Lost of thoughts

by CraftAids

Scars come from healing.

The bright light of the clear blue sky filtered dimly through the tall, tall canopy of the thick, thick trees to show big, eroded stone steps descending into the ground. On two hooves, he walked over a soggy carpet of enormous leaves and long grasses and approached the top of the steps, one hoof in a saddlebag hanging on his flanks and the other holding his sword handle as it rested on his shoulder. He pulled and tossed, from the bag, into the ruined passage, a hoof-full of small, round objects. He ran down the old, grey, stone brick passage, after them.

They hit the bottom with loud cracks and small flashes of light. All but one ball was gone. The last one was lit, revealing hallway fading off into the dark to the right and left. Roots had grown through the walls. Moss grew on the stones. A layer of water covered the floor. Down the halls, some things moved.

They couldn’t be identified, but he could still see them bumbling about as their senses slowly recovered. They clung to the walls and the ceiling and moved around in the water. He couldn’t be sure that they were even the same species, but that didn’t matter; he wouldn't take any extra chances. He could see where they were as he held his blade in both forehooves, taking full steps and full-body, turning swings. The metal parted everything moving as he passed, and the orange gems glowed with each kill.

This is what he had the most practice at: quick take-downs of stunned threats. It was better to live than impress a wild animal, Hot had said.

Hot was someplace outside, in the thick, dense, boggy swamp. Hot was looking for anything helpful he could do or find before he went inside and was forced to give up the use of his wings. A grounded flying fighter is a significantly weaker fighter.

He stepped out of the darkened hallway and into a large room. Everything was still covered in patches of moss. Light came in through the missing bricks in the ceiling. Stone pillars supported the remains. A set of three steps divided the room in half, with the water and light only coating the lower floor. A butterfly fluttered in the light.

He continued into the room and the reflections on the water bent with the ripples. He noticed nothing in the water. He raised a dripping hoof out of the water and onto the steps, clopping softly. He lifted away from the reflection and water with his sword raised. Nothing jumped at him. Nothing skittered across the ceiling. Nothing emerged from the floor. He moved past the pillars. On the right wall, there was a rectangular stone frame with designs of bulbs connected in strange shapes he didn’t understand. Through the frame, there was only stone brick wall. On the left wall, there was another stone frame leading into bricks, but this one was covered in pairs of wavy lines which touched at their tops and overlapped other pairs. In front of him was a stone frame leading into open darkness and a stone floor, like a regular doorway. He looked around its frame for symbols, but found none as he walked toward it. He saw a black shape.

A lion paw reached out from the dark and stopped before his face. He was unable to stop and bumped it. His sword fell from his grasp and he fell from his hooves. “Whoa, slow down there, big guy.” A creature with light, yellow-brown fur on a large cat body with a round, blue bird head with a white chin looked down at him, while it sat in the doorway on four paws. It’s colors seemed somehow less vibrant, but the grains of it’s fur were detailed. Its eyes were half lidded and it was smiling a lazy, toothy smile through its beak. “Alllriight.”

He sat up and watched for a moment. “Heh, can’t just let ya’ pass. I got a riddle for ya’. He tried to stand up, but wobbled and fell back down. “What’s got four legs, one arm, and is bigger than a breadbox?”

He sat back up. “Uh… an ill-stocked weapon stand?”

“No, the answer is - fuck - you. Now, what is good in the evening, better in the morning, the greatest in the future, better as time goes on, and also just the best, always?” It smiled and kneaded the stone with its claws. It wiggled slightly, but did not move its back legs.

He sputtered a little and blinked rapidly. “D- uh,w-w-um… fuck you?”

The creature - or person, really- stood up and stretched out, revealing a perfectly smooth dip in the stone underneath it. “There you go. I’d like to think we all learned something here, today.” It walked past him, off toward the water.

He tried to stand up again and it worked, but he noticed something different. His hooves were clinging, slightly, to the floor. They always had, he realized. When tried to raise a hoof to took a step, the clinging on that hoof went away. He felt the same force on his forehoof as he picked his sword back up.

He looked back and saw no sign of whatever-that-thing-had-been.

He took a step into the hall, through the doorway, and, as he did, he was watching closely, and he saw something. With, each step, as he leaned forward with each leg, the angle of the bottom of his hoof changed.

He stood, mid stride, looking at his changed hoof. He then shifted his gaze to his forehooves. He continued walking down the hall, wiggling his sword in one hoof.

As he walked down the dim brick hall, it quickly faded to black. He would bump the walls as he went, but he found no turns or holes or stairs, only a straight path. As his eyes adjusted, he saw brick outlines in light ahead. When he reached the end of the passage, he pressed a hoof into a brick, sliding it slowly and roughly out. It fell with a ceramic shattering and light shined in from behind it.

He did not ram through the wall and bring endless 70 pound bricks down on his head. Instead, he felt the tension in each brick as they moved and picked them out like jenga. He made a gap just large enough to fit himself. He crawled through and around the edge of a messy pile of ceramic shards and bricks. He was in a small space between a wall and the side of some sort of ramp. Bright light poured in through a singular, large hole in the center of the ceiling, lighting a very large, cubic room with a very large pile of dirt and rock and brick in the center of it. Small stalactites and stalagmites were scattered. The walls that weren’t blocked from his sight were whiter and smoother than the others had been, so far. More wall-frames with different designs sat along the walls. As he looked along the wall, the designs never repeated until the dirt pile blocked his sight. He could see a few between the pile and the rap. He couldn’t see up the ramp, yet. Lunging over the side of the ramp, face first, came Air. This was startling.

“Oh good, ya’ help me find you! Did you come across anything good n’ helpful?”

He glanced down. “Oh, I, uh, I broke a vase… Yeah… Nothing helpful, though!”

“At least you’re enthusiastic about it. Come on.” With that, Hot flapped his wings and pulled him up, through the hole in the ceiling.

They came out of a small mound of dry ground. Below them, there was a hole and no evidence of the chamber other than that. Around them, there was green water and brown water and huge trees blocking sunlight. Islands and broken pieces of ancient buildings were sprinkled about. Plant clusters covered both, making them hard to find.

The tiny engine inside of Hot was the loudest sound, by far. Once, Hot told him how it worked. A heater and a sprinkler discharged into a boiler which turned a generator which charged his array of gems and operated his prosthetic wings. The steam normally disappeared into a disposal gem. It was useful, but Hot hadn’t chosen it. This was just what happened to ponies who lived like them.

Hot dropped him over the water. His legs, than his barrel, then his head stripped away, leaving a black smoke tumbling through the air. The smoke impacted the water and spread across the surface, before coming together, his eyes floating on the cloud’s edge. He drifted, searching for solid walls.

He had started practicing in that grassy field. It felt like a long time ago, but it probably wasn’t. He didn’t need to try to sleep or let go of everything or even relax to make it happen. He just needed to sort of forget about himself. He needed to reach a kind of detached zen where he wasn’t fully aware of himself. He had to forget about his body.

Vines and moss curled and darkened a few shades as he passed, and, before long, he found bricks. The bricks formed a corner of two walls and a flat top. He remained for a moment, clearing the way, and then backed away, letting Hot land on it. A small nozzle popped out of Hot’s prosthetic hoof. Hot steam shot out of the nozzle, melting the substance holding the bricks to each other. Soon, the flat top sagged and fell through, leaving a hole into the ruins sitting on a platform in the open swamp air. Hot dove in. The smoke floated over the hole, sinking through it. It poured down onto the floor and he walked out of it. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a pop-stone “light model” and lit it on the end of his hoof. It revealed a small room with many doorways leading to many dark hallways. The smoke was flowing into his back and disappearing.

Hot sighed. “Here I was, hoping I would be stuck on the ground, at least a little while.”

“Almost like being a mud pony, huh?” He was smiling a cheeky smile at his friend, the friend with metal wings.

Hot’s “joking” smile slowly became an expressionless gape. “Wh… how… can you say that?”

“Well, you’re stuck on the ground and you don’t have a magic horn or anything special. You just kind of have to trot around with me, down here, in the mud, get it?”

“I…” Hot looked away and then started moving for one of the doorways. “Sorry.”

He followed Hot into the passage. He began to suspect he had made a mistake, and he resolved not to mention Hot’s wings again. Hot filled the hall ahead with a wall of steam, flapping to push it onward. An armor panel on Hot’s neck opened, revealing the lit head of a flashlight.

They passed countless boiled vines and small lizards. The halls bent and ran into eachother and rose and fell. Occasionally, something would come out of the steam still twitching, or from a wall, or through the floor, or fall out of a hole in the ceiling. Such things wouldn’t live long.

One hall had many small chambers to either side. Each chamber was filled with steam and light and each chamber contained dirt on a stone floor. They searched every room in the hall and found a brick wall at its end. They went back the way they came. The next hall they came to was the same. They began skipping hallways like those.

Steam flooded through a doorway and into a large chamber. Damaged patches in the roof lit the room. There were many entrances and exits around the room and there was a walkway along one wall. There was a balcony with a doorway on another wall. The steam was coming out of an entrance below and to the side of the balcony. A dull, yellow pony covered in cuts and bruises flared her wings and faced the steam. Two points of light emerged, glaring at her and hissing, she imagined, and she struck as the hissing stopped.

A white, hard cap with a round top and a slightly curved down rim flew into Hot’s face. A flying back hoof smashed into Hot’s neck, right next to the flashlight. His popstone was still shining on the steam, turning it into a wall of white. The mare’s hoof came out of the cooling, condensing vapor and smashed into his hoof, breaking the light stone.

He could see now. Hot was on the ground, choking. A pegasus mare wearing a green, ripped up scrap of cloth that could have once been a shirt over her shoulders, a dark grey mane, angry, magenta eyes and grinding teeth fell fell to her hooves in front of him. He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew he felt threatened. His sword came down.

She blinked and then her eyes left his hoof and traveled up his leg. Her tense mouth sagged and her grinding teeth opened. Her eyes traveled up him and past his head. With a look of terror, she realized there was already a retaliating sword dropping over her. She tossed herself to the side and slid across the floor, biting her hat as she went. His sword clanged off of the stone and she took to the air.

She circled above, observing the strange ponies through the almost cleared steam. He looked up and decided he was going with her. His bottom legs flowed off into a small black cloud under him, lifting him slowly up, sword held down by his side. The smoke trail traveled up him, submerging his sword and barrel and head. She saw him slowly gliding for her and spreading, as a gas, across the room’s air, and she left, fast, through the ceiling. Hot flew around the black cloud and out, after her. He continued to rise.

Hot flew into the shaded bog and found himself surrounded by a light fog. Cat-tails swayed and the fog swirled. She was not visible. He came out of one ceiling hole just as Hot flew back inside through another. Hot landed inside, on the balcony, and waited. Eventually, he caught up and solidified, standing on the railing. “What wa-” he started falling backwards.

Hot grabbed him and pulled him back, and he landed on all four hooves, sword sliding across the floor.

“Maybe stick to solid ground, dumb a-” Hot stopped talking.

“Yes, there is a slight chance that that was dumb…”

“Yeah, just… be careful.”

“Ok. So, what was wrong with that bitch?”

Hot held back a laugh, poorly, and his muzzle began to violently twist into and out of the positions necessary for what is known as a “smile”. “Some of the things you say.”

“I take it that you don’t know, then?”

“No better idea than you. At least she’s gone.”

“What? You, uhh, you don’t like it rough, there?”

They took their stuff and walked into the balcony doorway.

“Not so very much, no.”

Using Hot’s flashlight, they found a small room. On one side, there was a stone desk with drawers. On the other side, there was another doorway. A stone chair sat in the middle of the room, facing the balcony door. They found nothing in the desk. They exited through the doorway and into a hall.

“I’m just saying, in that case, what’s the point of night vision?”

He left the room first, and he found that there was light coming from around a corner at one end of the hallway, and black everywhere else. He started for the light, and Hot followed, Around the corner, the hall exited out into the walkway. They moved across the walkway and through the doorway on the other side.

“I’m sure I don’t know just exactly what the bucking minotaur poop you are on about, but-”

There, they found a small, empty room with a set of stairs leading downward and two other doorways. They took one of the doorways and found a room with knee-high stone benches sitting around a short stone cylinder with two roughly rectangular marble slabs, each with a single, jagged edge, leaned up on either side of the cylinder. The door out of this room led to a downward ramp, which they took. It led into another hallway.

“Why would someone do that? What process put that idea in their head in the first place? They had to have some sort of idea, even if they were wrong.”

“The point’s that it happened; A little lack of understanding doesn’t change that.”

The first door they came to in the hallway led to a large, rectangular room with a huge stone bowl sitting in its middle. Chunks of highly corroded metal sat, scattered about the floor. One of the walls contained a large door with a large stone latch. The far end of the room was collapsed.

“Shirrkhkhaaah oh! Ok, sure. Haha. Why not?”

“And he was really fat too!”

His laughter quieted and then halted. His smile became flat. His flat mouth became a frown.

“...Just help me with this.”

They yanked on the latch repeatedly, causing it to grind on the wall as it moved out of the way.They then shoved on the door until it opened a bit.

An sour, acidic smell flooded over them. They retreated, gagging, through the nearest doorway. Hot’s light struck a wall a fair distance away. Once they got far enough away from the smell, Hot turned around, sweeping his light across a very large, very empty room. A small portion of the smell stuck to them, like it sank into their coats. “Oh god, we have to go back in there.”

“What if it’s in there? I mean, they made that door real nice for somethin’... Not now, though.”

“No, now, I didn’t see any other exits to this room when you turned around.”

“What?”

“Just check the rest of the walls.”

Hot began moving the light along the walls, checking them.

A small, white cat with a poofy tail was sitting nearby. He noticed. “Oh, cool. Itsa’ kitty.”

Hot found another exit and sighed in relief. “Ok, what was that you said?”

The cat wiggled a bit from side to side. “Hey little-AH” The cat flew at his face. He swatted his heavy horse hoof into the cat’s face, slapping it into the ground. Hot jumped and quickly turned his light on it and released a burst of steam over it, backing away. They left through one of the doorways before the steam cleared. “My doneness level is so excessive right now.”

“Was that a cat?”

“We go find this thing, now. Now we go find it.”

“Why were you scared of a cat?”

They entered another room. It was the room with the balcony and the walkway again.

“We skipped a path up there, let’s check that.”

“What’s it gonna’ do? Bite you?”

He dissolved his hooves and floated up to the balcony. Hot flew after. They moved through the room with the throne and into the dark hallway.

“-though that’s fine, If that’s the case. I’m just sayin’, cats are adorable.”

“All I did was yell in surprise. It jumped at me. I don’t have a ‘cat phobia’.”

They passed by two or three doorways, waving a light around each. The first one was empty. The second one was collapsed a few feet in. The third one seemed empty, at first, but there were corroded metal loops bolted to the wall and sitting on the ground and the room contained a set of stairs which led down into a room with a heavy stone door and a window frame with metal bars that had almost rusted to nothing. Through the doorway, they saw the destroyed remains of what could have once been cells.

“What is it called? The name is something like where you put clothes. Drawers? Hangers? Hagiophobia? No, that’s not right. That’s not even close to the phobia.”

“Claustrophobia?”

“OO! Yes.”

They went back up the stairs and into the hall. There was one more door. A dirty, rectangular marble slab sat on four stone cylinders in the corner of the room. It was knee high.

“-leave these milky marble looking eggs in your skin that you really can’t force out without cutting yourself. You have to smear sap or something over it after it hatches so it will crawl out to get some air.”

“I’m thinking I’d have to agree with that. What is this? It’s kind of short for a table.”

There was a marble wardrobe in another corner. It’s doors were on the ground, one of them broken in half. “Well, this is the only place we have seen this much marble. Maybe this is where they guy who used that throne lived?”

“So, what, this is a stone bed?”

“What if the mattress is-”

A striped tiger was in the doorway, looking in his eyes. It was directly in front of him, and he remained standing. It’s head moved back as it brought air into its lungs. Air was somewhere just out of his sight, probably doing something. The tiger’s mouth opened and it made a noise that left a pressure on his ears caused him to cringe. His eyes were squinting from the pain and fluttering as he tried to keep them open. The tiger’s head and shoulders began to get bigger, coming closer, before the rest of it’s body did the same. He began to fall over, pushed by the claws. The ceiling swayed by, occasional bricks missing but mostly intact. He heard a sharp “toom” and his sword jerked and vibrated. The bed-slab was at the top of his vision. He could have hit it on the way down. The tiger’s breath was kind of bad, like a dogs, really. First, one of the claws pierced into the side of his barrel, then another, and then the other paw began to press into his other side and all the claws sank into him. The tongue and lower jaw’s teeth pressed into his shoulder. Two points of pressure, applied by two unyielding shapes, pierced his back, near his shoulder, splitting and tearing alerted, now-screaming nerve endings in his busted skin and pointing out the tiger above him with the sharpness of a polished scalpel or a tiger's tooth, where the tiger happened to be eating you. The full, heated, wide eyed weight of his adrenaline flowed through his heart and compelled him, “Strike it!” The first hoof bashed into the head, ripping his shoulder muscles all the more, but seemed to bounce off and the tiger growled and bit just a little harder and shook him slightly. The tiger let go and roared again, while turning away.

Hot was jumping from side to side, brandishing his little knife and yelling loud, vague sounds at the tiger. It swiped when Hot closed in, but hovered low over its prey.

He felt a yearning for escape and the call of Hot’s yells, but felt, even stronger, the need to be ignored by the cat, and remain untouched in the future. Something matched, a piece in his memory fit to the shape of the moment, and he began to endeavor to become untouchable and forget his body in the moment when he wished to save it, to escape the fuzzy weight pressing down on him, to forget the sting of the slices on his ribcage, to forget the burning holes in his back that served to give him the moment-to-moment focus of the adrenaline that was giving him the chance to think.

Black smoke drifted into the tiger’s vision. Hot reached into his saddlebag franticly. He looked down at himself, seeing only his shoulder. The tiger swiped a few times at the spot where his body should have been with jerky, spread open claws. As the cloud began to recondense, he slid away. The tiger stopped, and its eyes narrowed. Its eyes shimmered and its claws slowly began to glow. It swiped through the smoke, and left burning, painful trails. He escaped, under the bed.

The tiger couldn’t quite get in, but it turned sideways, laying the front half of its body down, next to his sword. Its paw slammed into his face, but he got his un-damaged hoof onto the hilt and turned the sword with as much force and at the best angle he could get. The tiger jumped away with a new hole on its chest. He pushed himself along the ground and his damaged shoulder yanked back, caught on a hard, raised stone piece, but he put the heightened pain into his good foreleg’s thrusts. The tiger moved forward, between attacks, and a small blade flew into it’s neck, leaving two wires trailing back to Hot. A familiar, clicking, rattling buzz sounded and the tiger spasmed and fell. He thrust his blade into the tiger. He kept thrusting, waiting for it to stop moving.

Hot’s forelegs wrapped and pulled him away from the tiger and took his sword away.

“You might… just… Buckin’ quit it! Calm down. Let me... Shhhhhhhhhh. It’s done. You got him.” Hot finally turned so that they could not see the tiger. He stopped struggling after a few moments. Hot slowly leaned him toward his back. “Ok, that doesn’t seem like much blood… He must not have clamped down much. I’m turning you over. Hot leaned him back up and put him down, on his belly. “Considering everything, it’s not even bleedin’ that much. It’s not all that bad at all. Once we’ve gotten back, we’ll cover it in gauze and call it a day, hmm? You there?”

He was staring at the tiger, breathing long, slow breaths through his teeth. His eyes were wide and his whole body tensed up a few times. “I think I saw something,” he said. “Under the bed.”

“We should really get back to my cart. It’s pretty far and-”

“No” he said, in a low, emotionless statement.

“Now, none of that. No need to get like that, no matter how bad getting mauled is. Get that chin up and come on.

“I’m not going.”

“Now, is anything really worth being out here when you’re hurt?”

“I found something under the bed of someone important. There is a good chance that it is worth looking at.”

Hot hoped for some sort of relent, but none came. “Ok, fine, just don’t use that leg much, ok? It shouldn’t be that hard with the way you walk. We leave if this is nothing, too! Ok?”

He turned his head away from the tiger. “OK.” He stood up. “Yes.” He began moving for his sword. “Yes, I’m good with that.”

The raised bit of stone under the bed was a stone handle. The stone under it was too heavy for hooves, so one of the ceiling bricks that had fallen over the years was used as a fulcrum. They pressed his sword’s tip into the handle-hole and rocked it over the brick, revealing a dark passage and a stone trapdoor under the bed. He bumped his shoulder on the way down. They left the brick in the doorway, keeping it open.

It was five minute’s passage through the darkness in that hall. They were at least both thankful that the ceiling was quite tall. His pain was quickly fading from its height when he was mauled. They thought their progress halted when they walked into a wall. But, they really would find it was a corner, a way forward. The far end of it was lighted with a square shape, dim, on a wall.

The chamber was a cube. Just a few spots of light existed in the roof. There was a small, flat, square piece of ground sitting in the middle of the chamber. An eroded, misshapen stone cylinder with one broken end was on it’s side, sitting on the small floor-square. Around the edge of the floor-square, there was a short flight of steps leading down, followed by a short, flat perimeter. There was another set of stairs, followed by another flat section, followed by another set of stairs, before the bottom, which was covered in water. On the top set of stairs, on the second stair down, by one end of the cylinder, there was a small, metallic item. In the center of three of the walls, there was an entrance, followed by stairs down to the bottom. They soon entered through one of those, and.he soon sat on his haunches, holding the metal object up, victoriously.It was one cylinder resting over a skinnier, slightly longer cylinder. On one end, there were two small, square nubs resting along one side of the smaller cylinder. There were three rings sitting on the other end, their edges touching each other and the cylinder, with the middle ring resting on the very end. The larger cylinder had a sunken in, dark rectangle, and innumerable buttons.

Hot was smiling, watching this. He brought the item back down and just sat there, smiling slightly. Hot slowly smiled less. He glanced a little lower, then back up. Hot looked back down at his flank. Hot snorted and shook his head. Hot looked back at his face and glared slightly and softly stomped a hoof. Hot turned and took a few steps and then turned again and stepped right back. “You feelin’ proud of yourself, there, at all?”

“I am so very satisfied with myself right now. The last week was worth it.”

“Yeah?” Doubt softened Hot’s glare. “Yeah?” Hot looked down and then sat on his haunches. “Ok. Ok, you did good.” Hot looked back up at him. “Let’s go home.” Hot moved back down the stairs and halfway up the stairs to the exit they entered through before turning around. “Come on!” The sound echoed in the small chamber, far louder than he expected. “Sorry.”

He stood up and began to walk. A pile of rock and dirt impacted the ground at the base of the stairs.

“Bucking Luna! Run!”

Only a little more dirt dripped down from the ceiling. He was looking up, tensing to charge across the dirt pile to get to the stairs he needed. He leapt, his hooves sinking into the freshly churned dirt, and stumbled his way across and up to Hot.

“Th- th- the other way. The other way. Run… Good nuff’.” Hot started moving back down the hall.

He looked back at the hole. It dripped dirt. A dull, yellow mare trotted up to the hole, looking down, and saw him. They just looked at eachother, for a moment, before her wings flared and she dove down into the air of the room. He brought his sword up. She had a whip in one hoof, which became apparent when it wrapped around the metallic object in his limp leg’s grasp and pulled it away. She was already flying away when he called out, “Hot, get back here! The mare is back! She stole the artifact!”

Hot was back in the room after just a few moments. “Where is she?!” He was floating for the hole with his back hooves dissolved. Hot flew out of the hole before he could answer.

He came to the surface. The only sign of anyone was a single swirling in the light, still fog. He moved that way, across dirt and dirty water. He moved slowly past the trunks. The bugs were awake and swarming, sending his tale on a twitchy rampage. When he came to ground, the ran through whatever bramble he could, gaining a little speed.

In the distance: “Where is it!” Hot was yelling. He moved for the sound.

There were two balls on strings, wrapped around each other and hanging on a trunk.

“You have to let me go!”

He followed the string around the trunk.

“Tell me where it is! I don’t much like threatening ponies, but you aren’t going anywhere and ain’t nothin nice happenin’ until I get what I came for.

“He already has it!”

“Who?”

“... You’re not lackies?”

“Hey, Hot, when did you get a bola?”

Hot turned to him. “I didn’t.” Hot turned back to the yellow mare. “Not that I’ve ever been made aware of.”

“Oh, thank Celestia. Let me go.”

“Not a chance.”

“Let me go!”

“Better idea: how about you tell me where it bucking is?”

She desperately ground her teeth. “Alright, just stop him. He went that way,” she gestured with her face, “and probably went inside. Hurry!”

Hot picked him up and flew off. They found a doorway sitting in the open swamp and landed. Past the door was a muddy, downward slope. They slid down, grazing the roof of the passage on the way. The room at the bottom was huge, with many large support pillars. There was a sizable pile of mud at the entrance, and a few feet of water on the ground. There was a single doorway at the other side. They trudged across the water. The back exit hallway was raised slightly by a few stairs. They galloped, splashing, into and down the hall. They passed another staircase. They passed hanging roots. They passed bloody, messy clumps of meat. They ran out of the darkened hallway and into a large room, covered in patches of moss. Light came in through missing bricks in the ceiling, showing a room divided in half by a set of three steps, with water and light only coating the lower floor. Hot looked rapidly around the room, at each of the entrances.

“This way.” He said. He slapped his back hooves into the steps, splashing and dragging water everywhere. They moved past the pillars holding the roof up and past an abstract designed and a fire designed stone wall-frame and through a regular doorway, leading into an open darkness that was dispelled by a flashlight. His shoulder ached with each heartbeat. Bugs the size of their hooves crawled along the walls. Thick webbing patches lurked on the ceiling. They saw saw the light of missing bricks in a wall ahead of them. The light was covered up as a dark shape shifted in front of it. They reached the end and squeezed themselves through the hole and into a pile of ceramic shards in a small space between white wall and the side of some sort of ramp in a large, cubic room covered in strangely designed wall-frames.

“The key to my vic-” a loud, deep, somewhat nasally voice declared as they ran around the side of the ramp to see a dark blue furred monkey with lighter blue skin and an incredibly long face holding the artifact in a hand on the end of its tail. He was standing on stairs. The ramp was stairs and the stairs stretched across nearly the whole wall. The wall was not covered in wall-frames. Instead, one great frame reached up, from either side of the stairs, nearly to the ceiling. It was decorated with images gears and lightning. “You are not Daring.”

“And you aren’t much but a three handed thief, but we’ve all got shortcomings.”

“Oh, what, are you going to tell me that it’s so much better when she puts it in a museum? Keep your values to yourself, they are of no consequence to me!”

“If you’re talking’ about that lovely nightmare strapped to the tree up top, she’s just as bad and I don’t give a buck what she does. We are following an official equestrian writ type document, and all I care about is getting paid.”

“Also, she stole it from me.”

“Also, she stole it from him.”

“Wr-” The blue monkey’s eyes grew wide and hard. “It’s been nine months! I was dealing with an entirely different plan when I put out that order!”

“Oh good, then hows’ about you can pay us, hmm?”

“I had to get it myself! You ponies were useless to me! You will get nothing! Waahaha muahahahaaa!”

“Look, you wouldn’t have that thing right now without us. We helped, we ought to get something for this.”

“Ahuizotl!” The yellow-ish mare fell from the hole in the roof and onto the ground at the base of the stairs.

“The key,” he held up the artifact, “to my victory is at hand.” He laughed deafeningly for a good five seconds. “You are too late, Daring Do.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing, Ahuizotl. You’ll die!”

“Oh, I’m so sure, just like I was going to die when I tried to bring years of limitless wetness or the great hardening or the need of burning. No, Daring.” Ahuizotl shook his head. “The most powerful equipment shall be mine!”

“Don’t do this!” Daring lunged forward, and was caught and pressed into the ground by the tail-hand.

“Honestly, Daring, I only have so many snappy comebacks.” Ahuizotl pressed the end of the artifact without the loops into the wall while Daring struggled to press up from the ground. The wall near the artifact became a dark purple. Ahuizotl moved back. The purple spread across the wall, stopping at the frame’s borders. Closer to the center of the wall, the purple darkened, the very center becoming black. The black shifted, seeming to face them and become deep. The purple waved and waved faster and seemed to spin. White began to appear from the black and streak to the edge, until it seemed that they were rushing, spinning, through nothing.

A red, round glass emerged from the wall at about the height of Ahuizotl’s neck, followed by a wider, rounded, grey surface with small, rectangular holes on the bottom. A metallic tube and a tight clump of sharp cornered, identical shapes right next to each other emerged on either side of the red lense, somewhat lower. The thing jerked and a flat-bottomed, metal shape emerged and pressed into the ground, connected to a set of metal tubes and joints clumped tightly together, but not so tight that there was no space to look between them. It jerked again, and another leg came out of the wall, along with the rest of its hand, part of its torso, and a fair bit of bulky machinery connected to pipe. It stepped out of the wall. An antenna extended up from the back of it’s long, rounded head.

Ahuizotl, smiling and opening his mouth, took a step forward. The tube came up and turned. Halfway up the wall, in the center of the room, a rounded, grey surface covered in a few hundred red lenses emerged. There was a flash and a bang and Ahuizotl’s head flew back. Then, there was another, then a third. The key fell out of Ahuizotl’s hand. The wall became pure white. Hot jumped back. Daring watched Ahuizotl fall. The tube began to turn on him. Warnings screaming in his head, he evaporated almost instantly. The muzzle flashed, and a bullet went through him. The wall’s original appearance faded in. The huge, rounded, metal object began to fall, scraping the wall loudly and cleanly separating. The tube moved, aiming closer to his center. It flashed again. He drifted slightly and it aimed for his center a third time and shot. Hot yelped. Daring looked up from Ahuizotl, finally, and saw the tube turning toward her. Her wings flared. Ahuizotl’s tail-hand fell off of her. She moved through the air, to the side, never letting the barrel aim directly at her. The giant metal head smashed the stairs and bounced slightly, filling the air with a deep ringing. Hot was on the ground. The robot sprang toward the sliced metal head. He shifted his position, keeping Hot out of its sight. Daring was on the ground, behind the bouncing head. The tube shifted at her as she jumped, and it fired. The head fell, causing the bullet to bounce off and hit the ground. Daring rose, fast and hard, flying for the hole in the ceiling. The ruined staircase shifted under the robot’s feet and the giant head bumped it. It pushed the head, sending it sliding and sparking along the ground until it ran into the dirt pile. It hopped and landed, balanced, and then lowered itself. It jumped through the ceiling hole, pushing off of the side of the hole with enough force to continue its ascent and follow daring, and sending a stream of dirt down.The dirt flowed, and it flowed, and it jammed, sealing out the sun.

He reformed. He tried to to look at Hot’s wound, but he couldn’t; the light bouncing off of him from Hot’s flashlight was to dim. Hot released a long, quiet, hissing “Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.” He continued to squint at the general area where the blood was flowing from. “Just stay still.” He pulled out a light pop-rock and tossed it at the ground, where it lit up. The blood was flowing from Hot’s chest, but didn’t seem to come from anywhere else. He pressed a hoof against the wound, causing Hot to gasp and struggle. He lifted his hoof. “Stop. Stop. This is going to hurt, but it’s supposed to help, ok? I’m going to help you. You’re going to be fine. Just,” he opened the saddlebag he didn’t keep his magic rocks in and poured everything out. He pressed the bag against the wound with both hooves. His shoulder ached. “Shhh, just stay awake. It’s gonna be ok, ok? Hot? Hey, Hot? Are you awake? Are you awake?”

Hot released a quick, “Yeah,” continuing to scrunch his muzzle.

He continued to apply pressure and mutter reassurances for long enough to begin to doubt that it was enough, that length of time being any amount of time at all, not that he could tell. His shoulder ached and felt numb and felt pressurized. He breathed through his nose and the air cut a tunnel of fluctuating snot that seeped down his neck and slightly clogged his lungs. He expelled the blockage from his lung and into his neck in a coughing fit, letting the pressure off of Hot’s wound and jerking his own.

His quickly picked the saddlebag back up and went to put it back, but the blood was dry, caked into Hot’s fur. Hot was asleep, and breathing. The breaths were short. He rubbed his hoof against Hot’s fur, trying to look at the skin underneath. The fur was damp and cold.

There was nothing in the room to burn. They didn’t have any blankets. He opened his non-poprock saddlebag, then looked on the ground behind him. There were bits and flowers, and the book, some dipped in blood. He opened Hot’s saddlebags and looked inside. There was nothing in the room to burn. He was the only source of heat. He could only cover one of Hot’s sides.

He floated above the metal bowl. It was cold and sharp and hard. He couldn’t even move it. Some of the ceramic pieces were somewhat large, and he stacked them on Hot’s side. They fit kind of nicely. They didn’t cover most of him. There was only one other thing in the room. He dragged Ahuizotl’s slightly warm body over and laid it on Hot’s back. He nestled as close to Hot as he could, and waited.

It was warm, but in a way where the tight space caused him to sweat, leaving him cold. It was cold and cramped and he felt a little stiff. There was a pressure in his head, like the pressure in the back of his shoulder, but worse, rougher. The force of the arm compressed him, and his breaths were short. He was getting tired. He was getting more tired than usual. He was tired, and that was unusual. He got on three legs, and the painful pressure in his head scratched at him like someone was spinning it, and his vision degraded into naught but furious white and black dots, dancing the mosh of the lost and the pointless. He was dizzy, but held still. A knot pulled loose and retied itself upside-down in his intestines while his vision cleared. He took a few wobbling steps and vomited near the corner.

He tried to think about what just happened, but his thoughts slid and bounced. Only with great difficulty did he force the feelings in his head into a coherent memory and then translate that into the incorrect words. He then tried to think about the words he thought, and came up with a frustrated blank. He was sick. Hot couldn’t have done it, bullets don’t make sick you can pass around. Ahwisobluemonkey wasn’t a friend, but he had the same deal as hot did. It is important to be fair in thinking. The thief bitch who hit him seemed to be fine.

His swollen shoulder throbbed, the shoulder the dog-smell mouth big cat made bad-hurt. The dirty animal’s mouth was on him. He maybe got it from that. It was one of those infe-thingies where the blood-bugs kept getting more and had to die with fungus and poisons. If Hot was awake, he would know how to do what about it. He must have been infected before, it was pretty not-unusual. He would pull something out and know what to do. He would just eat something from his bag.

The bag was still over there.

He pulled it out and started dumping things. There was an orange, but sour wasn’t really enough poisonousness. His eyes grazed over the spread pile of his stuff and Hot’s stuff, searching for the match to the vague call of in-my-blood-bug-killer, which tied oh, so closely to his concept of an “antibiotic,” and something white he saw struck a ping in his brain and his eyes traveled back across white food wedge clusters. The wedges were cloves. The whole bunch was…a bunch of cloves. Someplace, he knew, sort of, kind of, he could swear that the thought of a memory of something he read, and this memory told him that these were good for this. He ate one, then another, then a third one, then most of the last one. He didn’t want to eat another, but he wouldn’t die over that. It wasn’t enough, things needed to go where they did good. The hurt would stop or the hurt would not stop. He looked back to Hot. Hot also got hit. Hot might need some. He pulled the the last half into wedges and put them in Hot’s mouth. He snuggled back in and waited and focused as hard as he could on staying solid.

He was thirsty, and also a bit hungry. His mouth was shriveled. None of the water nearby was good for drinking, but he remembered where he could get some. He lit another pop-stone and searched the pile of stuff. His head didn’t hurt as much, anymore. He found a small, plastic object with a button and a knob. He tried to turn it to 17 and pulled out Hot’s prosthetic, aiming it at nothing. He pressed the button. Nothing happened. He pressed the button a few more times. He heard something moving behind him. He looked. Hot’s shades were descending and ascending repeatedly. He moved the knob 6 clicks clockwise, to 17, and pressed the button again. Clear water gently squirted out of the nozzle attachment. He lapped at the water stream, but became dissatisfied and tried to catch some of the water in his mouth, like a cup. When he closed his mouth to swallow, the water sprayed up his nose and everywhere. He flinched, then opened his mouth for more.

He picked something to eat. The orange was Hot’s. It belonged to him, he loved those things, and oranges helped with replacing blood. He only had three blue flowers left. He had been saving them. He picked a large, black flower that he hadn’t tried before and ate it.

He nudged Hot. “Hey.” He nudged Hot again. “HEY!” Hot’s legs twitched. He pushed Ahuizotl off and then kept pushing until he reached the dirt mound. He returned to Hot. “Come on, you need to drink.” He poked Hot’s face. Hot squirmed, reaching up to scratch at his muzzle, and was splashed with water. His head lightly flinched back. “Drink some of your water, ok?” Hot’s muzzle squelched open and placed the nozzle in his mouth and began sucking. this continued for a few moments, until he presented Hot with the orange, at which point that became Hot’s new concern.

They put away their items. He picked up and put away the key. Neither felt like they should be talking, right then, and Hot didn’t walk around. They just sat, leaned against a wall, next to each other, and waited. Hot fell asleep. When he woke up next, they shared most of the flower stash. After a few hours, Hot decided that he couldn’t sit any longer. They had to try and walk and see how far they could get. “Don’t step in that.” he had said, as they moved for the hole in the corner. They managed to walk down the hall, into the room with the water, before Hot was winded.

He convinced Hot, “Lay back down.” He convinced Hot “Stay for now.” He sat down with him. He ate one of his favorite, blue flowers, and gave Hot another other one. He put the last one back in his air-tight bag, after getting most of the air out.

Hot thanked him. Hot said he wouldn’t forget this. Hot said he felt guilty about everything bad he ever thought about him. Hot apologized for bringing him on this job. He said Hot couldn’t have known that this one would be like this. Hot said that that wasn’t the point, and that blue flower that he went on about was pretty good.

Hot went to sleep.

He waited.

He heard a material moaning. He looked to Hot. Corners of pieces of Hot’s plating were raising, pulling his skin. Hot was sliding toward him in short bursts. Hot was asleep.

He backed away, bumping into a pillar and then backing around it, entering the water, but not stopping. Hot came closer. Small bits of water jumped along the staircase. The jumping stopped, and Hot slid closer again, while vertical holes remained in the water, near the stairs, and, in the reflection, long, black, sharp segments arced out from beneath his armor, sprinkled with occasional eyes and fangs. His fear and aggression had a target.

He raised his sword and sloshed forward. The sharp segments raised and stabbed into the water again, scraping Hot closer. He looked at the water and swung his sword through the air, bending one of the spindly, black legs joints. The damaged leg slammed down, into the water, splashing a vertical line into the water. The leg rose back up without a bottom half. He swung at another leg, breaking it, and the first joint he broke slammed into the top of his head, knocking him into the water. It dragged along his head and off. He stood back up. Hot was resting near the water’s edge. He looked down and saw the sharp ends descending above him. He evaporated, and then brought his sword back together for a swing, snapping another leg. There were two sharp points left. One dropped in front of him, and he lunged forward, busting it. One landed just a little to the left of where he had been standing, and he turned and swung, backing up enough to hit it hard.

The leg he just broke closed in on him, pressing along his front. The other legs wrapped around him, pulling him toward Hot. He resisted, and Hot slid forward. He let the legs close around him, pressing him into Hot’s side. The legs lifted him, and his weight caused Hot to turn. They fell into the water. He could feel the water on every side of him, reminding him with the cold on his skin that his skin was cold and that he had a skin to be cold. He turned, facing Hot, who was flailing and hitting him, and brought his sword between them, wedged between the black legs and his body, near Hot’s side. He got the blade into the leg’s joints, and began to pry and saw and push. The legs popped off, dissolving into non-existence.

Hot sprang from the water first. He started to stand and was filled with a few jolts of electric pain. He got his head up.

“Just who do you think this is, that you’re messin’ with, huh?!? Ifn’ you wanted to have a go you could, at least, have been polite about…” Hot’s hoof was pointed at him. The knife was out and blue lines were thrashing in part of the prosthetic. “What?”

“Hot, there is something on you.”

“So, what, you thought to drown it off of me?!?”

“No, it was drowning me.”

“Funny, I don’t much feel something that could drag a pony on me.”

“Look,” he spoke with with unusual authority, “at your armor.”

Hot breathed in quickly and out slowly, in jerky bursts, and his eyes darted away a few times. Hot’s eyes darted to his side and then he looked quickly back forward and thrust his knife in the air and stepped.

“Other side! Other side!”

Hot quickly turned his head and then lowered his leg. Bits of armor were propped up. Two or three panels dangled. His wing hung limply.

He told Hot that it used to have more pieces. He wanted to cut off the remains, but Hot cut the remains off himself with some difficulty, and they bled and then disappeared. Hot had to remove his armor to get at them. It could not be put back on without tools that were in the cart. They stored the pieces in their bags.

He told Hot that he had seen them before, out in the wilderness, so they must be around. Hot said that he had never heard of anything like it. He told Hot that there were many things that he hadn’t heard of, implying that Hot was the same. Hot was still a little weak, but they were out of food. It was a long walk back to the cart.

Comments

[alamais]

[Swan Song]

Hm.

[Double_Bubble]

The immersion!
Sometimes confusing and hard to read but it's not a bad thing in this case.

Finding this story reminded me how most stories, even good ones will go unnoticed.