impressed on the front of it.

He was about the pull the paper from the inside of the envelope when movement caught his eye. He jumped backwards, only seeing Guitaga lunging towards him after he had done so, and barely managed to back pedal fast enough to avoid the tackle as Guitaga hit the ground mere inches from the toe of his shoe.. “God damn it Guitaga!” Came the outraged cry from Caramel. “I told you to wait!” Ledger took several quick steps back so as to get fully out of reach of the downed Guitaga and looked at them both in a state of complete confusion.

Caramel sighed, and in that exhale Ledger heard sadness and regret, but also determination. “Damn it sir. I’m sorry for this, but I know you saw Applejack in that basement. And even if I’m a slave to the queen, and even if you are kind. I can’t give up family. If I let you go back to Canterlot, you’ll tell the queen, or she’ll find out, she has a way of finding out what she shouldn’t, and I just… I can’t risk it sir.” His eyes were pleading and he seemed like he wasn’t entirely certain that he wanted to do this, but Ledger knew that he didn’t have the charisma to convince him otherwise, not as an alien who works for the dictator and not as a friend.

“I understand Caramel.” Ledger glanced down at the paper in the envelope, he could see it was blank now, it had been a clever ploy. If Guitaga had waited a few more minutes they would have had him easily, when he’d looked up in confusion, he wouldn’t have had the ability to do anything in time before he was pinned.

Caramel looked back hopefully, smiling kindly, as his muscles loosened, Ledger had always been kind to him, he figured, he had nowhere to run, and the man wasn’t physically fit enough to run away faster than a stallion. Ledger knew he was screwed here, there was very little reason to keep this going longer than it needed to.

Unless of course….

Ledger broke in a run and Caramel took a half second before he chased after him, having not expected the act from the man. The stallion had started to close the distance when the man suddenly ran into a nearby house, throwing the door open on his way in and slamming it shut quickly. He dropped a bar into the slots on the sides and turned around to see two ponies looking at him like he was insane. When they caught sight of his clothes and realized who he was, they quickly averted their gazes and began to chat amongst themselves about non-important things very nervously.

When the pounding came on the door their talk panicked and picked up speed, but Ledger was quickly gone from the room. “Sir!” Came the anger cries from beyond the threshold. “Sir! Just give up and come out!” Cries that fell on deaf ears. There was something he needed, and he needed it now.

He tore into the bathroom first, but instantly his heart sunk. No mirror. Of course there wasn’t a mirror, it was a frontier town, why would there be a mirror? Ledger began to berate himself. Now chances are things would be a lot worse than if he’d just turned himself in, now he had to go down, unlock the door, probably get physically beat up again. All because he decided to god damn try and do something different.

He smacked his head against the wall and cursed, preparing to go down and own up to his actions, but then, as he exited the bathroom, ignoring the pounding that echoed over to him from the front parlor of the building, he glanced further down the hall. There, at the end, was the bedroom. Maybe, if this was so much like those western films then there was still a chance…

He brushed the ajar door fully open and stepped in through the door frame, ducking his head so he didn’t smack it on the wood. A simple bed filled the room, a small nightstand on either side of it. He approached the closest nightstand and opened it. Inside was a beat up hat, and he knew he had the wrong one. He was about to slide the drawer shut again when he heard the wooden bar being lifted from in front of the door.

Leaving the drawer open he dived across the bed and pulled open the other nightstand, not believing his luck he quickly pulled his precious find out and held it in front of his face. He looked into the reflection and smiled, despite how much he hated his appearance. A hand mirror in a western frontier town, always. Remembering the urgency of his situation he swung his hand in front of the reflective surface and watched as it began to shimmer and shake like mercury.

Suddenly, it tightened and lay flat. Nightmare Moon looked at him from the other side of the reflection, and his breath caught in his throat. She always looked so angry and terrifying, even now, when she was his only hope of escape. “What is it Ledger?” The voice was intermediate but it always seemed to hold an emotionless edge to it, regardless of what the queen would talk about..

“I-”

“STOP HIM!” Came the shout from the direction of the door and Ledger spun around to look at the approaching forms of three angry stallions. The back two were Guitaga and Caramel, but the closest one was the owner of the house he had just busted into. All three of them held an aura that shouted quite plainly they fully intended to ruin his life. They closed the distance tremendously fast and before Ledger could get a word out of his throat the massive stallion at the front was already flying through the air to smash his form firmly to the floor. In all this approaching horror, he had completely forgotten about the mirror he held and the one whom he had contacted on the other side of it.

He was quickly reminded.

There was a flash of white, but it was over almost instantly, the blindness that struck all the ponies wasn’t the light truly, but the immediate absence of it after it left, that darkness that struck their eyes blind before they could recoup. Blinking it away, and pretending that there wasn’t a headache that felt like it had shafted his head, Ledger looked to the source and once again found his voice stuck.

The queen stood in the room, her form somehow taking up the entirety of it and none of it at the same time, her haunting tendrils of midnight hair swirled around in the air, as if completely devoid of any destination or cause, free and flowing in a beautiful dance of black. Ledger was awestruck when he saw her, the same as he always was, but he’d been trying to hide it, this absolute striking fear that followed the queen wherever she went.

He forced himself to tear his eyes away from the hair and realized he was seated firmly against the ground, he tried to move but felt an uncomfortable jolt of pain issue through his bones. He must have fallen down at some point when he was blinded, he didn’t remember it but his side protested to the truth of the fact. He groaned behind closed lips as he tried to get out of the pain, only to find it increasing, so he rested himself back against the wall.

“Ledger. Any wounds?”

“Maybe a few, my queen. I can’t tell for certain.”

“We’ll run a check up back in Canterlot.”

“Thank you, my queen.”

“And then you’ll go to the dragon capital as my envoy.”

“Of course, my queen.”

She nodded and looked back at the stallions, her hair seemed to shift slightly in it’s endless waves and Ledger managed to catch of glimpse of the trio all held perfectly still, even their faces unmoving in the perfect stasis that the queen had put them into. When he next got a chance to see how they fared, however, they were no longer in the hall, having seemingly vanished without a trace.

The queen stood still for a moment, looking down the empty hall, then turned to Ledger. “Can you remain conscious for a teleport to Canterlot?” She asked calmly, emptily.

He fought back the urge to gulp uncomfortably, he despised teleportation, but he certainly didn’t want to be riding back to Canterlot in that god forsaken carriage that managed to hit every bump on the road. “I will certainly try my best my queen.”

She nodded and a slow light began to build in her horn. It occurred to Ledger that she could probably teleport them immediately, without the build, and was wondering why she felt the need to build up the magic, but was interrupted when the queen spoke and shattered his thought process. “That’s all I ask Ledger.” Before he could respond he found himself encapsulated in the queen’s magic, held there, with her, as they moved through space. They traversed the distance from Apploosa to Canterlot almost immediately, but it felt… calmer than before, not nearly as gut wrenching.

The sphere faded away to reveal the familiar stone that composed the interior of the queen's magnificent castle, and Ledger instantly recognized the door he stood in front of, even without reading the sign off to the side. Medical wing. The queen was in a hurry to get him ready for this dragon capital business, but, of course, it wasn’t like she would be going. Not that he could really blame her for it.

When he looked around, the queen had already vanished and he was left alone outside those doors. He seemed to ponder on the emptiness for a minute before turning emotionless to the doors and entering the medical wing. He had to prepare for his trip to visit the dragons, and the first step would be to get back in good shape, how else was he going to get all the bones in his body broken if some were shattered to begin with?

Author's Note:

It's going a bit fast isn't it? I should slow it down, make the big events take longer, maybe draw out certain things to take up a full chapter. Maybe I'll start doing that.

Maybe.

Comments

[Blackfoot]

Me gusta. An interesting story, I hope to see it continued.

[RagingPonyRider]

Dear god, this is dark. I don't mean like "creepypasta" dark or "slasher film" dark. This is like "Harry Potter" dark with a dash of 20th century novels I read in school

I love it.

[Blaqmasque13]

You have a very good story coming along here. Keep it going, I'm hooked.

[DerpedRainbow]

They waited for him to wake up, instead of just running him over with the chariot a few times?