H A Z E

by Bandy

Chapter 22

The cloudstone walls of senator Giesu’s complex drank in the colors of the sunrise. Everything inside the massive main chamber glowed, including Hypha. As the day wore on, the colors cooled. His wound changed from gold to green.

Hypha laid on his side facing the wall. The static charge of the cell floor attracted a fine layer of dust, into which he practiced drawing rune spells. With the mineral shells gone, he had no more protection against his own magical powers.

That, of course, assumed he had a foreleg to draw runes with. This wound was getting worse. The smell alone was enough to make him wince.

Hoofsteps echoed down the hall, heading his way. Hypha lifted himself up. “Hello?” His voice echoed down the cloudstone corridors, bringing back memories of Roseroot monastery. The sun peered between the columns of the open east face of the building. “Hello?”

Giesu strode through the entrance, flanked by a dozen black-clad Derechan guards. A swarm of aides followed close behind. They all seemed on edge.

“Giesu,” Hypha called out.

The senator paused mid-stride. The guards paused with him. The aides looked at Hypha with barely restrained terror.

Hypha said, “My leg, it’s... I don’t know. I think I need medicine. It’s—”

“No.” Giesu resumed his stride. “No, that won’t do.” He motioned a guard over to the cell’s electrical control panel.

Hypha’s breath caught in his throat. He sank to the floor in a fetal position so he wouldn’t hit his head when the shock dropped him.

---

About a hundred ponies worked in the administrative wing of Giesu’s complex. They served as his support staff and his buffer from the ponies he represented, ferrying documents, drafting letters, handling finances, and generally insulating the senator from the tedium of his position. Also, if they screwed up, they’d go into the cages too.

On the fourth day of Hypha’s captivity, he was awoken from a feverish dream by the sound of a lower-ranked earth pony staffer storming across the hall.

“Excuse me,” he said, marching right up to the guards, “Are we gonna do something about this?”

The guards shared a tired look. “About what?”

“This smell. The kid’s rotting in there and it’s stinking the whole place up. I can smell it from my office.”

One guard tapped her spear against the floor. “You should get back to work.”

“The air doesn’t move. I’m bathing my office in essential oils and it still smells like a field hospital.”

“You don’t know shit about field hospitals.”

“Yeah, I do. I did my service, same as you.” He hesitated. “Except I was smart enough to get out when I had the chance.”

The guards didn’t throw him in one of the other cages. But they did chain him to Hypha’s cage. They pulled the restraints tight so his back rested against the bars.

“Get a good whiff,” one guard said. “We’ll let you out in a little bit.”

“Whaddaya mean, a little bit? I got work to do!”

The guards laughed and wandered off to patrol the courtyard. A few other workers passed sympathetic glances his way before hustling off.

It took Hypha a few minutes to muster the strength to talk. “I’m sorry they did that to you.”

“Shut up,” the stallion snapped. He was an older earth pony, lean, with a thin blue coat and a purple mane that showed the first signs of balding. He struggled against the chains to give himself some more wiggle room, but eventually gave up. He sighed. Then he gagged.

“What’s your name?” Hypha asked.

“Shut up.” The stallion twisted his head so he could see Hypha out of one eye. “Don’t talk to me. Crawl into the corner and wait for this to be over.”

Hypha tried to crawl, but a lance of pain shot all the way up the left side of his body. It took him a minute to get his breath back. “I can try to get the restraints off,” he finally said.

“No. Just stop.” A few worker ponies walked by and pretended not to notice the stallion chained to the cage. He tried to hide his face, but with his arms chained behind him there was nothing to do but turn his head and close his eyes.

“What’s your name?” Hypha asked.

“I don’t have one. Please stop talking to me.”

“Sino!” Another guard rushed in from the courtyard, the black plates of his armor clattering together as he ran. Hypha curled up again, anticipating a shock. But the guard ran past the electric controls and knelt down beside the chained-up pony. “I heard—” His nose twitched. He gagged a little. “I heard someone else got caged. I didn’t think—”

“Just untie me already.”

The guard drew back. “Sino—”

“What? Untie me, Dex.”

The guard, Dex, shook his head. He said in a soft voice, “I can’t. It’s a rank thing. Lieutenant Pograt—”

“That dirtbag? He couldn’t order a cloud to float.”

“Pograt’s the acting commander right now. Captain Aerie’s away on drill until tomorrow.” The guard patted Sino’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’ll get court-martialed if I untie you. If there was anything I could do—”

“Wait.” Sino strained to look at Hypha. “You could get some painkillers.”

“Do the chains really hurt that much?”

“No, idiot. For the street trash.”

Dex’s face flashed from pity to pure ice. “I’m not giving him anything.”

“Please Dex. He won’t shut up. Just give him something to knock him out.”

Hypha interjected, “I’m trying to be better about empathizing with outsiders—”

“See? He’s delirious. You gotta help me, Dex.”

Dex checked the main hallways for signs of other guards, then the courtyard. “Hang on,” he said, and ran off. A few minutes later, he returned with two pills and a paper ramekin full of coarse beige powder. He tossed them unceremoniously at Hypha’s hooves.

“Thank you,” Hypha croaked.

“Shut up. Take one pill now and another in four hours. And pour the powder on your leg.”

Hypha sniffed the ramekin. “Is this antibacterial?”

Heavy hoofsteps sounded from the courtyard. Dex patted Sino on the shoulder and started back off down the hall. “Good luck buddy. Maybe don’t be so antagonistic next time.”

“What’s the powder?” Hypha asked. But Dex was already halfway down the hall. Repeated attempts to ask Sino netted the same result. Hypha sniffed the powder experimentally, then dipped his hoof into it and tasted it.

It was sawdust.

---

They let Sino go after a couple more hours. Apparently, being in close proximity to Hypha for the morning was punishment enough.

The pills helped curb the worst of the pain, but it didn’t stop the infection itself. Hypha’s fever escalated. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. Sound dimmed. Even the crackle of the cage’s electric shockers fell away. He thought of Red and Blue feasting, laughing, selling mushrooms at an outlandish markup. The hate returned. For awhile, he was able to differentiate reality from the ghosts of all the might-have-beens. But with enough time, the two merged into a single entity, haunting Hypha’s waking thoughts.

There was only one reason why things had turned out this way. He was being punished for playing monk. He hadn’t just failed the order. He’d delivered mother sky into outsider mouths. Now the destruction of the order was complete, and he had only himself to blame.

The pain, the hate—it was all part of the punishment. That must be why he was in this cage. He deserved this.

Hypha tried to recall his conversations with Walik. How had he maintained his spirits in the face of death? Hypha regretted not asking. He recalled the moment the gates went up and the prisoners had poured into the pit of the colosseum. He ran ahead of them. Leading them. How?

The rhythm of pain and dissociation cracked his mind like weather-warped metal. Whole days disappeared, sloughed off like mountainsides collapsing into avalanches. He was free, careening through the sky. Then he was miles above a valley of fertile grassland. Then he went higher still, into the clouds. Then there was black.

When the guards checked on him the next morning, they found him convulsing on the floor of the cage. A thin trickle of foamy saliva poured from his mouth. His eyes were rolled up. The rising sun bathed him in gold.

---

Hypha came to on a morning-colored cloud. The pain had all disappeared. The air was fresh and free of rot. He could have been back on his cloud on the edge of Derecho. Or a nameless peak in the Stonewood mountains.

His heart soared in his chest. A smile cracked his dry lips. He was free. He was dead. Free—

He tried to sit up. The chains around his legs clanked.

“Oh,” he said.

What he thought was heaven was really a cloudstone-tiled room with a one-way mirror on the far wall. As he tried to regain his bearings, a dozen doctors in white coats spilled inside.

Endless questions and a great deal of uncomfortable probing followed. The doctors paid extra attention to his wounded leg, whose greenish tint had spread down towards his battered hoof. They prodded the center of the gash with a pair of forceps. Hypha found his voice and screamed.

When they were done, they swabbed his arm with iodide and cleanser, staining his fur a harsh copper-yellow. One of the doctors waved his hoof at the one-way mirror. A moment later, the door opened. Giesu stepped into the room.

“Do you know why you’re here?” the senator asked. Hypha opened his mouth to answer, but only a hoarse, pathetic gurgling sound came out. “Let me tell you, then. You’re here because I want to help you.”

Hypha tried to look down at his leg, but one of the lab techs placed a hoof on Hypha’s forehead, holding him down.

“I’m not heartless,” Giesu continued. “I pity you. You were misled. You never stood a chance.”

The doctor stepped in and slipped a belt around the top of Hypha’s leg. The leather bit into his skin.

“Azzura Scuro is a masterful manipulator. She had her way with you. It’s written all over your face.”

Hypha shook his head. “No,” he muttered. His throat ached. “She wasn’t... she—”

“Did she sleep with you? Were you lovers?”

“She’s with Red.”

Giesu let out a little hum of interest. “The other mare, right? She’s got her hooks in both of you.” A note of pride entered his voice. “Azzura Scuro doesn’t really love Red. And she was never your friend.”

“I know.”

An annoyed smile curled the senator’s lips. It was clear he hadn’t been expecting agreement. “You think I’m lying?”

“No.” The leather strap clawed painfully at his fur. “I didn’t want to see it before.”

“Do you want to live?”

Tears blotted his vision. “No.”

“Then why do you hang on?”

“Because I have to live.”

“Why’s that?”

“I have to kill—”

“Me?”

Hypha shook his head. The tears spilled over. “Romulus.”

At the mention of the general’s name, all eyes in the room immediately turned to Giesu. The senator’s ears perked up. He looked around the room, then leaned over Hypha until his lips almost touched his ear. Little ripples cascaded through his cloak as it resettled.

“Why do you want to kill Romulus?”

Bitter memories flooded Hypha’s head. “Roseroot.”

He snorted, his breath pungent with oil and fruit. “You’re a monk!”

Hypha started to shake his head yes, but couldn’t follow through.

Giusu burst out laughing. “Oh, he’ll be furious to know you’re alive. This changes everything.”

He motioned with his hoof. A lab tech removed a long, serrated saw from a leather holder. The others took up positions around Hypha and held him down against the table.

“I’m glad you’re here. Really.” Giesu’s eyes filled with bellows-blown fire. “I’m going to keep you alive because you didn’t know any better, and because I want to help you. But I won’t let this sort of thing slide twice. So I’m going to give you a little reminder. Every time you look back on this incident, I want you to remember that ponies of lower stations must always refer to their superiors by their title. It’s senator to you. Senator.”

Giesu patted Hypha on the shoulder and left the room, his purple robes flowing behind him.

The lab technician placed the saw against Hypha’s rotting foreleg and prepared to make the first draw.

Comments

[hehelover]

No comment here, except for the fact that I cannot sympathize with Hypha more than I can with, say, Giesu. I’m curious to see where this would go but my eyebrows wouldn’t even give a twitch if he had all his limbs chopped off and became Darth Hypha. He showed even less emotion other than hate than Anakin in the Prequels.