Lost Gear

by TheFoxern

1: Harsh Welcome

His eyes snapped open. “Oh good, you're awake, I-”

Shnikt. The magic around his leg shattered and he sliced off her arm. He hit the ground as she screamed and took several steps back. He got back up with slow, deliberate motions. That was what he was fighting for, he had to remember that. He was fighting to save ponies.

“Again with the hand...” Madam Raven grumbled as she flexed her newly grown hand.

Copper looked at where the hand he had cut off had been. It evaporated into black smoke as he stared at it. He was tired, and he was still crying. He took a deep breath, as he stared her down. “Raven...Other...it doesn't matter anymore.”

She arched a brow, smirking at him. “Oh? And why is that?”

“It doesn't matter...because the outcome is the same.” He looked up at her and took a deep breath. “It doesn't change the fact that I have to beat you.”

She smirked and stood in front of him. “Oh? And you think that you can?”

“Yes.” He buried the blade into her chest once again, gritting his teeth as he did.

“Urk...oh Copper...you think that you can beat me...by just...stabbing me?” She grabbed hold of his arm, but he continued to push. She stared at him as she was forced backwards.

“No.” It had taken all that he could muster, but he had done it. After all, if he had done it once, what was stopping him from doing it again? He rushed forward and tackled her through the rift he had made.

They had gone through. He had done it. He panted softly as he looked down at the hard dirt under his hooves. He looked back through the large crack in the air at Twilight, Celestia and Chrysalis, all of whom stared at him. There was an odd pressure and he realized his plan would not work. He took a deep breath and called out, “I'm sor-” Snap, “-ry.” He stared at the thin line in the air where the rift had been. He had not been able to keep it open long enough to even say goodbye.

“So this is your plan?” She flung him away and he skipped across the packed surface. His goggles slipped from his head as he bounced away. “Pathetic. So you take me away from them? That will not save them. I can just go back.” Madam Raven straightened up as she approached, purposefully crushing the goggles under her claws. “Do you even know where we are, dear Copper?”

Copper watched as the frame buckle and lenses shatter. He focused his attention away to the place around them. The ground was dried and cracked in all directions, the sky seemed to burn red and something blocked out the sun, making everything seem much darker than it should be, but at the same time it was still bright. There was nothing around except for a dead tree on top of a hill. “I don't,” he said as he got up and dusted himself off. “But it doesn't matter.”

“Oh Copper... How foolish of you. You drag me somewhere you have no knowledge of.” Her slimy black tongue ran over her beak as she lifted the mangled remains. “I have already won here.” She tossed it off the the side.

“Doesn't matter,” he said as he adjusted his bowtie.

“Doesn't matter? Do you even know what that means? This world is as good as dead, and I-” she stopped and the gloating face she had been making quickly melted away.

Copper smirked. “Oh? Just realized?”

“No...” she said as her claws dug into the ground.

“Oh yes. I don't know all the rules to your petty little game, but I know this one.” He smirked a bit more. “And you went through first. That means you forfeit that world. I win.”

“No!” Magic shattered as Copper threw up his hoof. Again and again she lashed out, each spell shattering in turn. The time he had spent practicing had more than prepared him for a fight like this. Her magic was already weaker and was getting weaker with each spell she threw. Eventually she stopped, collapsing onto the ground and breathing heavily. “Damn it...”

Copper stood several hooves away from her, staring her down. “You've lost, Raven.”

She chuckled softly. “Utterly. The Other has already abandoned me...I really should learn to not play with my food...”

“You wont have the chance to make that mistake again,” Copper said as he walked towards her.

There was a smirk on her face. “You may have saved that world, but you've doomed us both...this world is going to die. Surely you can feel it with your new power? There is no magic here...and we have burned up all that came with us.”

“As I said, it doesn't matter. The Other, and you, can't do anymore harm to anypony.” Copper was watching her closely and could practically watch her whither away.

He found it annoying that she could still smirk at him. “But what will you do now, Copper?” Her tongue ran over her beak. “Butcher me? Torture me? Make me feel for my crimes? Feast upon my corpse for sustenance in this barren world? Oh what poetic justice that would be...”

“No.”

She sat up and laughed. “Oh, Copper. Even now you play the good little pony. So you'll just leave me? After the atrocities that I've committed. The hundreds upon thousands I have butchered and devoured...” She took a deep breath. “Oh but I would much prefer my end to be like that. Come on, Copper... You know you want to. You want to slice me to pieces, hack off my limbs. Butcher me. I was going to do the same to you...and to your little Queen...and every single pony. But no. You stand there with your self righteousness and think so highly of yourself. Or are you just going to sit there and allow me to feast on you? Allow yourself to die another pathetic death while all your loved ones- gluck!”

“No.” He watched as she clutched at her neck. “I'm going to slit your throat and watch as you bleed out.” The blade retracted with a shink.

All he got was a gurgle in response.

“Put pressure on it. I want you to hear as much of this as possible.” He sat down in front of her, watching as the blood pooled around her. “The world, any world, would be better without something like you. A monster.” There was a chill down his spine and he felt as though something was standing behind him. “But you are going to die, Raven. And not quickly. You've got a lot to answer for.” Her eyes were wide as she stared past him. “I only hope that the death of this world is as cruel as the one in ours. You deserve to suffer, but it wont be me who torments you. It will be your own life that does that. Your actions. We all pay for what we have done when it comes to an end.” Her eyes seemed to find him. For the first time that Copper had ever seen her, she looked terrified. “I will not even try to imagine what awaits you wherever you're going. I'm sure nothing I could think of could come close.”

She gurgled and spluttered as she tried to breath. Her blood looked like oil, pooling around her body as she tried to do anything.

Copper sat and stared, watching as the light slowly went from her eyes and the gurgling and twitching stopped. Then he stood and turned to the side. Shnikt. He tested the ground with the blade; the ground was quite solid. He took a deep breath as he plunged the dagger into the ground and began cutting chunks from ground and tossing it to the side. It was rough work, but he needed time to think and it was something to do to keep himself busy. It was an hour before he was satisfied with the hole and shoved the lifeless body into it. The dagger retracted and he stared at the body in the hole. He felt like he should say something. Even if he hated her, he still felt like he should say something. “Stay there and rot.” Of course, it didn't have to be something nice.

He began covering the corpse with dirt. “What is it doing?” He stopped and turned around.

There were three figures standing not terribly far away, all of them pony shaped. “I believe he is burying the bird thing.”

“Hello?” Copper said as he watched the three of them.

“Why would he do that? We could probably eat the bird...”

He couldn't tell who was speaking, but he went back to pushing dirt into the hole. “You do not want to eat this thing.”

“What is it though? It is...oddly shaped as us.”

Copper was eventually satisfied that the body had been buried. “What do we do with it?”

He turned to look at the three who had gotten closer and now that they had, he realized that they were bat ponies. Copper cleared his throat. “What exactly is going on?” Copper said, starting to get a little frustrated now.

“Can we eat it?”

Shink. “All right. It's one thing to ignore me, but there is no way in Tartarus that I am going to tolerate talk of me being eaten.” All three of the ponies scrambled quickly away from him.The bat ponies scattered, trying to hide behind each other several times before they managed to get over a hill. After several moments the blade retracted. He had made his point. “Now then. Are we going to play nice?”

He saw the top of one of their heads before it retracted and there was rushed whispering, none of which he could make out.

Copper hesitated before he began heading up the hill after them. “I'm coming over there. I'm not going to hurt you as long as you don't try and hurt me.”

“We must go to the Priest,” one of the ponies said. “The Priest will know what to do.”

“But the Priest will be unhappy. He is an outsider.”

“He has something sharp and shiny. We have to go to the Priest.”

“Who is this Priest?” Copper asked, standing on top of the hill and looking down at them. They were laying down and huddled up.

“The Priest is our leader,” the middle one said as he stood up. The other two did as well. “He is our strength. He is our courage. He is the conduit of our lord. We shall take you to the Priest.”

Copper frowned slightly. “All right.” His mind was wandering as they walked. He wondered what sort of pony this Priest was. If it was even a pony. It made him think of Celestia. Some referred to her as a god in some lands and he knew the seaponies thought of alicorns as god like beings.

It took almost two hours, as far as Copper could tell, to reach what Copper thought of as a citadel. From a distance it looked amazing, a shining utopia amongst a vast and barren land. But the closer they got, the more horrid it looked. Buildings were crumbling and the streets were littered with trash and rubble. They were walking through the empty town to the massive structure in the center.

Then suddenly there were bat ponies everywhere, watching from doorways and windows. There were no doors and there were no windows. The entire city was silent except for the clinking of Copper's leg on the busted cobblestone road.

Then the whispering started and the crowd began. They seemed to flow from the cracks in the buildings and crawl out from under rubble. Copper had seen desolate cities that were just a step up from ruins, but these were ruins filled with ponies. Ponies who watched Copper and whispered to each other.

They approached the massive structure in the center and he realized that it was not a castle as he was expecting. It was a cathedral. Large glass windows with grand portraits stained into them, spires that stretched taller than any other building in the city and a great courtyard full of bat ponies.

Copper wished he had his cloak to hide under. Hide from the hungry eyes of these bat ponies. He was glad to enter through the large heavy doors, which were stuck open and falling from their hinges. Then he saw something that he had never seen before. At the end of the long room, atop a large pedestal, stood a pure white bat pony. He would have mistook it for a statue if it were not speaking to a pony standing on a lower wooden platform that reminded Copper of a gallows. “You are sure of it?” The white bat pony was saying.

“Yes, oh great Priest. They have been quelled and harvested,” the pony on the lower platform said.

“Good. Move onto the...next...” The Priest had spotted Copper. “What is this?” He stood straight. The bat pony practically leaped from the platform and Copper saw that he was being lead there.

“We have found this in the desert. It was fighting a bird thing. With magic.” The whispering stopped. “It killed the bird with a shiny sharp thing and buried it.”

The bat ponies stopped, but Copper kept walking up onto the lower platform, stopping where the other bat pony had been. He stared up at the Priest. “My name is Copper Feather. Are you the Priest?” Copper was greeted with silence and so he asked again. “Are you the Priest?”

The albino bat pony straightened up behind his pedestal. “I am. And you, Copper Feather, are to be put to death.”

His brow furrowed slightly as more whispering spread throughout the crowd. “Put to death? This isn't a trail?”

“This is a sentencing!” the Priest nearly shouted at Copper and the whispers died down again. “You are guilty of threatening followers of our Lord, unwarranted murder and the use of magic.”

“And those are crimes warranting death?”

“Yes, each worse than the previous.”

Copper watched the Priest. “May I speak and ask questions before my sentence is carried out?”

The Priest looked slightly confused. “You are unlike anything I or any others have seen, I will permit it on the premise you shall die with the knowledge of our Lord.”

Again Copper's brow furrowed. “Your Lord...as in your god?”

“He is everyone's god. He is my god. He is your god. He is their god.” He gestured out over the large congregation.

“Who is your god?” Copper was annoyed that he actually had to ask. He hated playing pronoun games with other ponies.

“You do not know of our god?” When the Priest spoke, Copper noticed that the room always went silent.

“I am not from this world.” There was a lot of muttering and mumbling. “I traveled with the...bird thing as you called it, here.”

The Priest was frowning at him. “The bird thing you murdered. We take murder very seriously, especially such desecration of the body in such a manner...in such a struggle as we are enduring now.”

Copper looked around the room once again and took in the details. The ponies were starving, that was evident. Starving and terrified of something. “Tell me who your god is,” he practically demanded.

“Do not speak to me in that tone!” Several ponies backed away from the Priest. Apparently it was the Priest they were terrified of. “I was chosen by or Lord and god, the Other to be his tool and voice in this world!” Copper felt his heart heart sink slightly into his stomach.

“So that is how he won this world...” But it also gave Copper some confidence. “I know of the Other.”

There was muttering again. “Oh? So you do know of god.”

“I do not know of it as a god, though the power it wields is godlike. The Other is something of destruction. I fought it and threw it down to save my world.” The Priest and the congregation went silent, all of them staring at him. “This world is doomed to death and it was done by the Other's hand.”

“We are at the end times,” the Priest said, regaining his composure. “The Other tests our faith, giving us this hardship that we must endure. Only then shall we pass onto Eden and live anew.”

“And what does the Other say about me?” The Preist looked taken aback. “What words does your god have for me? What wrath will he release upon me?” He stood up straight. “Your Priest has no power, because your god has abandoned you.”

He was met with silence until the Priest shouted, “You are the one who has been abandoned! You are the defiler who brings magic into our world once more and seeks to undo the work of the Other!”

“I do not use magic,” Copper said calmly. “I break it. My power is to shatter magic, as though it were glass.”

Suddenly there were many conversations all at once, too many and too loud for Copper to catch more than snippets of any of them, but his attention was on the Priest. “You lie!”

“No!” Copper snapped and the crowd went silent. “You lie! You tell your people that things will get better. You tell them that they are simply being tested, when you do not believe it yourself!” He had everyponies attention now. “How can you sit there and preach your nonsense while ponies around you cower in fear and starve to death?”

“You are nothing but a test of our faith!” The Priest stood steadfast and glared at Copper. “I will not allow you to subject this church to this blasphemy!”

“You are a fool and you have doomed your entire world!” Copper had to admit that he had lost his cool, but this was the sort of thing that really got under his fur: blatant and willful ignorance.

“Copper Feather! For your crimes, you are sentenced to death!” the Priest shouted.

Suddenly Copper felt the ground give way. He thought that he had been on a large platform where the accused would stand, but it had another purpose as well. The open air bellow filled him with immediate panic and his wing flapped uselessly a few times before he broke the surface of water at the bottom in a loud splash.

Copper coughed and sputtered as he broke the surface. His eyes burned and he splashed as he struggled to swim with his leg. The side sloped upwards, so he was more trudging through the liquid after a moment. The worst part is that he knew the iron taste that had gotten into his mouth and when he managed to open his eyes, his suspicions were confirmed. By the light that spilled down from the trap door he saw the thick red liquid he had landed in.

Then the light suddenly went out and he pressed himself against the wall. What had he just dropped into? Usually under temples and such there were tombs, but this looked more like a mixture of that and a sewer, with slanted floors towards the center. And it was overflowing with blood. He coughed and spat, trying to get the taste out of his mouth, but he knew that it was going to be there for several hours at least.

He panted, trying to get his breath back, he couldn't even hear what was above him; it was silent other than the noise he made. He closed his eyes, trying to make them adjust quicker to the darkness. He let his ears do work now as he stood perfectly still. Once the liquid had stopped sloshing from his movement it went dead silent. Except for a soft dripping. He knew it wasn't him dripping, the liquid went up to his chest, there was nothing for it to drip from and he couldn't feel it dripping off of him.

Once he felt satisfied with the adjusting of his eyes he opened them to find he could see quite well. He looked at the wall, examining the bioluminescent algae that grew on it. He also found that his side was covered with the algae it as well, as he'd been leaning against the wall. At least he assumed it was an algae, it could be some sort of bacteria for all he knew. But it at least provided enough light to be able to see his surroundings. There were four ways to go, not counting up. His heart rate had finally slowed and he tilted his head from side to side, trying to locate the dripping sound.

After a minute of leaning and tilting, it sounded like it was coming from behind him. He moved slowly to try and keep quiet. Thankfully the path sloped upwards slightly and was only a few hoofs deep when he actually got into the tunnel. He felt nasty, soaked in blood. When I get out of here, I'm going to have a long bath. He continued to try and figure where the dripping was coming from. Or several baths. A thought popped into his head, how is this supposed to kill me? The Priest had sentenced him to death, but so far this was barely dangerous. Was he supposed to starve? But why was there so much blood? Part of him didn't want to find out, another part of him couldn't wait to find out. One thing was for sure, he was going to hate flushing the blood out of his leg.

There was another crossroad coming up and he slowed even further; not liking the idea of having to figure out the source of the dripping once again, but it was far louder now. He leaned slowly and looked down the left passage where the dripping noise was obviously coming from. There in the distance, he could see a light. An actual light of some kind, like a lantern. He was about to call out and then immediately remembered that he was supposed to be dying down here. Slowly he made his way towards it, it bobbed oddly as if moving from one side of the tunnel then slowly to the other.

He could see nothing holding the light, just a light bobbing from side to side with the dripping coming from that direction. He stopped when he came to another crossroad. He could not figure out why the tunnels were so twisty and numerous. He looked left and right, but could see nothing. When he looked back, the light had stopped moving. There was an intense feeling of something staring at him. “Who's there?” he said, not shouting but loud enough hopefully for them to hear him. There was a sinking feeling in his chest, the feeling that his stomach was being tied in knots. His heart was racing, there was something wrong. Very wrong. Immediately he turned and ran, completely forgetting the urge to be quiet.

With a glance back he saw the light rushing towards him, bright. The dripping had been joined by an odd slapping. He couldn't tell if it was gaining on him, but he didn't bother worrying and focused on running. There was no sound of splashing behind him, just a sickening slapping noise and the dripping. He slid around the corner, flapping his wing hard to take the sharp left. He was thankful for the dip of the crossroad, even if he got another mouth full of blood, he felt the woosh of something over his head. For a second he caught a partial glimpse of what it was and all he could see were two large eyes and sharp teeth behind a bright light.

He ran again as soon as he had gotten out of deeper water and as soon as he had he was aware of a massive thing behind him. It was impossible to see the whole thing, but he didn't care. It was not something he wanted anything to do with. Thankfully it struggled to turn the corner, but he saw large tentacles slap against the wall, one of which hit the blood just beside him. What he saw reminded him of an angler fish, which he had seen once in Aquis, and an octopus. The dripping was loud and quick. It dawned on him that it was making the noise. He managed to get quite a good distance before the slapping began to catch up with him.

The next cross section came up and he took a right, pausing once he was far enough down to make sure that it was still chasing him. He shifted slightly, it was large and fast, if not a bit awkward. But he wondered how intelligent it was. Was it trying to cut him off? Get ahead of him? He glanced back behind him and then moved quickly towards the crossroad and then stopped abruptly. Another glance back. It either gave up or was going around. A loud slap far behind him made him look back and he saw the light bob into view.

Again he started running, taking a right and sprinting down the tunnel. At the next he took a left, trying to get distance from it and hoping that there was only one. He stopped when he came to another cross section and realized he was lost. The crossroads were not evenly spaced and were scattered sometimes densely, other times far apart. “Who designed this damn city?” Are they following streets above? That was the only explanation he could think of. His eyes scanned the ceiling, but all of the tunnels looked the same. And what the hell was that thing?

This world had some terribly fearsome creatures it seemed, if that was something that they could just...use as a form of execution. But it did not explain the blood. Then suddenly he heard the slapping behind him and started running again. He just had to keep sprinting and hope that he could find a way out, or a small place to fit into; which is what he spotted in the wall. He stopped and glanced back before looking into the hole. It went deep, that was all that he could tell. There was a lot of the algae in there and just enough room that he could breath. It was his only option at this point, besides continuing to run, and he quickly began making his way down the hole. At the very least it would not be able to follow him down. Judging from the creature's reach that he'd experienced when trying to turn, it wouldn't take long for him to actually get away.

The dripping sound got loud, echoing down the the small tunnel Copper was using. He struggled to turn around in the cramped space, having to dive under the blood in order to manage it. Shink. He held his leg tucked back, the soft light of the algae glinting off the blade. It looked like a large snake was swimming towards him slowly, searchingly. It must be tracking me via the movement of the blood, he thought as he lifted the blade slightly and began moving backwards. It's either intelligent, or it's got very good instincts...let's teach it something new. He stabbed at the tentacle. The small tunnel was filled with a screeching that hurt Copper's head. He kept backing away, a second tentacle came in after him and he stabbed it as well. It did not immediately retreat, thrashing and splashing around, which gave Copper time to stab it several more times.

Suddenly he found he could not stab it anymore as he'd moved far enough out of it's reach. He retracted the blade with a shnicht. He struggled again to move to face the other direction and continued moving down the tunnel. Not that smart it seems. He wondered what was actually at the end of this. Copper had not spent much time in sewers over the course of his life, so he was not sure what to expect. The most comforting sign was the fact that ahead he could hear voices.

There was a faint light ahead, brighter than that of the algae on the walls. It was pouring down through a grate in the ceiling. As he approached it the voices became clear enough to understand. “-don't care why it's making it. I'm just saying that I've never heard it make a noise like that.”

“Well, it's moving a lot...must be hunting something.”

“Something that doesn't agree with it.”

There were two figures above the grate, talking. Copper could barely make them out through the bright light that was behind them. It wasn't daylight, some kind of lamp, but it was enough to obscure his vision. “You think that something actually attacked the thing? What would be stupid enough to do that?”

Copper frowned up through the grate at the two as he let his eyes adjust. “I know a scream of pain when I hear one and that was one,” the left one said.

“And what makes you so sure that was it screaming in pain?” the one on the right said.

“I've never heard an animal make that kind of noise, not on either side of the chasm.” Copper made a mental note that there was a chasm somewhere near the city.

“So that immediately makes you the expert?” He saw as they both flexed their tattered wings defensively. That must be how they sentence their own kind...shred their wings and drop them down.

“Well what do you think it was, if you're such an expert?” They were in some sort of underground room and he could hear many more of them move about.

The right one hesitated as he thought. “Well, whatever it was is dead. Had to be a really stupid thing to try and go up against the Blood Horror.”

Blood Horror? Copper thought to himself, watching the two of them. “Oh I'm in agreement with you there. Out of it's mind, I'm sure.” He was starting to get fed up with being insulted.

“Just a plain idiot.”

Copper cleared his throat. “If you two gentlecolts don't mind, the idiot would like to not be neck deep in blood.” Both of them leaped several hooves and he heard the clatter of them scattering. He frowned slightly and put his hooves on the grate, planting his legs on either side of his little tunnel as he pushed up. The grate was heavy, but he could lift it. “Honestly,” Copper said as he climbed out of the hole and shook, splattering the floor around him with blood. “What in Equestria does a pony have to do around here to get a little help?” He looked at where they had gone as he pushed the grate back over the hole. The room was dry and full of bat ponies. Dozens of them.

There was a lot of whispers as they watched him. “Who are you?” one of them said harshly.

Copper didn't like that tone. “My name is Copper Feather.” Shink. “And I am not in a good mood. So I'm just going to sit here a moment, and all of you,” he pointed with the blade and they all recoiled, “Are all going to stay over there.” Shnikt. He sat heavily against the wall, taking deep breaths. The air only had the faintest hints of blood here. He held his leg up, letting blood pour from it. His leg had not been built to be water tight and it was an oversight that he regretted at this point.

Now he took in his surroundings, there were three passageways, two of them he could see lead back into the sewer, dipping downward back into the blood. The third lead into a similar room to this. All of the bat ponies had quickly gone down that tunnel when he had sat down. “Who are you?” A very large bat pony walked slowly into the room. He was twice the size of a regular bat pony, at least. The way that he held himself reminded Copper of Celestia.

“As I said...Copper Feather, your majesty.” Copper knew a king when he saw one.

That seemed to catch the other pony off guard. “I have not heard that name, nor seen something like you in my lands before.”

“That is because I come from another world. I tore a rift between our worlds in order to save my own. My plan had been to pull my problem from my world into yours, because it could not be killed in my world.” Copper was feeling very tired, running through the blood had been exhausting.

“And did you?” The king approached Copper without fear, sitting down in front of him.

“Kill it? Yes. But apparently you have outlawed the use of magic in this world and so I was sentenced to death by what you call the Blood Horror, by the Priest.”

“I did not outlaw it, that was the Priest.” Copper saw how his wings were tattered as well. “Our God the Other declared that I was going to betray him and needed to die.”

“The Other is no god.” He brushed some of his blood soaked mane out of his face. “It is a being of death and slaughter that seeks to destroy every single living thing.” That seemed to catch the king off guard as well. “It is what I saved my world from.”

“I...I had thought that the Priest had just...” He rubbed his forehead. “This explains so much... Is it possible to kill the Other?”

“I'm not sure... I know you can drive it from a world but-” Copper stopped, looking at the king sitting across from him. “It's too late for your world.”

There was an obvious look of confusion on his face. “Too late? What do you mean too late?”

Copper had to think how to best explain it. “It is something the Other said to me before it left. It said it had already won, that this world was over. Your Priest has no power anymore, the Other has left this world because it's already...doomed.”

“But...” Copper could see the pony trying to figure it out, trying to find the angle. “You managed it.”

“The Other had not won in my world. There was still a fight going on.” Copper was watching the king carefully. It was never good to be the pony delivering the bad news. “It's already won here. There's no magic here, and the world is dying if not already dead. I can feel it and you can, too. You're just blinding yourself, as the Priest is doing.”

He watched as the king deflated, shoulders sagged and his head drooped. A bat pony walked cautiously towards them, with the look of somepony who'd drawn the short straw. “My king? Is it true?” Copper did not take his eyes from the pony in front of him. “Is he the Prophet?

Copper's brow wrinkled. He had a vague notion of hearing that during his sentencing. It was something that had been whispered. The look the king gave him caused Copper to lean more against the wall. “If he is not the Prophet, then there is not going to be a Prophet.”

“And what does that title mean?” Copper did not want another title.

“The Prophet is somepony the Other spoke of. He is the one who will come at the End Times and lead us to better times. But it was only something spoken of briefly, something the Other changed not long after...but once the End Times began, talk of the Prophet began again.” The king looked back at the one who had come. “Gather up food and water, and make up a place for Copper to sleep. I'm sure he is quite tired.”

The pony practically ran. “Perhaps it was a last ditch effort by the one with no name...” Copper muttered and the king turned to him. “The thing that fights the Other...it has shown that it has a lot of power...maybe it brought me here on purpose...” Copper couldn't imagine having that much forethought. To think in terms of worlds and all those that lived there. “Bastard...” Now he had to figure out a lot more. “But a long rest sounds good. That...Blood Horror is something straight out of a nightmare.” Nightmare...

“It is something the Other brought forth. It was born from the blood of those that did not believe in the Other. They hunt down those who do not believe and let the Blood Horror have them. It drains them and leaves nothing but a corpse.” Copper saw as a hesitant bat pony moved into the room, using it's wing to carry a tray. It could hardly be called a tray, but it's what it was being used for. On it Copper saw an odd assortment of mushrooms and...a slab of meat.

Copper stared at the slab of meat as a basin of water was laid beside him. Surprisingly it was clean. He leaned in to drink, but as soon as his muzzle touched it he saw it turn red with blood. He sighed and dunked his face, washing off the blood. Again his attention turned to the meat. The awful look of it, the violent looking red and the leaking red juices. “This is...” He cleared his throat, recognizing immediately what the meat was from. “I do not eat meat.”

The king's brow furrowed slightly. “It is all we have to eat aside from mushrooms.”

“And I will eat those,” he said as he sniffed at them carefully before tasting one. They smelled like mushrooms he'd eaten in the past and he'd not enjoyed that experience, but as he ate them they were the best thing he'd ever tasted.

“You should not be picky. You need your strength to-”

“I will not be lectured by cannibals,” Copper snapped. It had been something Copper had stuck with even through the worst of times. “I would rather starve than eat that.” He poured the water from the basin over him, focusing the water down into his leg. Crystal metal didn't rust, but he wanted to flush out as much of the blood as possible.

“Food is not something to be picky over,” was the kings response, slightly taken aback by Copper's outburst.

“There are consequences to eating each other, even in desperate times.” It was something Copper refused to budge on. “The meat of your fellow ponies, and those that you see on an equal level to your own, whether they be your family or neighbor should be put to rest, not devoured.”

The other pony rushed off when Copper was done speaking, Copper hoped to get more water. “How are we to survive? It's all we have down here...”

“You find a way, or starve. These mushrooms are more than enough to survive off for a long time,” he said as he ate another.

The king had no response. From the other room, Copper heard the pony cry out, “The Prophet says we are to not eat meat!” Which was followed by a large commotion and several ponies looking down the hall at him.

“Could I get more water?” Copper called out and there was a clambering of movement. “Thank you in advance.” He ate a few more mushrooms. Several basin's of water were rushed into the room and laid around him. Copper used one to finish washing and then drank from another; not the bath he had wanted, but it was close enough. “Judging from the smell and taste of it, you collect the rain water?”

Again the king looked taken aback. “Yes. You can tell that by the taste?”

“I have lived off of rain water before; it has a sort of earthy taste to it. A bit like eating dirt.” He drank deeply. The taste of mushrooms and dirt was much better than that of the blood he had been forced to taste.

He really felt that he had tasted too much blood during his life. His own blood and others. Mostly his own blood. “So you were banished here like everypony else. Explain it to me.”

The king looked at Copper with a frown. “The Priest had such power...but I began to have my doubts. Rather than try and convert, they would simply sentence them to death. It was a mistake to mention it.”

“No, it was the right thing to do.” He sighed softly as he moved over to what looked like a bed made of something soft. As he laid down he saw the question the king wanted to ask. “I make no promises. But I will try.” With that he closed his eyes and slowly drifted off to sleep.

Author's Note:

(Last edit: 6/26/19)