Ascendants

by TechieBrony

Chapter 1: Nice To Meet Me

Two

Chapter One - Nice to Meet Me

Darkness.

The body was sending all the typical signals of being cold: Numb hooves and ears, icy tendrils creeping through the back of the skull, heavier than normal breathing. All of these things were trademark survival instincts, crafted and honed by ponies of generations past, who had to survive in the wild using only intellect, wit, and a bit of running. But they were of no use if they weren’t acted upon.

One hundred billion neurons sputtered to life almost simultaneously, deploying several simple messages to the frontal lobe:

Dark, tight, and cold.

But nothing happened; the kickstart hadn’t worked. The brain wasn’t on yet - at least, not enough to make the decisions that needed to be made. So the sympathetic nervous system did it’s job, flooding the body with various hormones in an attempt to facilitate action.

Another message flashed it’s way through the halls of the mind: Out.

My eyes snapped open to darkness: the bane of the claustrophobe. My hooves lanced out instinctively, desperately questing for a way - any way, out of my prison. I began to hyperventilate. Experience was failing me at the moment, but I did know several things: Darkness was bad, and so were tight spaces. My hooves clumsily tripped over one another, striking a few tender spots in my legs, but I kept searching. After a desperate few moments of scrambling about, I found a latch and pushed it open with all my might, not caring what happened as long as I was out.

Sweet, brilliant light blinded me as the pod door swung open. I shot my hooves outwards and flung myself out of the darkness and into the dim light of the outside. My face kissed the grated floor harshly, and a groan of pain escaped my throat. In a way, the pain was calming; Pain meant I was alive, and I could still feel. I closed my eyes and let myself bask in it like a lizard warming itself on a rock. Slowly, it subsided, and I let myself roll onto my side. Before I could calm completely, however, a question posed itself to me.

Where am I?

My eyes flickered open once more, staring into the dull grey floor, composed of many interconnected grates. These were the only things keeping me from falling into the dark unknown beneath them. I hesitantly craned my kinked neck upwards and took in the metallic ceiling, which curved like the inside of a tube. There was a cantaloupe-sized hole torn in it that allowed sunlight in. The walls were lined with metal pods on both sides of me.

I need to get up, I thought. I positioned my legs underneath me with haste so I could orient myself.

Well, that was the plan anyhow. What really happened was me transporting my face from one part of the grating to another, glancing my horn off a pod, whilst also managing to smash my legs against everything within leg-smashing distance. I wasn’t sure what had gone wrong. My legs just seemed to… move differently than I expected.

And my horn, I thought with a grimace. Ow.

Not eager to hurt my horn again, I decided to try a different approach. Alright, hind legs first, then roll a bit, now up on a foreleg. Now the other… c’mon, up, up, up! My forelegs finished what my hind legs had started, hoisting me onto four wobbly noodles. Each of them shook under the strain of keeping my stance stable, persisting in their quakiness for several seconds after my ascension from the metal grate, which now seemed farther away then it had any right to be. So caught up was I in my newly found stature, that I smacked my horn on something, sending another jolt of pain down my spine.

Ow, that hurts! A foreleg traveled upwards to massage the aching appendage, but I only ended up socking myself in the forehead. The surprise combined with the use of only three legs for balance caused me to fall over once more. By the stars, I thought, feeling around my head frantically, where’s my horn?

Soon enough, the answer presented itself to my eyes. The base of the pod door reflected a pitiful sight back towards me. Messy purple and turquoise locks hung limply over my forehead, desperately trying and failing to stay in the orderly lanes in which they grew, splaying every which way in wiry tangles unhindered by a horn. In fact, There was no indication that there had ever been anything on my forehead. My eyes were crusted around the edges with who knows what, and my nose already harbored signs of bruising, it being discolored around my nostrils.

Come to think of it, I didn’t remember having a snout that long either. Nor one that was so angular, almost akin to that of a stallion. I turned my head slightly to be sure it was my face; the look of fear and confusion coming from the mare’s face sure felt like mine, but to be extra sure I pressed a hoof against the metal. The corresponding hoof on the reflection moved to touch mine. It was my hoof; It was my face.

Then why didn’t I remember it?

I shoved the reflection away and turned my head. Predictably, that just brought my attention to all the other reflections of me lying down in the other pod doors. They all stared back, almost eerie in their unfamiliarity. I gulped nervously, regarding myself with apprehension.

“Hello?” I croaked, prying my eyes from the pods. My voice felt unused, and sounded almost as unfamiliar as the rest of me. A silly part of me thought the reflections might answer, but there was only deafening silence. “Hello!” I shouted, a little louder this time. A strange, dissonant echo came back, like my voice had shaken the metal around me. Either nopony could hear me or they didn’t care. I felt myself begin to panic a bit, feeling utterly alone. I closed my eyes and took some deep breaths. It looked like I was going to have to look after myself for now, and crying wasn’t going to help one bit.

I repeated the process of getting to my hooves, a little shakier than before. There wasn’t much to use for support, so I let myself lean against a pod. I carefully lifted a hoof and slid it forward, then another, and another. Carefully, I shifted my weight away from the first pod, stumbling forward onto the second.

As I moved forward and my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw that the end of the hall was blocked by a heavy-looking steel door. If I had a horn, opening it would have been easier done than said. As it was, I had to use my teeth to turn a metal handle; I certainly couldn’t spare a hoof to do it. I pulled with my neck and the door slid to the side. Keeping my grip on the handle for a minute, I repositioned my hooves to make sure they would all stay under me.

The next hallway was perpendicular to the last, with walls of plated metal disappearing into darkness in both directions. I need a light, I thought. My not-horn started tingling in a not-quite-painful way. A horn would have made things so much easier, assuming I actually knew how to cast a light spell; Given how hard I found it to walk, and that I thought - or felt - that I had a horn even though I didn’t, I decided I’d better not take light spells for granted, either. I needed to do things earth-pony style.

There was a switch on the wall next to the door, half-hidden by darkness. I tried flipping it with my nose, but nothing happened. Just to be sure, I flipped it a couple more times. No dice; I’d have to improvise.

I turned around and looked for anything in the pod room I might be able to use. The pods themselves had cables running into their sides from the walls. Whatever they were originally meant to do, I wasn’t going to be using that awful pod again, and I needed something to work with.

The cables sparked as they came loose. Power! I thought. Everything about the structure had seemed derelict; no lights, a hole in the ceiling... But if there was a working source of power, and if I could find it, I might at least be able to turn on some lights. I tugged on the cable again, and a panel fell off the wall, revealing that the wire ran upwards into the ceiling.

Drat. There was no following the wire that way, but maybe I could still get some use out of it. I used my teeth to pry another panel off the wall and started digging through the circuitry with a hoof.

If the wiring was advanced as it looked, there ought to be some sort of capacitor somewhere… something that could hold a charge. Ah! Perfect: a crystal. I wrapped my hoof around it and yanked it out. It sparked angrily and a few stray wires came with it. That would work nicely.

Now, all I need is something to power… there! A strip of foggy glass was embedded in the ceiling; there would be lightbulbs behind that. I used levitation to… Right, I was an earth pony. The lighting fixture was too high for me to reach with my mouth, and I didn’t like the idea of trying to balance on two hooves, so I looked for something I could use.

The only thing of note lying around was the panels I had removed from the wall: long rectangles of some reinforced insulating material. I decided that would have to do. Grabbing one end in my teeth, I turned the other end upwards and leaped, bashing the glass and revealing a row of gemlike light-bulbs. The shock of the impact made me fall again, but luckily I wasn’t hurt. I quickly got up again and used the panel to nudge and turn the light bulb. It was awkward, but it worked.

The bulb wobbled, and I wobbled to grab it before it shattered. Once again, I fell down, but the bulb landed safely in the tangle of my legs. Slowly, I extracted my limbs from the tangle and gingerly picked up the bulb. It was cone-shaped, tapering into the spiral that I had just unscrewed from the ceiling.

I sat down with the items I had acquired in front of me: a gem, some wires, and a lightbulb. Setting the lightbulb on top of the gem, I used some wires to tie the two together. Then, I carefully inserted two other wires into the bulb socket. The bulb lit dimly, but not quite enough to light my way; I needed more power. Bracing my forehooves against the wall and holding my improvised flashlight in my teeth, I touched it to the end of the cable still hanging from the ceiling. Sparks flew, and my light started glowing brighter.

Despite myself, I had to take a moment to admire my work. It looked shabby, but I had managed to make my own little 'light spell' from spare parts. I cantered back to the dark hallway.