Death of Mother Nature Suite

by Cynewulf

XI. (A) The Fires of Perdition

She awoke suspended, her legs stiff and sore from the ropes. They had attached several drips to her flank, her side, her chest, her neck--all of them running through chains attached to shackles above her hooves. Every movement possible would upset two dozen different hanging ropes or chains, for they hung down like a weeping willow’s branches. Like spanish moss, Applejack through groggily, that’s what it was like. Like Spanish moss made of iron and sinew.

She did not make a sound. Groans would only draw them to her. She knew this. The servants of the Tower hunted by sound, and the jailors would no doubt operate by the same motive force. She imagined what they might be like. Would it be Artifcers? Or was there some intermediary class between the butchers and their inventory of parts and canvas?

As her mind came back, Applejack began to really examine her surroundings. Below the forests of restraints, there was a vast darkness cut across by slivers of light cast through windows on the walls. At least she assumed it was so. She couldn’t see the walls very well through the chains and her fellow prisoners.

For there were more of them. In the dark, in the chains, there were a dozen ponies and griffons suspended above the void. The nearest to her was a young unicorn colt probably only half her age. He groaned softly, startling her into painful movement that she regretted, and then strained against his shackles for a few seconds. He could not keep up his struggle for much longer, for it soon proved too much for him and he went limp.

He was only a few ponylengths away. She had the absurd idea of swinging herself until she could reach out and touch him, but the slightest jerk of her leg sent agony running through her. Her body was so stiff. She imagined the needles coming out, all at once, pulling out, and she felt sick.

Welcome to the Tower, Applejack, she thought and ground her teeth.

Consciousness is an elusive thing.

It comes. It goes. It is soft and pliable to the touch in ways that it should not be, and yet is. Among the chains, Applejack’s mind was like a beach, and time like waves that took a bit at a time. The hours dug causeways in her consciousness, stealing it from her. She was less a pony and more the sensation of suspension, of dull pain and cottonmouth. If there was water, she might have felt alive, but there was no water and so she felt like meat in a Griffon’s freezer.

The Tower was cold. Not just cool, like one finds in well ventilated buildings, but cold. Piercing cold. Like cold knives slipping under her skin, like they slipped them in and sewed her up after and the icy blades were trapped inside.

Her sight would swim. Sometimes she thought she saw things moving in the inky black. Sometimes she didn’t see it at all, the pit, but instead she saw a brightly lit room with piles of twisted metal and beds coated in dried blood, or what she thought was dried blood, and robed piles of twitching parts walked beneath. Sometimes she looked down and saw fields, verdant and whole. Sometimes she saw the last battle and the winding gorge and the bridge. Once, Applejack saw a hipbone rising out from her bowl of stew and Celestia was laughing from across the table about the price of grain and the price of coal, the price of oil and the price of apples. A bit for a bushel of oil, a bit for a bushel of blood, she laughed and Applejack slurped up her soup and then she came up out of the nightmare into the other nightmare, the one that had the chains and the needle drips, and then she stumbled out of that one, swinging, into the last and worst nightmare, the one where the earth was green and Fluttershy’s eyes still worked and Twilight Sparkle of Ponyville was still of Ponyville and alive.

She thought sometimes that she saw a figure be brought down from the hanging ropes. They would be dislodged and descend like the gods of ancient ponies, like they were gingerly stepping down from heaven. Slowly, slowly, and then they were beyond her sight in the darkness, and they did not come into the small lit places below.

Sometimes she heard things, but she did not want to hear them.

Sometimes she heard the grinding of far off gears. Sometimes she heard the laughter of children. Once, she heard Twilight Sparkle lecturing in a shining hall.

Eventually, they took her down.

Applejack lay on a bed now, somewhere else in the Tower of Cogs. There was no telling how high up she was. Ten stories? Thirty? Fifty? How tall was the abomination anyhow? How much of the sky did it contaminate with its smog and grinding?

They had cut her down. Literally, she had woken to red glaring eyes in the dark and the sound of saw blades as they cut the ropes and chains and she collapsed into the grasp of large clawed hands made of some sort of surface unlike any she had known. She had been brought here through a long darkness and then a brief terrible light. She had been given food and water, and it was all clean and filling.

There had been no questions. There had been, in fact, no strength for questions. What would she have asked, had she possessed the will? Nothing. The Cogs did not answer questions. Others answered their questions.

Her kit had not been returned to her. She was sorry to see it go, but much of it was replaceable. The spurs, for instance, were a bit a dozen, though hers had been of high quality. The food was a concern, but she could steal or trade services for more. The only things she needed were the duster and the maps, and the duster she could at least find something to replace with.

Mac’s maps. Applejack shuddered. There was no telling where they were or what had happened to them. For all she knew they’d been burnt.

Just thinking about it almost broke her exhausted, numb horror enough to bring her to tears. Gone.

She waited for someone to collect her, but nothing walked through the door of her spartan cell. In the meantime, as her strength returned, Applejack waited.

Her room was bare, almost entirely bare except for the emblem of a cog emblazoned in relief on one wall. There was a single bed, small but not too small, and a table just large enough for an empty bowl and a carafe of water. She had already drank half of the water in blind greed.

There were hoofsteps outside. At least, she assumed what made them were hooves.

It might have been heroic to think that one would go down swinging, that one might could spit in the eye of the interrogator and declaim. It was a sweet if not seemly thing to dream in the intervening seconds between hearing and seeing that she might could ambush her jailor at the door, overpower him, and push out into the corridor beyond. She imagined herself fighting through the winding, circular stairs, one at a time and unstoppable and…

The door opened behind her. She had not moved.

The newcomer did not introduce itself. She felt cold iron scoop her out of the bed and she squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to see anything.

Applejack knew better. Not everything was in darkness, and she had see the halls. One did not walk in the tower past the first story. One was taken along--one connected to a rail and slid along by way machinery. She would be hard pressed to survive just walking. She could not escape as she was and she knew it.

The trip was long, she thought. Time was hard to pin down. Even with the influx of food and water, she was still hazy.

But eventually she was deposited in another room, and she did not open her eyes as her jailor left. She did not want to see them.

She also needed a clear head to think.

Any hopes of that were dashed as a familiar voice spoke from above her. “Ah, it’s you. They’ve found you, then.”

Comments

[Yami Vizzini]

And here I was about to go to bed....

If nothing else, I have to agree with AJ about consciousness being slippery- at the very least you don't know when you've started to drift off until you suddenly wake up. Thankfully, I can't speak to the rest of her experience.

[Ice Star]

Curse this cliffhanger! D:

[Fiddlebottoms]

8883176
I guess the suspicion makes sense; she is some kind of fugitive. Really does just seem to have a pretty lax attitude to food in general, though.

I look forward to more if you feel like bringing more forth.