The Infernal Line, Chapter 6: Scavenger Hunt, Part 5
Things were going great for the salvaging ponies… too great…
Blinding light abruptly filled their vision; the ponies in the little room—eyes down—still got an eyeful, but Mercury got it the worst, looking right into the main room forge.
“Gah!” Mercury yipped, his sight burning.
Startled backwards, the young stallion hit a row of stacked lead ingots.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Amethyst and Spc. Hemp leapt straight up, landing back on their hooves. Only a dozen or so ingots fell, but was it ever noisy!
Amethyst quickly calmed her mind. Even with her eyes screwed shut, she was able to visualize her companions. The specialist was by her side, stiff as starch and stunned but standing and mute. Mercury was writhing slightly on the floor, whimpering quietly as he wiggled to her side.
“Shh…” Amethyst soothed him.
He shut up at once, and there was silence.
Amethyst couldn’t tell much, so she further felt out their surroundings.
An awake centaur, sober and likely patrolling or checking in on the party, had entered the other side of the building. The lights inside the armory worked—for some reason—and had been turned on. It seemed the lights were connected to the little room, as well.
Shit! She’d failed to sense it approaching!
The mare scolded herself; she’d been excited about their apparent good fortune, and once again, she’d dropped her guard.
“Shield your eyes…” Amethyst whispered to the others, though they’d been doing so. “And keep quiet. We have company.”
Her voice was barely a whisper, but it was heard with the good ears of a pony.
The ponies listened, but only Amethyst was able to “see”. The centaur grunted in obvious frustration and disgust; it was taken aback at the scene, but maybe it didn’t figure the sound of the ingots falling meant anything. After all, the centaurs were strewn about the ruined forge, and the building was falling apart… Some beast— bothered by the sudden light—may have shifted and disturbed the structure.
But even if that was the case, that didn’t stop the centaur from looking around the building… which it did.
Shit… Amethyst thought bitterly, sensing the centaur rounding the prone bodies, moving further into the forge and towards them.
The only hope they had was the centaur wouldn’t look into the little room. Amethyst was good at magic, but she was unexpectedly weak in vanishing spells. Certainly, she could conceal the three of them, but the lights were on, there were ingots scattered on the floor, and she couldn’t sense those or the bags they’d been filling. And putting out the light above them wouldn't hide them at all, with plenty of it outside.
If the centaur looked in, it would see something was wrong, even if Amethyst hid herself and her companions.
The mare had to think quickly: there was no hiding their activity, and there was no door—just an entryway to the small room—so there was no shutting out the centaur’s prying eyes…
With only a couple seconds before the centaur would potentially be able to see them, Amethyst made her decision. And she wouldn’t be vanishing anypony.
Spark! Amethyst blew out all the lights overhead, a brief buzz issuing. Immediately, the ponies could open their eyes and see again. The stallions saw the centaur… right in front of them; neither had seen such a creature! Spc. Hemp suppressed a cry, and Mercury felt his bowels loosen.
The centaur, still grunting in confusion, stared here and there in the darkness. Whether it suspected anything was about to happen or not, the ponies wouldn’t ever know.
In the pitch-black, the centaur saw Amethyst’s horn spark again, illuminating her face and body.
“Equi-” it began, never finishing the word “equine”.
Amethyst hadn’t thought ahead as much as she might, and her first instinct was to silence the centaur, before all else. She encapsulated its head in a sound-proof bubble. She hesitated in killing it, though… Her companions didn’t know she was capable of the "brain-buster"—only the lieutenant and a choice few were—and she’d decided not to let them know… for reasons both selfish and practical.
The centaur didn’t even notice anything was wrong immediately, but it only took a few seconds for it to realize it couldn’t breathe; it began to panic, pulling at its throat.
Amethyst took a good 10 seconds to realize this.
She’d merely created a literal bubble! There was no air to breathe after a breath or two.
Strangely, the magic bubble beginning to choke off the centaur’s life—normally invisible in light—glowed under the power of the night-vision, but this was the least important thing occurring.
The stallions gasped, realizing what was happening, but they sure weren’t going to put a hoof in! All they could do was watch.
Something Amethyst hadn’t expected was felt within… She was horrified! She was horrified to see what she’d done. But why?!
Was it the centaur? Watching its rising terror?
Was it that she knew now she was slipping? She felt as if everything she’d done that night was half-assed, poorly planned, and clumsy.
Had she just lost her stomach for being a walking, talking, murder-machine? Not that it hadn't happened ages ago...
She wasn’t sure, pondering in those few seconds.
But one thing was certain: she needed a cleaner kill.
A few reasons why and why not to end it quickly went through her head: she had to hold up the lieutenant’s credibility—that she wasn’t able to kill a monster so easily… but suffocation could be a noisy, violent death… and undue struggling would suggest foul play… and the two stallions didn’t need to know just what she was capable of. Magically blowing a brain was easy; it was doing it cleanly that took a few terrible tries at it.
Glancing to her sides, Spc. Hemp and Mercury looked revolted, watching the centaur begin to buck around, now tearing at its throat. Any longer, and the centaur would begin to dig into its own flesh.
Amethyst had to decide what to do! Almost 30 seconds had passed since she cast the spell.
And she decided to go with the brain-bleed… the “brain-buster”…
The reason she settled on was a painful one: she couldn’t stand to see a creature die that way again; she’d done it that way a few times, killing others.
She focused her magic, going after a few choice blood vessels in the centaur’s head.
Fwink!
The centaur would’ve fallen down like a 6,000-pound bag of potatoes, but Amethyst caught the body… and “faked” the rest of the asphyxiation.
The stallions didn’t know what was going on, and they just looked on, revulsed. Amethyst kept the game up another 45 seconds, controlling the centaur’s throes and appearing to struggle. It was difficult for her, and she hated herself more by the second.
At last, Amethyst let the centaur go limp, and she collapsed, panting believably.
Specialist Hemp was on his rump, jaw dropped. Mercury wasn’t in much better shape, feeling dizzy.
Amethyst blinked; her eyes still bothered her from the flashes of light she’d received.
She asked, sounding calmer than she was, “You two okay?”
Mercury jarred, standing bolt-upright, “Yes, ma’am… But my eyes hurt… I’m seeing spots…”
“You’ll be alright… We all will. It was just a short exposure… no different than looking into the sun for a second.”
Specialist Hemp shuddered, coming to his senses, “God…!”
Amethyst regarded him as he shook his head; she turned her eyes back to Mercury.
“You all right, otherwise?” she patted his back.
“I may have soiled myself,” Mercury stated.
“How bad is it?” Amethyst checked his rear, projecting the collected mare she always wanted to show everypony.
Mercury squirmed, “It stayed well in the uniform, ma’am…”
Since he’d left no visible trace, there was little reason for her to worry.
“Wait until we’re down below, and then clean yourself up,” Amethyst said. “We need to get out of here.”
“The smell…” Mercury put forth. “Won’t they notice some other creature’s stink?”
She shook her head, “I said they had lousy senses of smell, and it’s true; they won’t be able to tell… especially with all else up here...”
This quelled their worries. There was no sign of any other creature approaching, and they’d managed to keep quiet.
This left the non-elephant in the room. Neither stallion was too put off by what they believed Amethyst did. It had been messy, desperate, and brutal, but it was effective. And there was no question about its necessity.
“Sergeant… uh, wow…” Spc. Hemp groaned.
Amethyst put up a convincing front, “It was the first thing I thought to do.”
He nodded, “Well, it sure worked…”
She nodded back, “It did.”
“Uh…” Mercury motioned to the heap of “choked-off” meat. “What do we do?”
Amethyst barely hesitated, “It has to look like an accident. Stand back, and watch the doors, both of you. Let me know if you see or hear anything besides us.”
The stallions did as they were told and looked on as Amethyst began whatever it was she was doing. They had to watch the doors, but there was no looking away as Amethyst put up a soundproof barrier around the centaur and its surroundings.
Lining up the body where she wanted it, she let the weight of the centaur do the job… mostly. She wanted to make it look like the centaur had taken a good spill, having slipped in the grime on the floor.
With a bit of extra force behind it, she slammed the centaur’s head into an abrupt edge on the side of the big forge at jaw-level.
Shunk! would’ve been the noise, but the bubble kept it quiet; the building still shook with the weight of the body when it hit the floor, and some dust fell from on high.
“Jesus…!” Spc. Hemp mouthed, seeing this.
The centaur’s neck was broken at a crazy angle, and the head had cracked like an egg on the sharp corner into which it had been forced.
Mercury felt a thrill of sickness ride up to the end he hadn’t shat from, and he had to swallow his vomit, watching the blood pooling, mixing with all the other foulness on the floor.
Amethyst further desecrated the scene by magically smearing a little of everything at the centaur’s hooves. The idea that the centaur had the worst slip-and-fall in history was quite convincing; it was as if the legs were swept right out from under the bastard.
The mare dropped the barrier, looking a little nauseous—and she wasn’t faking that, “There… it was an accident.”
The stallions merely nodded at the gruesome sight, and they prepared to leave. Just because they could, they pilfered another 15 pounds of ingots, bringing their total weight to 60.
Amethyst covered their tracks back to the duct, and the three ponies went back down. The first thing they saw was Cpl. Painter’s tense face.
“I saw the light in the pipe!” Cpl. Painter breathed. “What happened?”
Amethyst simply told him, “It’s under control. Let’s move.”
“We got the goods?” he asked as she passed him.
Specialist Hemp gave a lop-sided grin, “Sure did…”
After several minutes of walking—and Mercury shaking out his uniform—the night-vision wore off. Giving their eyes a few moments to rest in the darkness, they soon moved again under lit horns.
“Wow…” Cpl. Painter had just been told of their predicament. “Good thing you were able to keep it quiet.”
The other stallions felt strongly in the same spirit.
Amethyst was already tired of thinking about it; the centaur’s suffocating face was in the forefront of her mind, “Let’s just keep moving. We need to contact the lieutenant once we get safely to the woods.”
That ended their time chatting about their mission and its complications. With heavy bags full of gold, silver, copper, lead, and a bunch of good steel, they’d done what they’d set out to do and more. All they had to do was get back to camp.
As they retraced their steps back to the tunnel’s entrance, the stallions resumed chatting. This time they talked of killing centaurs and the two ponies that had done it in the last several centuries.
Amethyst wasn’t even paying attention to who was saying what. In fact, she was mostly blocking it out, disgusted, but she found it hard to keep to herself.
“That was something, but it must’ve been a sight to see the lieutenant take those things! Sergeant Flare saw him do it! To nine of them!”
She hummed, “I only saw a couple… I lost consciousness.”
He’d only handled one… Amethyst thought.
“Imagine if he’d been with us…”
“He would’ve slaughtered that thing!”
Yes, he could’ve… if he’d been able to go nuts… and it wouldn’t have helped their “silent” efforts…
“Man, I almost wish I could keep my wits to see that…” Cpl. Painter waxed; of course, he’d faint pretty fast, he’d readily admitted.
As they paddled on, Amethyst again blocked out the chatter and retreated to her own thoughts.
…
She figured ponies would’ve figured it out by then, but as far as she knew, none of them had… that the lieutenant hadn’t slaughtered an entire party of centaurs—doing who knows what past their defense-line—with his own strength.
A berserker the lieutenant may have been, but it hadn’t been him to commit most of that atrocity so many ponies in the division had sneaked around to see.
She recalled that night… all those weeks ago. She’d foolishly gone out to track the centaurs she’d sensed, and the lieutenant had followed her. Despite his wishes to fall back, she’d succeeded in killing eight of them… some of them brutally. The lieutenant had ordered her to take the last one alive.
But she’d failed, and she was about to die at its hands. The lieutenant had rescued her, becoming injured in the process. It was then, watching that beast preparing to kill her, that he’d gone apeshit.
And she was conscious long enough to see that!
She’d never told anypony what she saw…
It was a cleaner kill than those which she wound up giving him credit. All he’d done was climb up on the thing, wrap himself around its shoulders, and break its neck… though it was a Helluva struggle. And he’d wound up using such force against the thrashing centaur, he’d torn the damn thing’s jaw off… with only his clumsy hooves!
The lieutenant had been outraged upon seeing the violence Amethyst had left… But she’d not left anything impossible for a berserk Pegasus to accomplish on his own. The berserkers were stuff of legends, but they were well-documented, occurring from time-to-time, and a pony lost in bloodlust could leave anypony or any other creature looking as if cannon-fire had rendered them to pieces. They could fight at full-tilt until their spirits literally left their bodies, felt no pain, had no fear, had no actual thinking going on, and most magic—short of something pretty powerful—glanced off of them.
When the lieutenant had killed Lt. Hoop, he’d not gone fully berserk; the same could be said of his killing the last centaur that nearly did in Amethyst. Had he gone fully hog-wild—and Amethyst had accurately depicted such a thing—he would’ve killed not only Lt. Hoop, but everypony else within his sight that night. And he wouldn’t have stopped until he was rendered unconscious, dead, or until there wasn’t anything left to kill (hopefully they’d have figured running for the exit was a good idea…), and he’d simply have petered out.
Amethyst was sickened at the revel over the lieutenant’s supposed deeds. If the ponies knew just how dangerous their “slayer of centaurs” was, they’d be less than accepting of it. She’d immediately regretted what she’d done, but she hadn’t been thinking ahead.
She hadn’t been and, as stated several times, still wasn’t ready for everypony to know the degree of which she was a walking, talking war-machine; she’d set out to hunt those centaurs out of personal need… to see if she still “had it”. If she’d done as she’d planned to, she would’ve killed the nine of them, hidden the evidence, and no word on the matter would ever be spoken.
It was the lieutenant that threw off her idea. Looking back, it had been foolish to try to include him when he unexpectedly showed up… It was foolish to think he’d help her conceal such a thing—though he might’ve… But instead of turning around—as would’ve been wise—she’d gone for it. She’d wanted to impress him; more than proving anything to herself, she’d wanted to prove herself to him… though she’d never needed to. That was the ugly truth she’d discovered about herself... that night.
Maybe she did still have it… Maybe… She wasn’t sure if getting swatted by that centaur was her having lost her edge or just a fluke. She knew now that she was spiraling, but couldn't quite chalk it up to that.
…
…
All she knew was she loathed herself for her selfishness… and putting her beloved commander in that situation… her beloved Lt. Zip Screamer.
And yes, was he ever angry about it! Nopony could blame him, least of all her. Still, she hadn’t felt like much of a mare when he’d tracked her down, pissing herself and coming unglued as she had.
She'd been frightened of her lieutenant, then… nearly as frightened as she’d ever been of anything. He’d reminded her—viscerally—of her second husband… all the times she’d been afraid that “tonight would be the night”… that he’d finally get carried away and kill her.
She’d given Zip a hundred reasons to hate her, but he didn’t, somehow; it was one of the reasons she’d fallen for him… It wasn’t his being a “pushover” or a “doormat”, but that he had the capacity for being her dear friend. And she’d had so few friends in her life.
She looked forward to hugging him once they were back at camp. Hopefully he wouldn’t mind her being covered in shit.
Once they got back…
…
…
…
After regrouping in the clean, cold night air, the four ponies began their trek to camp at 00:50. Once they reached the forested hills, they'd contact their lieutenant with the good news.
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That was a nice new chapter there!
Have 3Rings of Baumkuchen, 5Muffins,2Cupcakes and a coffee.
But somehow I have the feeling that something is going to go horribly wrong and all those precious metals won'T get to where they are needed....
10081893
I try. And don't worry too much. There's a little "plot-armor" at work, for the time being.
Someone dropped a review of this story.
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/891471/review-swap-the-virgin-company-by-pone-heap
10114374
And it sucks donkey balls 🏀 ⚽️.
10114374
I read it. You were waiting for it for so long, I was excited to see it too. If Transfat freaked out over names and there being fewer mares in the army than stallions, he can’t have been paying much attention to anything else. He said he fell off at the end of chapter one.
But he was kind of right in wondering about the names. Other than the brother and sister none of them sound very military-ish. How did that happen?
10134655
No need to get personal and nasty.
I was just explaining to someone else why. It went something like this:
I don't have names that were molded for a pony's current situation (in the military). What I mean by that is... I didn't name a pony something like "Scootaloo" because I somehow knew she'd ride the Hell out of a scooter one day. It's not like she was born with it, and I doubt Mane Goodall could've pushed that thing out alongside her daughter anyway.
I gave ponies names like "Jacinta Petals" or "Caramel Crunch" or "Basket Weaver" because they were just born normal ponies. They chose to join the military later. That's why I didn't name any "Sharpshooter" or "Frag Grenade". I named a brother and a sister "Razor Wire" and "Trip Wire", respectively, but that's it and only because their father was an NCO in the army.
10114374
Just checking in.
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