RoMS' Extravaganza

by RoMS

2013 project - Shattered - 2. Discharged

Chapter 2, Discharged

“When a miner’s got nothing to do… he’s got some laws to screw”

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“Get your ass out of the way!” a voice roared. “You ain’t authorised to do this!”

“He. Needs. Help!”

“And here, you, fallen, has got no power! So move out of the way, bitch!”

[…]

I lay on my back, sore and stiff, a blinding light hung above my head. I was alone. The room I woke up in was entirely covered in white tiles. Its cleanliness put to shame my own hide, the light itself throwing every stain into stark relief.

The light, overwhelming and powerful, was pouring out from a single lamp screwed to the ceiling: an arc crystal, as always. Those tiny contraptions were everywhere and so useful. Sometimes I did understood why we, the miners, were sent to death to retrieve those along with the coal. They were jewels of engineering and refinery. I was so sad I had to put my life on the line to enjoy this warming light on a daily basis.

Shaking my head out of the reverie, I stared at my surrounding, desperate to find something to focus on. The wall on my left had a massive mirror mounted over a series of clean basins. The right wall only displayed a thick, white door.

The fact that I didn’t know where I was washed over me with cold fear. Bending my back in a violent jerk, I sat up… or rather tried to. My whole body shuddered with spasms, pain bursting through my bones.

A few minutes passed, trying to tame the pain and calm myself. I was breathing by little puffs of air, aiming at lessening the ripping sensation cramping my lungs. My dried lips cracked with pain as I breathe, the cold air stinging my two or three teeth. Steadying, forcing myself not to cry but couldn’t stop from shedding one or two tears.

I tilted my head forward to take it my physical state. My chest, swelling up and down, was covered with green and brown oozing burns. Some of my skin showed taints of rosé. My left flank was scarred, splattered with large patches of blistered flesh. My left hip was a complete mess. Where my cutie mark should have been… nothing remained but a patch of brown, a pure mess. Stretching my hoof, I tried to reach where my cutie mark should be. My cutie mark there was gone. Gone.

I tried to look at my other side, willing to take in the sight of it but leather restraints barred my movement. I was tied to a bed. A hospital bed.

I forced on the bind. The binds. It just succeeded in giving me more pain. Hooves and hindquarters trussed up, I writhed about in the free space the ties gave me. My scars scrapped on the leather. The pain sparked fear. Fear triggered panic.

Eyes shot-open, squealing, I attempted escape in spite of the pain, making me shaking. The pain being too strong, I only gave in. My hooves pounded on the side of the bed. Hissing and unable to stop the tremors crippling my limbs, I cried.

“Wow, calmos, child,” a mare advised me as she entered the room, closing the door behind her with a push of her rear end. “Don’t reopen the wounds.

She had a rather loose nurse attire, a mask, and that cold disk of metal with two earplugs which I couldn’t remember the name. Going to the doc’ was too expensive for me anyway. She had tied her dark brown mane into a bun, giving to see her deep brown eyes like two stains on her coat of cream white. Her cutie marks were hidden beneath the white cloth.

“Let me go,” I begged, pulling on my ties only to trigger a new wave of pain.

“And risking a paddlin’, hun? No, thanks,” she scolded with a smile. “I’m not going to make that mistake again.”

She took a piece of white tissue out of her suit and started wiping off my tears, then the pus dripping off the wounds.

“Uh?” I looked at her, perplexed.

She stopped, her smile dying a little, swapping place with a hint of surprise. She raised an eyebrow and walked up so her head was above mine, her hooves clattering rhythmically on the tiled floor. Her lips pinched together and she buckled up a small laugh.

“You don’t remember, hun?” Her voice, as sweet as honey, fell silent as she bit on a pen pointing out of a pocket.

Methodically, she picked up a notebook hanging on the end of the bed, and read its contents. Mumbling, going through my records, she focused for an horribly long minute.

She put the notebook back on its rack and returned her attention to me.

“Oh, sho’y, yesh,” she chewed over the pen, stuck in her mouth before spitting it back in her pocket. “When you were brought here, you were in shock. You broke another nurse’s jaw.”

She sighed and pointed to my ties with a jab of her muzzle.

“We bound you to that bed for safety. It’s not the first time we’ve gotten some irate patients.”

She prodded my skin with a savant hoof, sliding its tip over my scars and burns, giving me nothing but tickles.

“You’re lucky the flashover didn’t damage any vital parts or organs,” she huffed in relief. “You’ll survive. With minor scars, mostly.”

“Mostly?” I blabbered, fear gripping my heart to the thought I would live with more than scars.

“You’re a miner, right?”

I nodded, gulped, and kept silence while she observed me from her dominant position. Couldn’t she untie me? Her eyes followed the lines of scars marking my hide and crawled up to my cheek.

“I can only speak for myself. I don’t know the field in which you work in the Pit,” she stated, overbearingly neutral, “but the mines aren’t a good place for cicatrisation.”

I looked down, and grunted, “Well, I’m sorry about your co-worker, but can I be untied? Like... now.”

I gritted my teeth as she giggled at me. It wasn’t funny.

“Uncomfortable, hon?”

I huffed. the playful nurse was wearing a golden chain around her left forehoof. Gold… Haven’t seen that in a while. Lifting my head up, I tried to take in more of her features. I stopped on her wings, sprouting out of her suit through two sewn holes.

For the first time since I had awoken, I let the silence settle. A knife rubbing in an open wound. I tensed, felt a drop of sweat roll over my forehead and slide behind my right ear. It fell and hit the floor in a heavy drip. Her eyes and mine met. Every ounce of her playful mindset was gone, she just huffed and shook her head. Colours left my face. We gauged each other. To be honest, I was the first to break contact.

“Where am I?” I asked.

Her eyes, cold and dark pierced through me like a spear. Her wings fluttered softly.

“In the hospital of Murmanesk’s prison,” she answered, neutral.

I scoffed at her.

“There is no hospital in that jail. I know that. I’ve already been there!” I deadpanned, trying to grasp the best out of my situation.

And… I knew I should have shut up. She grinned, showing a row of white teeth that made my own, yellowish and uneven, look like shit. She turned around, whipped her tail on my burnt flank and walked by the door. The massive chunk of reinforced wood creaked on its hinges as it closed.

“Unbind me! Where I am!? Please!” I shouted, to no avail.

Now, that was getting ridiculous. Really…

I knew of no Pegasus that would help an earth pony like me. They were too mechanical for that. Too evil for that!

Did they understand the word compassion? Impossible. It was not in their twisted nature to do so. I knew it! I had seen them do the most monstrous things. I knew they were monsters.

And what do we do with monsters?

Nothing, but hide.

“It’s not a jail. It’s not a jail,” I repeated to myself. “Where…?”

A shy laugh.

“Somewhere safe. At least.”

My mane stood on end.

The deep, calm, and inquisitive male voice petrified me. A cold sweat trickled down my brow as, for the first time since I had opened my eyes, I heard that simple, low breath break through the ambient silence. Right behind my head.

“Well, I guess you dislike that situation as much as I do,” the stallion confessed. “But you know the rules. ‘The culprits…”

“… must be punished,” I finished. That’s what the posters were saying, nailed everywhere in Murmanesk. “Steal a pick axe. Steal a friend’s life.”

The sayings were right. They always were. I had known co-workers who’d died because of somepony else’s lies or mistakes. the punition, if not brought by the Pegasi, was always carried by the earth ponies you’d made into enemies.

“Good, good, you learnt your lesson.” His hoof brushed over my mane and crawled down to my shoulder. Painful. “You can be proud.”

I whimpered, pulling on my bonds to see who my interlocutor was. Those bonds were too tight, biting in my skin.

“Who’re you?” I squeaked.

“One thing at a time, would you?” he countered. “What’s your name?”

I froze. He was right behind me… but I still couldn’t see. A hoof whacked the side of my head. The pain snaked in my teeth. Cold. I hiccuped. I was not fast enough.

“What’s your name?”

“Coal Dust.”

His hoof hovered over my face, and dropped. My muzzle scrunched under the strength of a hammer-like punch. I screamed.

His fur was a clear blue. A rare colour to see to be honest. Blue…

Star danced before my eyes. Focusing was hard. Ears ringing, the stallion’s whispering, inquisitive voice crackled once again behind me.

“Who are you?”

A stiffening coldness spiked through my body. My belly wrenched and my mane crawled with all that stallion could do to me. Could and would get away with it. Bathing in fear, my body contracted painfully. My heart, beating wildly, forced a chilling gag up my throat. The dreadful voice was playing with me. I was trapped within his hooves. A void opened in my chest. I was simply nothing.

“Coal Dust. Excavation team. Eastern wing of the pit. Matriculate, 009PSQ-EP90-07-64,” I said in one raspy breath and begged, “please, don’t kill me.”

“You see. When earth ponies want, earth ponies can… when they’re not doing a mule from themselves. Stop crying, It’s unbecoming of an adult like you.” He paused, probably grinning. I heard him clack his tongue in his mouth a few centimetres next to my ears. “You’re still young though.”

I was crying indeed. The pain from his hooves pressing my shoulders, unbearable. I knew I needed medical attention. I knew he should stop. But when Pegasi do, earth ponies look down and remain silence. Rules. The rules! Don’t break them, or it’s a promised new shift in the pit. Don’t break them again, or you get discharged. Then you’re taken far in the East, to fight the war. And, if by any misfortune you couldn’t fight, just hope they won’t throw you over the cliff. The cliff… I had seen it once. Frightening.

“Oh come on, young one,” he fatherly said, tapping his hoof on my shoulder in a gentle way that still made me grunt. “I’m not a monster. I just want to understand.”

The bed creaked dangerously as the stallion threw it sideway.

“To understand how stupid…”

I finally faced him, my eyes shot-open in terror. A rather slender, nonetheless impressively muscular, beige coated stallion grinned back at me. His groomed black mane stretched behind his ears, giving to see a large barren forehead. His eyes, two grey diamonds, looked down at me with no animosity whatsoever. He was wearing a thin black jacket sewn with gold and silver, contrasting greatly with his two wings falling on his sides.

“...and dangerous you are!”

he walked forth so that his muzzle nearly touched mine. The clatter one of his hoof produced as he made his move caught me off-guard. A sound of metal.

“Look in my eyes,” he ordered.

Where his right hindquarter should be shone with a unnatural reflection, but when a Pegasus order, the earth pony obeys. So did I. I looked into his eyes, no matter how uncomfortable it made me. To see myself in those two irises where I could read nor hatred, interest, anger, or anything.

“You were in the Pit, three shifts ago, weren’t you?”

Was it already three shifts? For how long had I been trapped down there? How long had I been unconscious?

Answer!

Answer fast. I didn’t want to be beaten.

“Y- Yes!” I nodded.

“Good,” he smiled. “You were the arc specialist of your shift, am I right?”

I nodded even harder, swallowing the saliva remaining in my dried mouth.

“So tell me.” His eyes pierced my soul. “Why did three hundred and forty seven miners died in the wing you supervised?”

“Three hundred and…”

That was bad.

Terribly bad.

“I’ve killed nobody,” I interjected.

“But ponies died,” he spat back. “So tell me, why?”

“I- I was down there. Was an flashover. Everything’s fuzzy. Can’t say! Body everywhere.”

He smacked my jaw with the back of his hoof.

“I want answers! Not gibberish.”

“I- I…” I sobbed. “I don’t really remember, okay.”

That ‘okay’ was going to cost me a lot. Prancing over, he dropped his two forehooves on my chest. I bent under the weight and pain. I even puked. a few drops stained his suit. Trembling, I meekly looked away, biting in my lower lip to give up the least amount of squeak that could make him happy.

“Stop… Stop, ple-e-ease.”

He growled. “So tell me, what happened!?”

“I don’t know!! I woke up in that cave. Was a body. He’s been killed for sure and burnt after that.” I gurgled. “Didn’t kill him though.”

He remained silent. And so did I.

I slowly looked up in his direction. His eyes fixed the nether before him, in deep thought. I swallowed hard.

“So you’re telling, somepony killed another underground.”

I couldn’t say for sure. The cadaver had that slash around the neck. Could have been a bad landing on a rock. But because it was burnt in a place filled with water… Anyway, the stallion was a Pegasus. No earth pony was to contest a pegasus. I nodded as hard as I could.

“Yes,” I hissed. “Yes.”

“Do you know what ponies do to the liars?” He wishfully asked.

I drifted my eyes away and gulped. My throat hurt from being sore and dry. I wished I could drink. I had that horrid taste of soot still present on my tongue.

“You don’t know?” He gritted, feigning surprise.

“First they cut out the tongue,” I began, pressing my own against my teeth to check it was really there, “then they cut open the hoof with a hook. And they hang the pony with it to a pole. So that everypony can see. The liars.”

“Yes, that’s it.” He smiled. “Now you know what happens if you lie.”

I prefered not to think about it.

Sniffing, fluttering my eyelid to wash off the blurriness from my tears, I look at his hindquarter. One of his leg was made of metal, shining with a small blue arc encased in a glass cylinder. Cogwheels, valves, and pistons activated together as he walked up to me. the movements of the mechanisms was fascinating, making no real noise as it moved up and down. He crossed his hooves on the side of my bed, looking at me with a playful smile. the closer he was, the more uncomfortable I got. A ball of fur formed in my throat. I wanted to puke.

“You know what’s worse?”

I shook my head.

“Right now. I am your only friend. Remember what ponies say. The culprits must be punished…”

“...Steal a pick axe. Steal a friend’s life,” I ended again.

He patted me. “Good, good.” And smiled the most horribly. “So now, tell me. What happens when somepony stole the life of another…?”

I never answered. My lips quivered. Tears rolled, heavy on my cheeks.

“What will happen when your friends will learn that you failed your job. That you may have killed their family?”

He took my hoof in his own.

“I didn’t…” I tried.

His grasp tightened.

“Maybe you didn’t. But what will they think of you? You lived. Their relatives didn’t.”

He was right. So damn right.

“And what’ll happen when you can’t defend yourself?”

“Uh?”

He giggled, “Well, they’re going to be pissed at you. And what about you giving away that you did kill your co-workers… by having nothing to defend yourself with?”

“Defend m’self with what?”

“Evidence.”

I looked at him, eyes-wide. My heart skipped a beat.

"Ah won’t go down,” I interjected.

He laughed, “Not your choice, piece o’cake. You’ve got no choice in this affair.” His stare fell on me like a boulder. “So tomorrow you’ll present yourself to the pit. And you’re gonna be part of the cleaning team. You won’t like it. None of the ponies will like cleaning that mess you did.”

I didn’t… I knew I didn’t. But what could have I said? He was the Pegasus. I was, definitely, nothing.

Nodding was the last thing I had.

“I will… I will.” I acquiesced.

“Good.” He sighed. “Would be a shame that your father lose you?”

“My father…”

He scolded at me. “Your father, while still being an earth pony, has some good strings to pull. He knows you’re alive. Haven’t been told where you are yet.”

I was reassured somehow.

“How good is it to have a father that can pull you out of the shit like that?” the Pegasus dropped. “Many must envy you… to have such position in the Pit.”

I said nothing. There was nothing to say anyway. Ponies were indeed jealous of my father. He was… powerful regardless of his earth pony condition. He was the one who ruled within the Pit, as much as the Pegasi ruled above.

“I’m going to let you go now,” the pegasus said, unstrapping me from the bed. “I’m sure you won’t be stupid to go against your father?”

“Against my father?” What had he told to save me from an expeditive punishment?

“Yes, he’s the one who asked you to prove you aren’t responsible for this mess.” He shook his head apprehensively. “You don’t know how much damage you may do to your father’s reputation with your mistakes. Your father put up some measures to delay the announcement of the adventures of his ‘prodigal son’.” He chuckled as I dropped, my legs cheesy, from the bed. He tended me his hoof, waiting for me to shake it. “Name’s Pureblood, and I’m sure we will make a great partnership together.”

[…]

I opened my eyes on a wet, stinky antechamber of death. The wall reeked, marred with brown and dark trickles of murky water dried from the heat coming from the hissing bodies lying around me. The ceiling had bent across the decades and, in its middle, among moss and putrefied stains of black, a single lamp switching off from time to time was balancing slowly from the loud hoofsteps from one stallion a floor above.

To my right, patchwork mattresses had been lain on which rested ponies, wounded, crying, murmuring, pleading… An earth pony stallion whose face had severe burns loudly breathed a retching air onto my nose. One of his forehoof was twisted and, my eyes following his features down to his hindquarters, I saw his linen had only torn bulge. Amputation.

A needle of fear piercing my heart, I instantly checked my legs and let out a sigh of relief. I was even given the privilege of a blanket with my two remaining legs. I was intact, yet not deprived of wounds and burns. Lifting the blanket, I saw unclean scars seeping with pus on my belly. My head hurt and reeled. My hooves were sore and bloody. However, I was alive. Pain, a simple tick on the checklist.

“Eh, lad, ye’re alive?”

I leaned my head on the left. I was sharing the poor excuse of a bed I had with an old stallion. Pressing his hoof on the gauze strapped to his left eye, he was looking at me, smiling, showing two range of yellowish and uneven teeth. Lying on his back, I was given to see his cutie mark… or to be honest were it should have been. A large gash, burnt and seared to black and a gruesome green and red, covered his flank.

“Yes, it hurts,” he told me through gritted teeth. “But at least I’m not the one on the other bed.”

I nodded silently.

“You too you’ve seen the mare?”

I glared at him perplexedly.

“You know, the white one who carried you here.”

I spoke, or at least tried to. My tongue licked where some molars had broken. Growling, trying to fit in my tongue in this new and eerie empty space, I took a few seconds to muster my words. Once I had left Pureblood, a masked doctor had knocked me out, not even to stitch me up. So technically speaking the mare hadn’t brought me here. Yet, she’d saved me.

“No, I don’t know. She just… happened.”

The stallion shrugged.

“She brought many of us, here. Too beautiful for the Pit.”

“Maybe.”

The stallion sighed. “You ain’t really talkative, are you?”

I was thinking about the mare, wearing her blackened non-flammable cape, shouting around.

I looked at my torso. There, between the coal and muck, remained the mark of two hooves pressing on and on. At least, she had left me with a souvenir, painful ribs.

“Yeah, beautiful…” I breathed.

“Eh, you!” an ice-cold voice spat above me.

Snapping out of my reverie, I found myself towered by a pony wearing a blood soaked pinafore, a red-dripping saw hanging at his belt. He only needed a white ivory mask to be a monster that had escaped of one of my weirdest child dream.

“You can see?”

“Yes…” I hesitated.

“You can walk?”

“I think… so,” I continued.

“You can leave?”

“eh, yes…”

“So stop wasting my time!” He kicked me in the side, cracking the thin layer of mud that had dried over my fur now falling below me on the stinky mattress.

“And take your… scabs with you!” he shouted as I made my way to the door, not listening to his stream of swear words.

I needed rest, but most of all I needed was directions to go back to my family’s cottage. To be honest, I had never been to the doctor, the dudes from the healthcare asked for a price I couldn’t manage to afford in one year of hard labour. Thus, I went on the tangent, hoping the old pony who’d just kicked me out wouldn’t chase me for a meagre payment.

“Hum… guy,” a rattling voice called from behind. A nurse, an old one this time, and an earth pony. “You’ve got to pass the aptitude test after each visit.”

Oh fuck me, that test. To be sure that I was still mentally okay for the mine…

Piece of cake.

[...]

“I… didn’t pass?”

I sat down the room stool, looking at the nurse rubbing her bleeding cheek. She shot me that kind of stare, wondering whether I was stupid… or really stupid.

“So, nurse… Am I ill?”

She pondered a second her answer, giving me a dark-ringed glare as her eyes rose from a paper report. Folded on the top, I could see my name written in black on the yellowish parchment. Pushing a lock of white mane aside her butter yellow face, she cleared her throat and sighed.

“Trauma,” she dropped like a hammer on an anvil.

That was one big word. She caught my dumbstruck look and let out a deep breath.

“To put it in lay-pony’s terms, your body has developed a fear of narrow spaces.”

“Uh?”

She showed me the fold she tried to blind me with. I had her blood on my hooves.

“I’m sorry.”

“I will have you discharged from any mine work.”

“You can’t!” I yelled.

She gave a step back, my bloodshot widened eyes fixing her. Then, biting my lower lip I slowly brought my stare down to the cracked marble blanketing the floor.

“I…” I stuttered, the same shakes that had numbed my senses in the cavern crippling my hooves. “I’m a miner.”

A long silence settled between the two of us. Fillies and foals were playing outside, kicking a probably deflated ball down the street. The nurse slowly raised her hoof to her face, letting out a long sigh, wrinkles folding on her features.

“Why did you have to tell me that?” she grumbled.

I gulped as she walked around the makeshift bed I was sitting in toward a small furniture. Opening it, she took out one single sheet of paper with a round shape blood red stamp on its bottom.

“Wha… what’s that?” I muttered.

She gave me the stare, filled with annoyance as it was clearly not the first time.

“Spare me the whining, please,” she berated. “You’re, just, getting discharged. I’ll send your case to the politburo. You’ll get recruited in the army. You’ll see the world and get some pay apparently.”

Father once told me what he thought about it, chilling.

“Nurse,” I said, my voice febrile. “How many don’t return from the battlefield? In the mine it gets sometimes up to twenty percent.” I slowly rose my head, my count was at three hundred forty seven... A tearing lump in my throat made its presence known as I struggle swallowing the saliva I was chewing on. “Please…”

“You don’t…”

“Please,” I begged, still sat onto the makeshift, stained mattress.

The nurse looked at me, her eyes watering as she bit on her lips, desperate not to tell the truth. Her front hooves trembled as she constricted over her scribbled bloc note. She avoided my curious stares. Her voice slowly rose, crystalline and stuttering.

“None returns,” she spat meekly, her eyes shut as she feared any of my overreaction. “Not that they all die… Just… Murmanesk is not where ponies wanna stay to die.”

She looked at her hoof. “You’re an groundbound like me… You know th’city is our prison.” She was right.

I was just stunned, prostrated. There had always been rumour of those gone beyond the rift… but getting the truth from a rather competent mare was something else than wrestling the words out of one of the chronic drunktards of the nearby tavern. My muscles tensed. I curled up on the bed, locking my knees with my forehooves in a foetal position. The nurse departed.

“Lady,” I called her back, my voice broken and raspy. “How long before you send my case to the administration.”

She stopped in the threshold of the room, the parquet creaking below her hooves. He saw her tail wriggle swiftly. Without a glance back, she sighed.

“Three days,” she muttered with a gruel high-pitched voice. “Three days before the hospital sends your discharge to the politburo.”

She lifted a hoof, ready to go on her fare but stopped. “By the way, there is a letter in the drawer behind you. Letter’s for you.”

Her hoof clattered outside the room.

“Wait”, I yelled. “Please… Can you read me the letter. I… I can’t read.”

She fell back in, ripped off the letter from the sole furniture populating the room, opened it and cleared her throat, clearly annoyed. She read out loud.

“Hi little Coal,

Hope you’ll recover well. I hope to see you again tomorrow. Well, when you get this letter read to you, I guess it will just be one shift in the Pit from our meeting. As I asked the nurse who’s read…” the nurse stopped, grunted, nearly quitted, but kept going on, “...reading this to discharge you so that you can focus ‘properly’ on what I’ve ask you to do.

Hell I know you won’t like that. Neither do I. But it’s something we all have to go through. Proving oneself. So prove to me and your dad, who’s already pissed that you weren’t home as I paid them a visit. You’ve got a beautiful mother and sister to be honest. So, I told him what I suspected you did. And he was pissed. Like Tartarus.

So I expect you to come in handy tomorrow to find out what happened. I found you friends to investigate so far.

By the way, you should really check who your friends are right now. I’m always surprised by how solidarity flow through earth ponies’ veins. I got the nurse reading this ten days of ration for…”

“RAAAh!” she screamed and tore up the paper.

She left in the following second, a tear in her eye, leaving me no time to say something. grasping the two pieces of shredded paper at the feet of my bed, I tried to decipher the paper.

“f… f-or her doh… daughter…

S-See y-ou t-t-tomorr-ow.”

He had signed the letter with his name, Pureblood, and left it with a post-scriptum.

‘PS: Interesting stuff you got in your suit. Did you really tried to smuggle Raw arcs out of the Pit? An arc I haven’t seen yet? And the record… Really interesting. I wished you’ve heard it with me for the last time.'’

I just cringed below my smelly, wet blanket and wept. It sounded like a death penalty. three days and I would be dead… or a wannabe-dead. Either dead on a rope under Pureblood’s order… either in the army, taken far away from here.

“Three days,” I hiccupped.

I had Three days left and I should have hurried. Instead, I just buried myself deep beneath the bed cover and tore up, leaving all my tears trickle over my cheeks in a low, unbearable silence.